“Nowhere safe from access”
Israel wants to pursue Hamas to every last corner
February 6, 2024, 10:10 a.m
Israel has been taking action against Hamas for almost five months. The terrorists should no longer be able to hide in the Gaza Strip. To this end, Israel’s leadership wants to send the army to the extreme south of the coastal strip – a delicate undertaking.
In the fight against Hamas, Israeli Defense Minister Joav Galant wants to pursue the Islamist group’s leaders and fighters into the last corner of the Gaza Strip. They are nowhere safe from Israeli forces, said Galant. This even applies to the last remaining areas in the coastal strip, where – like in the southern city of Rafah – no ground troops are yet deployed. “Any terrorist hiding in Rafah should know that they will end up like those in Khan Yunis and (the city of) Gaza,” Israeli media quoted him as saying. “A good half of the Hamas terrorists are dead or seriously wounded.”
However, an advance on Rafah is considered extremely sensitive. Before the war, around 200,000 people lived in the city, but now it is home to more than a million Palestinians who have fled the fighting in other parts of the Gaza Strip. At Rafah, the coastal area borders Egypt, which rejects an Israeli offensive in the border area. Cairo fears this could lead to a rush of desperate Palestinians to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
It is still unknown where the Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip, Jihia al-Sinwar, and his closest staff are. Israel suspects they are in the extensive network of tunnels under Khan Yunis. Israeli ground troops have been deployed there for weeks, but searching and destroying the tunnels has proven difficult and time-consuming. Al-Sinwar and his leadership may have already escaped to Rafah via the tunnel network.
The war was triggered by the unprecedented massacre carried out by terrorists from Hamas and other extremist Palestinian organizations on October 7th in Israel near the border with the Gaza Strip. According to Palestinian information, at least 113 people have died within 24 hours in the ongoing fighting in the Gaza Strip. The Hamas-controlled health authority said 205 other people were injured during the period. A total of 27,478 Palestinians have been killed in the sealed-off coastal strip since the start of the war. According to the Hamas authorities, 66,835 were injured.
The information cannot in fact be independently verified and does not distinguish between civilians and armed fighters. However, the UN and other observers point out that the authority’s information has proven to be overall credible in the past.