Gallant at Gaza border: 'war that will change the situation forever'

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant made a statement to the media on Sunday from the border with the Gaza Strip, hours before the ground incursion into Gaza against Hamas. “This is a war between the sons of light and the sons of darkness, and it will be deadly but it will change the situation forever.”

“I saw, I investigated, I studied the events that took place here in recent days and especially on Saturday October 7. What I saw here were demonstrations of heroism on the part of soldiers and women soldiers, men and women, all these people together. They protected the State of Israel with their bodies and protected the lives of the people who were in the towns and villages," he said. 

"The courage of the fighters who attacked with their bare hands, sometimes with grenades, with weapons they collected from the terrorists, with equipment they brought from home on the spur of the moment, all this is extremely impressive."

"Wild beasts have murdered our soldiers, our children, our citizens. IDF fighters, together with the air force, intelligence personnel and navy, will eliminate Hamas," he said. 

"We will reach all the terrorist infrastructures, we will reach all the tunnels, we will reach all the Hamas operatives, we will not finish the mission without having annihilated them. It will be a powerful and deadly war, it will be a precise war and it will be a war that will change the situation forever,” Gallant said.

"The nation of Israel has suffered a heavy blow. We are all in our hearts with the bereaved family members and those searching for their loved ones. We are doing everything possible to locate them even in this great complexity. I put together a very strong team of all of our intelligence agencies and all of the security organizations that are working day and night to try to recover information. This effort is happening concurrently with the war effort and we will succeed in these two missions,” he concluded.

Keep up to date with up to the minute information on the war in our LIVEBLOG.