“There is a time for peace and a time for war. This is a time for war.” So declared Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, as he rejected calls for a ceasefire, two days after Israel had entered what he termed the “second phase” of its war against Hamas. The ground offensive had been widely anticipated in the three weeks since Hamas’s devastating 7 October attack on Israel, in which 1,400 people, most of them civilians, were killed. But its launch opened a new stage in the conflict, said The Wall Street Journal, which Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry estimates has already cost 8,500 Palestinian lives, including those of 3,500 children. Within 24 hours of the fresh offensive beginning, Israel had sent tanks and ground troops into Gaza, and had hit…
