Israeli Chief of Staff Herzi Halevy said that the battle in the Gaza Strip will be long; Stressing the need for reserve forces again, after 24 Israeli soldiers were killed in one day in a specific Palestinian resistance operation.
Halevy added: “We will continue to fight” the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) “with great determination for our right to live in safety.”
Regarding the operation in which 21 of his forces were killed, Halevy said: “Our soldiers fell in battle during a defensive operation in the area separating the Israeli towns and Gaza.”
He added that the operation was aimed at creating security conditions for the residents of the Gaza envelope area to return to their homes safely, noting that “an in-depth investigation will be opened and lessons will be drawn so that such an incident will not be repeated.”
On Tuesday morning, the occupation army announced that 21 soldiers were killed and another was seriously injured, in a battle with Hamas fighters in the central Gaza Strip, which took place at 16:00 local time, on Monday afternoon.
The Israeli Broadcasting Corporation reported that the soldiers were killed as a result of “they booby-trapped two buildings in the Maghazi camp in the Gaza Strip, and as a result of this operation, Hamas members fired anti-tank missiles, which led to the explosion of explosive devices and the collapse of the two buildings above them.”
Yesterday, Monday, the Israeli army announced the killing of 3 officers in battles in the southern Gaza Strip, bringing the number of its deaths to 24 in one day. This brings the number of officers and soldiers killed since the beginning of the ground war on Gaza on October 27, to 221.
third level
In the same context, the Israeli Broadcasting Corporation said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu informed his government ministers that the third phase of the war on Gaza will take 6 months.
The authority added that Netanyahu explained that it would take 6 months for the army to end the third phase of the war, which had already begun in the northern Gaza Strip.
It quoted Netanyahu as saying to the ministers at a meeting yesterday: As we said previously, the air phase will last 3 weeks and so it was, and as we said the second phase will last 3 months and so it was, and thus we say that the third phase of stabilizing control and cleansing will last 5 months, according to what he put it.
