AS diplomatic efforts to halt the ongoing Israeli-Hamas War falter, Israeli tank units staged an incursion into Gaza on Wednesday, while its jets pounded the besieged territory, and its artillery fended off barrages of rockets. Casualties are mounting; the humanitarian cost is also rising, and the conflict looks likely to widen and draw in more belligerents. Increasingly, the capability of the international community to maintain global peace appears shaky. Statesmen should rise and halt the bloodbath.

Gaza, blockaded and bombarded, is going down in ruins. By Wednesday evening, the territory’s health ministry was reporting 6,500 persons killed, many of them civilians. Since October 7 when Hamas fighters crossed into Israel in coordinated military and terrorist attacks that killed 1,400 persons and about 250 others kidnapped, the Middle-East has been boiling.

Deployed in tanks and armoured vehicles, the Israeli Defence Force confirmed that troops carried out a ‘targeted raid,’ in northern Gaza on Wednesday in “preparation for the next stages of combat.”

From Gaza, Syria, and Lebanon, Hamas, Islamic terror groups, and the Shia Hezbollah militias respectively maintained a steady barrage of missiles on Israeli territory, killing civilians and soldiers.

Israeli Air Force planes meanwhile fired on 250 Hamas targets overnight. As the enclave reels, a UN official lamented, “Nowhere is safe in Gaza.”

But worse is coming. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed that the dreaded ground invasion is imminent. For this, reported The Economist of London, the IDF has mobilised its entire armoured corps and their over 1,000 tanks. About 360,000 reservists, regarded as the backbone of its vaunted military, have been called up to join the 170,000-strong full-time force.

Netanyahu repeated the country’s wartime goals; to destroy Hamas, and rescue the hostages.

An avoidable war, it was triggered by the surprise simultaneous assaults by air, sea and land. Hamas fighters breached border security fences, emerged from tunnels, and landed by gliders, amid a torrent of hundreds of rockets, and gunned down civilians and soldiers. Others stormed Israeli beaches in motorboats.

The 1,400 persons killed included children, the elderly, and soldiers. About 32 of those killed were Americans, and over 4,500 persons on the Israeli side have been injured. On the Palestinian side, over 12,000 have been injured.

Military analysts fear a massive rise in the casualty figures once the ground invasion begins. An urban area, which Hamas has ruled for 16 years, it reportedly hosts an extensive “spider web” network of underground tunnels that could help blunt the potency of Israel’s tanks and cost it greatly in casualties.

Armed and funded by Iran, Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based Shia militia, with whom IDF fought an inconclusive war in 2006, and the Palestine Islamic Jihad, also based in Gaza, Islamists in Syria, and the Houthi army that controls most of Yemen, could join the fray against Israel. They have been exchanging rocket fire and raids with Israel.

The United States that has weighed in fully behind Israel and dispatched two Carrier Strike Groups and other military assets to the region, has intercepted missiles fired from Yemen, while its bases in Syria have come under attacks, including one this week that wounded two dozen servicemen.

Diplomatic efforts must be scaled up urgently. UN officials should stop assigning blame for now and concentrate on brokering a ceasefire and pressuring Hamas to release the hostages, and Israel to halt its air strikes and the blockade.

With civilian deaths mounting, and two million Gazans set to become refugees, the world should work to prevent an escalation involving more actors.

The US should leverage its influence with Israel to promote caution. A ground war will be disastrous, not only in the deaths, injuries and devastation, but also in the entrenchment of mutual hatred.

The global community must rise as one and stop the bloodletting today.

•Israeli soldiers and police gather following a mass infiltration by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip, in Sderot, southern Israel

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