Welcome back to the Independent Republic of Mike Graham.

Israel's defense minister, Yoav Galant, has ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip.

No electricity, no food, and no fuel.

This is the latest development after all the thousand people lost their lives in this weekend's fighting between Israel and Islamist terrorist group, Hamas.

And of course, what we don't know yet is whether it's going to be something that Israel

decides to take on as a ground invasion of Hamas. Already, there are people trying to get away

from Hamas and trying to leave the Gaza Strip. But the continuing escalation of violence and war

will go now, we assume, for at least several days, if not several weeks.

It is war on Israel. It is the biggest conflict in the Middle East for many, many decades.

Peter Hitchin joins me now from the mail on Sunday.

Peter, I'm sure, like me, you were horrified to see some of the scenes from Israel

from the invasion on on early Saturday morning.

It's fascinating to see this is a war on civilians, by which civilians are deliberately killed.

There's no suggestion by Hamas that they killed by accident while they were pursuing some allegedly military military.

No, targeted them.

And that the actual kidnapping of people, and this is basically these are criminal actions,

not even under the laws of war, permissible things.

They're all crimes, aren't they?

Well, I think, I don't know, quite possibly not that you're ever going to get any of

these people to the Hague, but that's the point is this is not actually, people keep saying

this is war,

and comparing it to the 1973 invasion conducted as it was with tanks.

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