Military and strategic expert, Major General Fayez Al-Duwairi, considered Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s talk about his army besieging the last stronghold of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in the Shujaiya neighborhood, east of Gaza City, “an internal message to Israeli society that does not reflect reality.”
Al-Duwairi said in his military analysis for Tel Aviv Tribune that the recent video broadcast by the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Hamas movement, was clear, stressing that fighting is still taking place in the northeastern areas of the Shujaiya neighborhood.
He added that the battles are taking place in the outer framework of the Al-Shuja’iya neighborhood, and the depth of the population and urban bloc has not been reached, and he stressed that the areas he entered through the fence are considered dead and empty lands. All the way to Baghdad Street.
The fighting is still intense, even though the size of the Israeli force attacking Shuja’iya – according to Al-Duwairi – is a minimum of an armored brigade. Which means 97 to 105 combat vehicles; 70% of them are tanks, while 30% are Tiger armored vehicles, supported by bulldozers, and the total reaches 150 Israeli vehicles.
He stressed that the fighting is taking place at zero distance, which ranges from zero to 130 metres. It is the effective distance range for resistance weapons, such as anti-armor and anti-personnel missiles, sniping operations, dropping grenades, and finishing off soldiers from point zero.
He noted that historically, the Shuja’iya Battalion, along with the Al-Tuffah Battalion, is considered one of the battalions of the Qassam strike force, and has great influence in previous wars, especially in the 2014 war.
Regarding Gallant’s character, Al-Duwairi said that the Israeli Defense Minister deals with military superiority and arrogance, but he is “defeated internally and lying to himself, despite all the arrogance and dirty vocabulary he displays in his speeches,” similar to describing the Palestinians as “human animals.”
He pointed out that the tunnel network is unknown and is known only to the fighters, and it has distributed openings from which resistance members exit and then enter demolished buildings after monitoring and intelligence operations of the movements of the occupation soldiers.
He stressed that whoever carries out the monitoring operations knows with certainty that it may be the last mission because he is undertaking an extremely dangerous job, but he must accomplish it by obtaining information and communicating it via wired phone. This confirms that the command and control system is still effective.
Al-Duwairi explains that the official who receives this information about the presence of Israeli vehicles prepares the force and determines its number based on the observed target, and then the force goes out to carry out the mission.
It is noteworthy that satellite images obtained by Tel Aviv Tribune confirm that the occupation army was unable to besiege the Shuja’iya neighborhood until December 10, and the channel also broadcast scenes of the Qassams targeting Israeli tanks and vehicles from different distances.