Israeli strikes on Gaza killed at least 40 Palestinians overnight, while Israeli officials talk of expanding Israeli territories “to Damascus,” according to Arab media.
In southern Gaza, an Israeli airstrike on Bani Suhaila in Khan Younis hit a residential building, killing at least 10 people, according to officials at Nasser Hospital and family members of the victims.
Five others were killed in an attack on a house in the town of Al-Fokhari. Eight more died in the centre of Gaza as a result of Israeli strikes on and around the Al-Nuseirat camp.
The Gaza Civil Defence reported that six people were killed in a strike on an apartment building near the residential Nawri tower, while two others lost their lives after a strike on an apartment building near the Radi petrol station, according to PRCS paramedics.
17 people perished in northern Gaza. Three people were killed in a strike on the Salah Eddine Mosque in the Al-Zaytoun neighbourhood southeast of Gaza City, while two others died in an airstrike on a mosque in Tal Al-Hawa in the southwest. Many victims remained trapped under the rubble.
Israel seeks to expand its borders?
Israeli Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich was criticised for calling for the expansion of his country’s borders to Damascus in a recent documentary, In Israel: Ministers of Chaos, produced by European public service channel Arte.
It is written that the future of Jerusalem is to expand to Damascus.
Smotrich voiced the ideology of “greater Israel,” which implied expanding “little by little” to include all Palestinian territories, as well as Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. The Jordanian Foreign Ministry condemned the inflammatory remarks, saying they highlighted the Israeli minister’s dangerous and “racist” ideology.
Another Israeli politician, Minister for the Advancement of Women May Golan, showed disdain for the lives of Palestinians by expressing pride in the “ruins” of the besieged Gaza Strip.
I am personally proud of the ruins of Gaza. And that every baby, even 80 years from now, will tell their grandchildren what the Jews did.
She also stated that Israel wanted “to see the Israeli soldiers, the holy heroes of ours, catching (Yahya) Sinwar and his terrorists by their ears, and dragging them all across the Gaza Strip, on their way to the dungeons of the Prison Authority.”
