Hamas has attacked Israel. The IDF hits back. The world's reaction, the situation now

Since the morning of 7 October, militants of the Islamic movement Hamas have attacked Israel. Thousands of rockets flew at Israeli cities, hundreds of terrorists infiltrated into Israeli territory, seized Israeli army bases, taking IDF soldiers and residents of border towns and villages prisoner.

The attack was unprecedented in scale and tactics - militants entered Israel on foot, in vehicles, by water and even by air in motorised paragliders.

In confronting the Israeli military, the militants for the first time actively used drones to drop ammunition on armoured vehicles.

The militants said they captured Israeli military equipment and towers in the first hours. Palestinian looters began stealing agricultural equipment.

The number of Israelis killed in the Hamas attack has risen to 100, Radio Liberty reports .

Military operations continue in settlements in the south of Israel, near the border with the Gaza Strip. Electricity is cut off in homes and mobile communications are intermittent. Local residents say they are running out of drinking water," the agency said.

Hamas is kidnapping people and taking them to its territory. Among them are children, women and the elderly. It said the Israelis will be held captive until all Palestinian prisoners are released from Israeli jails. According to the militants, there are 7,000 such prisoners on Israeli territory.

In the afternoon, it was reported that among those captured, Palestinians claimed that Israeli Brigadier General Major General Nimrod Aloni, commander of Israel's "deep forces" responsible for operations behind enemy lines, could be among those captured. Israel denied the information.

Closer to evening, Israel Defence Forces chief spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari confirmed that the Hamas terror group had taken Israelis hostage in the Gaza Strip and that Israeli soldiers had died in the fighting. He did not give figures on the number of hostages and soldiers killed.

Hagari said fighting is taking place in 22 locations in southern Israel.

The Web publishes a map of the suspected area occupied by Hamas militants since the start of the escalation of fighting this morning in Israel.

A state of emergency has been declared throughout Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a special address to the people of the country that Israel is in a state of war.

Citizens of Israel, we are in a state of war. It is not an operation, it is not an escalation - it is a war. The cleansing of those settlements in the south where the militants managed to break through has already begun. I have ordered a large call-up of reservists to the army and crushing blows in response. I call on all citizens of Israel to obey the army and the Home Front Command. We are at war and we will win the war. The enemy will pay an unprecedented price," he assured.

Netanyahu also said that the terrorists should be charged a huge price for their crimes.

The Israeli Air Force began strikes on the Gaza Strip. A call for reservists was announced in the country.

The Israeli Security Council approved a ground operation in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli army leadership said that not a single living terrorist would be left on their territory by tonight.

Iran and Qatar supported the terrorists. "Taliban" said it was ready to join Hamas and attack Israel. A spontaneous march in support of the attack took place in the Palestinian Authority capital Ramallah. The Russian Foreign Ministry "expressed concern" and urged "the parties to restraint".

In Russia, Z-bloggers did not hide their gloating:
📌 "Captured Israeli woman. I'm sure they will rape the whole kishlak and then kill her. Retribution for the occupation is inevitable. Be good!"," writes blogger and separatist Alex Parker.
📌 "A country that doesn't fight its neighbours is fighting its neighbours again. Waiting for the exodus of Russian pacifists. However, nah, we are not waiting," Margarita Simonyan wrote.
📌 "Without gloating: can Maxim Galkin be drafted? He's a year younger than me. We are worried," Zakhar Prilepin wrote.
📌 "Not a drop of pity and sympathy, the parasha about "a quarter of the former our people" we'll leave in the past, to the relocants of the first wave," - propagandist Dmitry Steshin.

Hamas military commander Mohammad Deif issued a statement calling this morning's attacks and infiltration into Israel "the day of the great revolution." The terrorist called on Israeli Arabs to take up arms and join the attack. He also called for "Islamic resistance" in Lebanon, Iraq and Syria.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu held talks with Biden and told him that "it will take a long and protracted struggle in which Israel will prevail." Biden said he fully supported Israel's right to self-defence. Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin said his department would work to ensure that Israel, which Hamas militants launched a massive attack on, "has everything it needs to defend itself". The official U.S. government website published Lloyd Austin's statement.

I am closely following developments in Israel. Our commitment to Israel's right to self-defence remains unwavering, and I extend my condolences to the families of those killed in this heinous attack on civilians," the US MoD chief said.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Berbock said Berlin condemns the terror attacks from the Gaza Strip on Israel. She said the violence and rocket attacks against innocent people must stop immediately. Berbock emphasised that the IDF can count on Germany's full solidarity and added that Israel has the right under international law to defend itself against terror.

British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said that London "unequivocally condemns Hamas's horrific attacks on Israeli civilians."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also reacted to the events. The head of state said that terror should not be given any chance anywhere in the world. Zelensky noted that terror is always a crime not just against one country or its specific victims, but against humanity and the entire world.

French President Emmanuel Macron also voiced support for Israel .

In Tel Aviv itself, dozens of Israelis queued to donate blood for the victims.

The conflict between Jews and Arabs over Palestine dates back to the beginning of the 20th century. At that time, after the Ottoman Empire disappeared from the political map of the world as a result of the First World War, Britain took control of some of the territories of the Middle East that had been part of the empire. Among them was Palestine, a territory that Jews considered their historical homeland, and which at that time was mostly inhabited by Arabs.

Beginning in the 1920s, more and more Jews travelled to Palestine, fleeing oppression in Europe and then the Holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler during World War II. And tensions between them and the Palestinians grew increasingly high.

At the UN in 1947, they voted in favour of a decision to partition Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states, and to recognise Jerusalem as an international city. This decision was accepted by the Jewish leaders but rejected by the Arabs, so it was never realised. In 1948, the Jews announced the creation of their own state, Israel. War broke out. And troops from neighbouring Arab states invaded the country. As a result of the confrontation, Israel gained control over most of the territory. At the same time the part of Palestine, which was captured by Jordan, began to be called the West Bank. And Egypt gained control over Gaza. Jerusalem was divided between Israel (controlling the western part) and Jordan (controlling the eastern part of the city).

In 1967, a new major war broke out between the Arabs and Israel, called the Six-Day War. Israel was then opposed by Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Algeria. As a result of the Six Day War, East Jerusalem and the West Bank, as well as most of the Syrian Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip and the Egyptian peninsula of Sinai came under Israeli control.

Over the past 50 years, Israel has built new settlements in the occupied areas, where more than 600,000 Jews now live. The Palestinians consider this illegal under international law. Israel denies the accusations.

The attack on Israel on 7 October was pre-planned and the timing was not random. Thus, analysts point out that the indirect reason was the normalisation of Israel's relations with Saudi Arabia, which financed the Palestinian Authority and supported militants, and the day was timed to coincide with the "Doomsday War". It lasted from 6 October to 25 October 1973. It was initiated by a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria as a revenge war for defeat at the hands of Israel in the 1967 Six Day War, in which the Israelis took control of the Sinai Peninsula, all of Jerusalem and the west bank of the Jordan River, as well as the Golan Heights in Syria.

Meanwhile, Tel Aviv is oupsteady. People are hiding in shelters.

Because of the terrorist attack on Israel, a number of airlines on Saturday cancelled their flights to Tel Aviv. About it writes Spiegel.

The airline Lufthansa said it was reducing the number of flights to the country. On Frankfurt Airport's homepage, two Lufthansa departures to Tel Aviv scheduled for Saturday were marked as cancelled.

Swiss airline Swiss, a subsidiary of Lufthansa, has suspended flights to Israel indefinitely.

According to industry publication AeroTelegraph, several planes changed course and turned back after the attacks began. A Wizz Air plane flying from Rome returned to the Italian capital instead of Tel Aviv. Another plane of the airline landed in Larnaca instead of Tel Aviv.

A Turkish Airlines plane also turned around near Cyprus, according to the publication.

Polish carrier LOT cancelled its Saturday flights to Tel Aviv. The company promises to monitor the situation and inform about the fate of the flights in the following days.

Discussing why Israel was not prepared for a Hamas attack Israeli military expert David Gendelman said in a BBC commentary that the Israeli intelligence assessment was that the escalation was not favourable for Hamas at the moment, after friction in recent weeks Gazans were given more permits to work in Israel, another tranche of Qatari money came into Gaza and so on.

It was assumed that their current demands are satisfied, they will not fight now, and the exercise is just a seasonal exercise, as it has happened before," Gendelman explained.

According to him, the intelligence did not reveal direct preparations for the operation either.

The army relaxed, there was no readiness on the border, Hamas achieved complete surprise in the attack, and consequently achieved unexpected successes even for itself," the expert said.

According to Gendelman, this once again showed that the assessment of intentions should not completely replace the assessment of capabilities, and that the adjustment of the enemy's alleged actions to the concept of what we think is favourable and unfavourable to him, leads to disastrous consequences.

The Embassy of Ukraine in Israel has stated that it receives appeals from Ukrainian citizens on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides. However, unfortunately, there is no technical possibility to evacuate Ukrainians now.

More than a thousand of our citizens live on the territory of Palestine, in the Gaza Strip. They are on the consular register. We had to evacuate them during the last attack two years ago. Therefore, appeals are constantly coming, we try to help our citizens in real time," Ukrainian Ambassador to Israel Yevhen Korniychuk said.

He pointed out that people should stay in safe places, listen to the commands coming from the authorities and follow them clearly.

The catastrophe is huge, no one expected it. The biggest problem is that the Israeli side did not expect it," he added.

By late afternoon, the Israel Defence Forces officially confirmed that the Israeli military had entered all the settlements whose capture by Hamas fighters was reported in the morning. Fighting is going on there.