Gaza Offensive between Ground Invasion and Truce Efforts

As Israeli officials were mulling a possible ground invasion in Gaza, efforts to reach a ceasefire were going on with an Egyptian mediation.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened an expanded offensive that might reach a ground invasion.
“The army is prepared to significantly expand the operation,” Netanyahu said at the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday.

But Israeli occupation military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Avital Leibovich said no decision on a ground offensive has been made yet but confirmed it is ‘still an option’.
“We still have hundreds of targets in Gaza, including rocket launchers ready to fire rockets on Israel,” she said.
“The only thing of concern is how to stop the rockets threatening three million people – just under half of the total Israeli population,” Leibovich added.

For his part, US President Barack Obama said on Sunday it would be “preferable” to avoid an Israeli ground invasion of Gaza.
Obama, weighing in with his first comments on the crisis, made clear he was firmly on the side of the Zionist entity against the Palestinian resistance, but he also seemed to appeal to Netanyahu to allow more time for Middle East leaders to “rein” in Hamas.

“There’s no country on earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders,” Obama told a news conference during a visit to Thailand.
“So we are fully supportive of Israel’s right to defend itself.”

For his part, British Foreign Minister William Hague warned the Zionist entity that a ground invasion to Gaza would cost Tel Aviv international support.

“The prime minister (David Cameron) and I have both stressed to our Israeli counterparts that a ground invasion of Gaza would lose Israel a lot of the international support and sympathy that they have in this situation.”
Meanwhile, only 30 percent of the Israelis support a ground operation in Gaza, according to an Israeli daily Haaretz-Dialog poll taken on Sunday.