Since October 7, the Palestinian movement Hamas and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have been engaged in the latest escalation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which has so far claimed the lives of more than 4,100 Palestinians and 1,400 Israelis.
Israel’s National Security Council (NSC) has raised its travel warning for Israelis in Egypt and Jordan to the highest level, which means that citizens there should leave those countries immediately, the Israeli prime minister’s office said in a statement on Saturday.
“The NSC raises its travel warning for Egypt (including Sinai) and Jordan to Level 4 (high threat) and recommends against travel to these countries. Those in these countries should leave their territory as soon as possible,” the statement read.
The warning coincided with mounting tensions on the Lebanon-Israeli border, witnessing multiple exchanges of strikes between Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
In addition, at least two Israeli nationals were killed in a shooting in Egypt carried out by a local police officer on October 7, in the wake of the launch of Hamas’s “Flood of Al-Aqsa” operation against Israel.
Furthermore, massive protests have taken place in recent days in many countries around the world, including Egypt and Lebanon, demanding an end to Israel’s unprecedented daily bombardment and blockade of the Gaza Strip, home to 2.3 million people.
Notably, the protests have intensified in the wake of an Israeli bombing of a Christian hospital in Gaza on October 17 that killed more than 500 Palestinians, most of them children and women.
In the early hours of Saturday, October 7, the Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement in Palestine (Hamas), launched a large-scale rocket offensive from Gaza, breaching the border with neighboring Israeli settlements and taking captives. The movement said its operation was in response to the continued provocations by the Jewish state.
Israel responded with retaliatory strikes and a “total blockade” of the Gaza Strip, blocking the entry of food, water, medicine, fuel and electricity, and exacerbating the humanitarian crisis in the area.
