Last December, in the third month of war in Gaza, the Israeli army announced that it had “broken the operational capabilities” of Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezedin Al Qasam Brigades, in Jabalia, the largest refugee camp in the Strip. The speech was then triumphalist. “Jabalia is no longer what it was,” said the commander of the responsible division, Itzik Cohen. “We have killed hundreds of terrorists and arrested some 500 suspects of terrorist activities,” he added, announcing the dismantling of the three battalions that the Brigades had there.
Four months later, a division initially prepared to invade Rafah – the area in southern Gaza that tens of thousands of civilians are forcibly abandoning by order of the Israeli army – once again entered Jabalia this Sunday, due to the reorganization of the militiamen. . Both there and in Zeitún – a neighborhood of the Gazan capital in which the army had given up on Hamas – the intensity of the fighting shows that, after more than half a year of war, the “total victory” in Gaza – as defends Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – is far from going through the dismantling of the last four Hamas battalions standing, all of them in Rafah.
Not by chance, the military establishment has just come out – from anonymity, but in an apparently coordinated manner and for the first time since the war began – to criticize Netanyahu. Without a realistic plan for the “day after” of the war, the troops are condemned to the myth of Sisyphus, with Hamas filling the gaps left by each withdrawal to launch typical insurgency actions, taking advantage of its knowledge of the terrain.
The United States Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, has echoed these doubts in a television interview. “What are we seeing right now? We are seeing parts of Gaza that Israel has cleared of Hamas, where Hamas is returning, even in the north, even in Khan Younis […] If we look at Rafah, [Israel] can come in and have some initial success, but potentially at incredibly high cost to civilians. A cost that is neither lasting nor sustainable. They will be left carrying the dead of a lasting insurgency because there will be many left [miembros de] Armed Hamas, no matter what they do in Rafah.”
Hamas soldier deaths and ambushes
For a month now, the majority of Israeli troops have been on the road that cuts Gaza from north to south and in the positions that divide it and prevent passage from one to the other. After weeks of more aerial bombardments than movement of troops and armor, the announcements of soldier deaths and videos of Hamas militiamen ambushing troops have returned. They marked the first months of the unequal confrontation, but they had become a rarity. This weekend, the army announced the death of five Israeli soldiers and Hamas reported dozens of armed clashes.
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The militias’ main show of force, however, has been to show that they can still launch salvos of rockets, even relatively far away. With the invasion of Yabalia, they fired more than 20 projectiles. Most were intercepted, but one slightly injured three people in the city of Ashkelon, falling on a building. Not only against nearby towns. Also, from Rafah, against Beer Sheva, a city of more than 200,000 inhabitants located 40 kilometers from the Strip that had not been targeted for months.
Added to the war reports that Israeli military spokesmen offer every day is the intense activity on social networks of Palestinian spokesmen who confirm the activity. Throughout Sunday alone, Hamas’s armed wing sent more than 20 alerts of attacks against troops. Some are accompanied by videos such as the one that shows a drone dropping a small bomb on an enemy tank. Others detail an attack together with the Al Quds Brigades, the Islamic Jihad militia. The Hamas warnings briefly detail combats and confrontations in Jabalia, Zeitoun and Rafah, where the Israeli army last week took over the Palestinian part of the vital border crossing with Egypt (cutting off access for humanitarian aid) and has been expanding the orders of evacuate some of its parts.
In a few days, Israel has gone from proudly parading its flag on the Gazan side of the Rafah crossing to returning to Jabalia. From thinking that he was considering a second ceasefire agreement, to admitting that, at least these days, it is not close and returning to the mantra that “military pressure” brings the possibility of a truce closer, because it pressures Hamas to lower its demands. . From having smoothed out differences with its main ally, the United States, after the Iranian attack, to hearing reproaches, more or less open, almost daily. Blinken defended this Monday that Israeli forces must “leave Gaza.” “I believe two things. One, we must have a clear and credible plan to protect civilians, which we have not seen. Second, we also need to see a plan for what happens once the conflict in Gaza ends. And we haven’t seen it either,” he declared.
US espionage sources have also targeted the newspaper The New York Times They do not believe that the leader of Hamas in Gaza and the man most wanted by Israel, Yahia Sinwar, is in a tunnel in Rafah, to take advantage of the fact that the network communicates underground with Egypt, but somewhere under the city of Khan Yunis. He is another of those who occupied the army and from which he retired.
Yes, for Israel, each new incursion poses a question about its strategy; For the Palestinians it is the umpteenth forced displacement after months of permanent flight in search of that safe place that does not exist in Gaza. The army has given the order to abandon Yabalia – 1.4 square kilometers – to its inhabitants, who are today estimated at around 100,000. They did not follow the order to move south or have ended up returning to their homes or going to those of relatives that are habitable.
This Monday, Netanyahu and his Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, took advantage of an anniversary, particularly symbolic this year, to insist that there are no half-victories. It is the day of the Fallen Soldiers in Israel’s Wars and Victims of Acts of Terrorism, in which the population stops and remains silent for two minutes to honor them. Since the Hamas attack on October 7, 716 soldiers, police, members of the intelligence services and local security patrols have joined; and 834 civilians. Almost everyone died that day.
“Every battle in Israel is a battle for our survival.” […] This is exactly what this war is about: us or them: Israel or the monsters of Hamas. It is existence, freedom, security and prosperity; or annihilation, massacre, rape and slavery. We are determined to win this fight,” Netanyahu said in his speech at the country’s largest military cemetery, in Jerusalem. “[El resultado de] This war will determine our lives in the coming decades,” Gallant stressed. “It will continue until we bring back our hostages, dismantle the Hamas government and its military capabilities, and restore prosperity, creativity, and smiles to the faces of the citizens of the State of Israel.”
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