A week after sending ground forces to Gaza, Israel said its army had surrounded the northern Gaza City, killed 10 Hamas commanders who helped plan the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, and obtained “impressive successes” according to Prime Minister Benjamin. Netanyahu.
Israeli forces appeared to be cutting the Gaza Strip in two, south of Gaza City. On Friday, they had advance about 15 km (9.3 miles) from the Gaza-Israel border, along the coastal road, next to the Turkey-Palestine Friendship Hospital, well south of Gaza City. The hospital is Gaza’s only cancer treatment center and was forced to close due to fuel shortages resulting from the Israeli siege on the enclave.
Meanwhile, Hamas said it was fighting Israeli armor east of this point, at Juhor ad-Dik, suggesting that Israeli forces were operating almost across the entire width of the Gaza Strip, from the coast to the border.
The fighting continues behind this advanced position. Sources affiliated with Hamas said fighting continued in Beit Hanoun, in the northeastern Gaza Strip.
Israeli strategy over the past week appeared to be to isolate and exhaust Hamas and its affiliates in the northern third of the Gaza Strip. But it has come at a growing humanitarian cost to Gaza and a price to Israel’s reputation.
Israel claimed that the Jabalia refugee camp, north of Gaza City, was a hub of Hamas’ tunnel network used for weapons stockpiles, rocket firing positions and tunnels leading to the coast . Israel, without providing clear evidence to support its claims, razed large parts of Jabalia in air raids over three days. At least 50 Palestinians were killed in the bombing of Jabalia.
Since the Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7 that killed more than 1,400 people, the Israeli aerial bombardment of Gaza, now accompanied by a ground attack, has killed more than 9,400 Palestinians, including nearly 4,000 children. On Friday, an ambulance convoy heading from Gaza City to southern Gaza was bombed – again, Israel claimed, without providing evidence, that Hamas fighters were in the ambulances. At least 15 people were killed.
Still, Israel did not eliminate Hamas’s ability to launch rockets against military installations in Israel at the rate of about a dozen rockets per day throughout the week, although that figure slowed to nine rockets per day. rockets on November 3. Official figures released by the Israeli government and the Health Ministry in Gaza suggest that most of the casualties on both sides are civilians.
Israel said 25 of its soldiers had been killed since the ground invasion began, bringing the total number of military deaths to 332. Another 260 soldiers were injured. Israel said Hamas was also holding 242 civilians hostage.
“A new type of hybrid warfare”
On October 25, Netanyahu said that Israel’s goal in the coming days would be “to eliminate Hamas by destroying its military and governance capabilities and to do everything possible to recover our hostages.”
The Israeli army tested Hamas’ reflexes with a limited incursion into northern Gaza the following night with a single armored company using bulldozers. The company “located and attacked numerous terrorists, destroyed terrorist infrastructure, anti-tank positions,” the Israeli army said.
Israeli forces carried out several more ground incursions into Gaza on the night of October 27, this time supported by helicopter gunships. Israeli naval forces also “destroyed terrorist infrastructure…and operated in a compound used by (Hamas) naval commandos” on Rafah beach in southern Gaza, the Israeli military said.
Then, on October 28, Israel launched its ground invasion, exactly three weeks after Hamas’ attack on southern Israel. The invasion was accompanied by a telecommunications blackout, cutting off internet and telephone access to, from and within the Gaza Strip.
Experts told Al Jazeera that the Hamas attack and the Israeli response mark a departure from past clashes between them in terms of scale and complexity.
“What we have seen since October 7 is a new type of hybrid warfare,” said Matteo Bressan, professor of strategic studies at Lumsa Master School-University.
“Hamas was able to launch 6,000 rockets at Israel and this number shows a military capability that Hamas has never had in the past,” Bressan said. “The question is how Hamas was able to carry out 20 attacks in 20 different villages. This means that Hamas had clear training and preparation to do this,”
The Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing, said it fired rockets at Israel’s nuclear reactor and Dimona research center – the first time they have done so.
“That’s why Israel’s response is different from the past… it’s not simple, it’s not easy, and it will take time for Israel,” Bressan said.
“Hamas has been planning this campaign for some time and deployed most of the rockets fired in advance,” US Special Forces Commander Demetries Andrew Grimes told Al Jazeera. “Many Hamas rocket batteries are buried underground or deployed via tunnel networks under Gaza. »
He described Israel’s goal of destroying Hamas as an “extremely difficult undertaking.”
Hamas said it had destroyed several Israeli tanks and armored vehicles. For example, on November 1, Hamas claimed to have destroyed at least four Israeli Merkava tanks using Yasin-105 anti-tank weapons during clashes in Beit Hanoun. These claims have not been independently verified.
Hamas has also been bold in its tactics. On October 29, for example, the Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing, reported using tunnels to land fighters behind Israelis occupying the Beit Hanoun crossing, called Erez by Israel, between Israel and northern Israel. Gaza.
“Resistance fighters entered the border and fired anti-armor missiles at Israeli vehicles and killed a number of occupation soldiers,” they said.
Grimes considered Israeli military losses “a high casualty number given that the campaign was only a few weeks into the campaign.”
The audacity and effectiveness of the Qassam Brigades prompted the leader of Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed group in Lebanon, to declare Israel weak.
“This revealed Israel’s fragility, weakness and utter fragility, more fragile than a spider’s web,” Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised speech on November 3.
“The rapid response of the United States to support and prop up Israel has exposed the extent to which Israel has failed since the Al-Aqsa flooding operation,” he said, using the operational name for the Israel attacks. October 7.
Nasrallah said this war would mark a new era.
“This is not an event like those of the past. It is a decisive, historic battle. What happens after this battle is never like before,” he said.
Putting friendship to the test
Throughout the week, there were signs that Israel had felt stung by international criticism over its continuation of the war and was trying to improve its image.
Netanyahu initially resisted pressure from the European Union and United Nations for a ceasefire on humanitarian grounds, saying Hamas could use it to regroup. That stance softened a bit on Nov. 3, a day after U.S. President Joe Biden backed calls for a humanitarian pause in the fighting. From now on, Israel conditions any pause in the fighting on the release of prisoners held by Hamas. “Israel refuses a temporary ceasefire that does not include the release of our hostages,” Netanyahu said in a televised statement.
Netanyahu also changed his position on the amount of aid arriving in Gaza. It initially allowed only a handful of trucks to enter the territory bringing food, water and medicine. On Oct. 31, he agreed to allow 100 trucks per day, but even that, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, was not enough.
On Thursday, Israel for the first time allowed Palestinians with foreign or dual nationality to leave for Egypt through the Rafah crossing at the southern end of Gaza, with around 80 Palestinians injured.
