Israel-Hamas war: IDF says preparing 'ground operation'

The leader of Islamist group Hamas, which is considered by the US, the EU, Germany and others to be a terrorist organization, met with the foreign minister of Iran on Saturday.

Ismail Haniyeh had the meeting Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahianin in Qatar.

The two discussed Hamas' deadly terrorist attack on civilians in Israel and "and agreed to continue cooperation" to achieve the group's goals, Hamas said in a statement.

The Iranian foreign minister also praised the Hamas terrorist attack as a "historic victory" against Israel.

Hamas killed more than 1,300 Israelis during the attack, while dozens more were kidnapped and taken hostage.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak has thrown his support behind an expected Israeli ground offensive in the Gaza Strip after Islamist group Hamas staged a terror attack that killed around 1,300 Israelis and saw dozens more kidnapped

Barak was Israel's prime minister from 1999 to 2001, and went on to serve as defense minister in later governments. He is also one of Israel's most highly decorated military service members.

"We suffered the probably the most severe blow since the establishment of the State of Israel," Barak told DW's Pablo Foley Elias.

He said that "when Israel's Jews are slaughtered in this way," no country can afford to have terror groups on its border.

Hamas is considered to be a terrorist group by the US, the EU, Germany and a number of other countries.

International observers including UN Secretary-General Anonio Guterres have voiced concern that the Israeli forces' evacuation order for some 1.1 million Palestinians in Gaza City could be dangerous or even unfeasible.

Barak maintained that Israel and its armed forces would respect international law.

"However, we cannot assure you that there will be no collateral damage," he added. "It unfortunately happens in any major war."

Barak said any large-scale Israeli operation would be deliberately thorough in order to neutralize Hamas.

"There is no way to root out the Hamas operations from the Gaza Strip through air attacks, diplomacy, wishes from Israel on the on the TV station and global support. It has to be done by soldiers on the ground facing the risk of paying with their lives," he said.

"And we do whatever we can, and 'whatever we can' means to tell in advance everyone to move. They already had four days to leave."

Barak said he hoped that if Hamas is destroyed, other Arab states can act as caretakers to gradually reinstate control of the Palestinian Authority over the Gaza Strip

The United States is sending a second aircraft carrier strike group to the eastern Mediterranean, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Saturday.

The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and its affiliated warships are being deployed "to deter hostile actions against Israel or any efforts toward widening this war following Hamas's attack," Austin said.

It will join the USS Gerald R. Ford strike group, which was directed to support Israel in the Mediterranean last weekend.

Austin said the move demonstrates Washington's "ironclad commitment to Israel's security and our resolve to deter any state or non-state actor seeking to escalate this war."

Germany has started evacuating its citizens from Israel with military airplanes.

The first A400M military transport with 51 German nationals aboard took off from Ben Gurion Airport shortly before midnight, the Bundeswehr said on X, formerly Twitter.

A second A400M also landed at the airport.

According to parliamentary defense spokesman Wolfgang Hellmich, both aircraft had relief material for Israel on board.

A third military plane was being readied for a flight on Sunday.

German carrier Lufthansa stopped its scheduled flights from Israel at the beginning of the week. 

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Israeli strikes targeted Syria's Aleppo Airport, putting it out of service.

Syria's defense ministry also reported the strikes, which it described as "an air attack from the direction of the Mediterranean Sea, west of Latakia, targeting Aleppo International Airport, which led to material damage to the airport and it being out of service." 

The Israeli military did not immediately comment. 

Saturday's strikes come days after missile attacks by Israeli forces on the airports in Syria's capital, Damascus, and Aleppo had damaged the runways and put both hubs out of service.

US President Joe Biden held separate phone calls with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, according to statements from the Israeli and Palestinian leaders' offices and the White House.

Netanyahu told Biden that "unity and determination" were needed to achieve Israel's military goals against Hamas militants who rule the Gaza Strip.

Hamas is considered a terror group by the EU, US, Israel and other governments. 

Biden again assured the Israeli leader of unwavering US support.

"President Biden discussed with Prime Minister Netanyahu US coordination with the United Nations, Egypt, Jordan, Israel and others in the region to ensure innocent civilians have access to water, food and medical care," the White House said.

"President Biden affirmed his support for all efforts to protect civilians," the White House said.

Representatives for Abbas said the Palestinian leader told Biden that he completely rejects the displacement of Palestinians from Gaza as Israel ordered civilians in the densely populated enclave to evacuate to south of the strip.

Abbas, who heads the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank but who lost control of Gaza to Hamas after elections in 2006 and a violent struggle for power between Hamas and Abbas' Fatah group, also told Biden that he "rejects killing of civilians from both sides, calling for release of civilians, prisoners and detainees." 

Biden told Abbas about US efforts to prevent the conflict from widening and the need to preserve stability in the West Bank, the White House said.

Biden offered Abbas his full support for efforts to ensure humanitarian aid to Palestinians and underscored Palestinian "self-determination" during the phone call, the White House said.

Israel's military said Saturday that it is preparing for the "next stages" of the war against Hamas, which would include an "integrated and coordinated attack from the air, sea and land." 

Israel has been readying troops for a major ground offensive to dismantle Hamas in Gaza in response to the militant group's deadly October 7 attack on Israeli territory.

Hamas militants breached defenses from Gaza and massacred citizens in Israeli towns, leaving more than 1,300 people dead, according to Israeli authorities.

Gaza health officials say more than 2,200 people have been killed so far as a result of Israel's retaliatory airstrikes in Gaza.

The Netherlands will continue to send humanitarian aid to the Palestinian territories, the country's Prime Minister Mark Rutte said.

Rutte on Saturday spoke with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who heads the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank but who lost control of Gaza to Hamas after elections in 2006 and a violent struggle for power between Hamas and Abbas' Fatah group.

Rutte expressed his sympathy for "all the innocent victims of the spiralling violence unleashed by the Hamas terror attacks."

"We also discussed our concerns about the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip. It is of great importance that the innocent residents of Gaza can obtain food, water and medical care," Rutte wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

"I assured President Abbas that the Netherlands will continue its humanitarian support to the Palestinian Territories," Rutte said.

The European Union has forcefully condemned the terror attacks carried out by Hamas militants in southern Israel last weekend. Hamas is considered a terror group by the EU, US and others.

EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell said after an emergency meeting of foreign ministers earlier this week the bloc would continue to work with its partner, the Palestinian Authority (PA), which rules parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

That was to ensure humanitarian aid reaches Palestinian people. Germany has suspended development aid for the Palestinian territories but it is keeping up humanitarian help.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke on Saturday, with Scholz again assuring Berlin's  solidarity after Hamas' terror attack. 

Both leaders agreed that it was important "to avoid a regional conflagration and in particular a Hezbollah intervention in the conflict," German government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit said, referring to the Islamist political and military group based in Lebanon.

Scholz also briefed Netanyahu on his other diplomatic contacts in recent days, Hebestreit said. The German chancellor had spoken with leaders from Egypt, Qatar and Turkey, and is scheduled to meet the Emir of Jordan in Berlin early next week. 

Hebestreit said Netanyahu also briefed Scholz on Israeli efforts to avoid harm to civilians in Gaza, but told Scholz that these "were being counteracted by Hamas." He said both leaders were in agreement on the importance of this issue. 

Scholz reiterated "Germany's full solidarity with the people of Israel in these difficult hours and underscored that Germany stands unwaveringly by Israel's side."

The Israeli military says it is preparing for an "integrated and coordinated attack from the air, sea and land" on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

In a statement issued on Saturday evening, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said: "Battalions and soldiers are deployed all over the country and are prepared to increase readiness for the next stages of the war — with an emphasis on a significant ground operation."

It did not specify exactly when this would begin, however, amid speculation that a larger-scale attack could be imminent.

The IDF has called up over 300,000 reservists in an unprecedented mobilization since Hamas militants launched thousands of rockets toward Israel, breached border defenses and rampaged across communities of southern Israel a week ago.

More than 1,300 people have been killed in Israel, and more than 2,200 people have been killed so far in Israel's retaliatory bombing campaign of the Gaza Strip.

Israel has ordered Palestinian civilians to evacuate the northern part of the Gaza, an order that has been condemned as impractical by much of the international community.

Earlier on Saturday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted video footage and photographs on social media of him meeting with IDF soldiers on the front line and asking them if they were ready for the next phase of the deployment, to which they were shown nodding.

"We are all ready," he wrote as he shared the video, but again with no details on where or when.

The German armed forces, the Bundeswehr, will fly German citizens out of Israel. Germany's Luftwaffe air force confirmed earlier media reports to this effect on Saturday evening.

Two A400M military transport planes were already en route to Tel Aviv.

German commercial carrier Lufthansa has been flying Germans out of Israel on special flights this week, with more than 800 flown to Germany on Friday alone.

But the airline said on Saturday it was pausing those flights due to security issues and "unresolved questions of operational stability in Tel Aviv."

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has said that Israel's fight against Hamas must take into consideration the humanitarian situation in Gaza.

Speaking from Cairo, where she was holding talks with Egyptian and Turkish counterparts, Baerbock spoke about a "huge dilemma that is difficult to resolve."

"The fight against Hamas must be carried out with the greatest possible consideration for the humanitarian situation," she said.

Germany is looking into how humanitarian aid could be deployed to the Gaza Strip via the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, saying that people there were "in need of everything at the moment." 

She also said that Berlin was trying to find a solution for German hostages held by Hamas.

Baerbock appealed to Hamas to release all the hostages abducted from Israel during its deadly October 7 attacks. 

"This is about innocent people," Baerbock said. "Their release is a humanitarian imperative."

Both the United States and China tried to put the onus on the other to help restore calm in the Middle East, with each side urging the other to use its influence in the region to defuse the crisis.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, had what State Department spokesman Matthew Miller described as a "productive" one-hour phone call on the issue. 

"Our message was that [Blinken] thinks it's in our shared interest to stop the conflict from spreading," Miller told reporters on Blinken's plane from Riyadh to Abu Dhabi. "He thought it could be useful if China could use its influence." 

China has closer ties to Iran, in particular, than the US does. 

Wang, meanwhile, said Washington "should play a constructive and responsible role" in the conflict.

"When dealing with international hot-spot issues, major countries must adhere to objectivity and fairness, maintain calmness and restraint, and take the lead in abiding by international law," said Wang, according to a Chinese Foreign Ministry readout.

The Chinese foreign minister added that Beijing called for "the convening of an international peace meeting as soon as possible to promote the reaching of broad consensus." Wang said finding a two-state solution would be the "fundamental outlet for the Palestinian issue."

The Lebanese military has said Israeli forces launched a missile that hit a "civilian vehicle" of a media crew on Friday, killing video journalist Issam Abdallah and injuring five others.

The Lebanese army accused Israeli forces of targeting southern villages and towns, as well as an army reconnaissance tower.

Abdallah was a video journalist for the Reuters news agency. Other journalists wounded in the attack worked for media outlets including Reuters, the French news agency AFP and the Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera.

The Reuters videographer was laid to rest in his hometown on Saturday. Hundreds attended the funeral procession in the southern Lebanese town of Khiam, where the late Abdallah's body was draped in a Lebanese flag.

Israel's military said on Saturday it was investigating the incident.

Hamas said on Saturday that nine of the hostages it is holding have been killed in the past 24 hours in Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip.

The group's military wing said four of those killed were foreign nationals. It claimed their deaths were the result of Israeli bombardment of areas where the hostages were being held. 

Hamas, designated as a terrorist group in Israel, Germany, the US and the EU, did not provide any further evidence for its claims on how the hostages died.

On Friday, Hamas had reported 13 hostage deaths, also blaming the Israeli bombardment.

The Israel Defense Force (IDF) said earlier on Saturday that over 120 hostages were being held by Hamas in Gaza.

The IDF has intensified strikes on the besieged strip since the deadly terror attacks.

Jordan warned Israel that a new displacement of Palestinians would push the region to the "abyss" of a wider regional conflict.

Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi also said Israel's blocking of humanitarian aid to Gaza and forcing its residents to leave were "flagrant" breaches of international law.

Israel has given the entire population in the north of the Gaza Strip until 4 p.m. local time on Saturday to move further south.

Safadi said Israel's military campaign against Hamas was killing innocent civilians and would bring despair and destruction in its wake that would not bring security to Israel.

"It won't achieve security or lead to peace," Safadi added. "This will bring the region into the hell of war ... we have to end this madness."

Meanwhile, Qatar said it categorically rejected any attempt to forcibly displace the residents of Gaza.

A statement from the Qatari Foreign Ministry said Gulf state's leaders "call on lifting the siege of Gaza Strip, and provide full protection for the Palestinian civilians according to the international and humanitarian laws."