Israeli troops continued their methodical push into Gaza City, exactly a month after Gaza-based Palestinian Hamas militants launched a bloody rampage into southern Israel, killing more than 1,400 people and taking hundreds of others hostage.
Maj. Gen. Yaron Finkelman, commander of the Southern Command of the Israel Defense Forces, said Israeli soldiers are now fighting in the heart of the Gaza Strip — which he called the “heart of terrorism” — for the first time in decades. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said earlier in the day for the first time that Israeli forces will likely have to be an occupying security force for a time if and when Hamas fighters are ousted from their strongholds in the densely populated enclave.
“Our actions strike at the core of Hamas’ capabilities. We have eliminated dozens of commanders, exposed many tunnels and we are severely damaging the enemy,” Maj. Gen. Finkelman told reporters outside Gaza, according to a statement released Tuesday by the IDF.
“Every day and every hour, the forces kill terrorists, expose tunnels, destroy weapons, and continue to go forward to the enemy’s concentrations. We continue with all our strength with the goal of defeating the abominable Hamas organization,” he said.
Israeli fighter jets unleashed another wave of strikes across the Gaza Strip on Tuesday as hundreds more Palestinians fled Gaza City to the south, The Associated Press reported.
Chief Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari told reporters that Israeli ground forces “are located right now in a ground operation in the depths of Gaza City and putting great pressure on Hamas.”
And on the diplomatic front, Amos Hochstein, a senior adviser to President Biden made an unannounced visit to Lebanon to discuss the volatile situation with the country’s parliament speaker and caretaker prime minister. The U.S. has repeatedly warned Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese Shiite movement which, like Hamas, has deep ties to Iran, not to open a second front against Israel from the north.
Keeping Lebanon’s southern border calm is of “utmost importance,” Mr. Hochstein said. “The United States does not want to see conflict in Gaza escalating and expanding into Lebanon.”
One of Mr. Hochstein’s meetings was with former Lebanese intelligence chief, Abbas Ibrahim, who has negotiated hostage cases in the past and had just returned Monday from Qatar, the AP reported. The Gulf state has become a key intermediary over the fate of some 240 Israeli and foreign hostages still held by Hamas.
Mr. Netanyahu’s statement late Monday was seen as a clear sign that Jerusalem doesn’t intend to permit a return to the status quo inside the Palestinian enclave for the foreseeable future. The outline of a post-Hamas future in Gaza comes as Israeli forces have just begun an incursion into the tunnel-lined streets of Gaza City to take on the militant group and its allies in earnest.
“I think Israel, for an indefinite period, will have the overall security responsibility because we’ve seen what happens when we don’t have it,” Mr. Netanyahu told ABC News. “When we don’t have that security responsibility, what we have is the eruption of Hamas terror on a scale that we couldn’t imagine.”
The Israeli prime minister again pushed back against the idea of a full cease-fire inside Gaza until Hamas releases hundreds of hostages it took during its Oct. 7 rampage in southern Israel that killed more than 1,400 people, mostly civilians. But, facing pressure from the Biden administration, the Israeli leader opened the door to more modest measures to relieve civilian suffering in Gaza.
“As far as tactical little pauses — an hour here, an hour there — we’ve had them before … to enable goods, humanitarian goods, to come in, or our hostages, individual hostages, to leave,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “But, I don’t think there’s going to be a general cease-fire.”
The Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry claims the monthlong conflict has killed more than 10,000 people, of which more than 4,000 are children, primarily in Gaza but also in the non-Hamas-controlled Palestinian West Bank area. Those figures could not be independently confirmed.
Maj. Gen. Finkelman said IDF soldiers in Southern Command have been fighting nonstop since Oct. 7 with the goal of defeating Hamas and creating the conditions for the safe return of the hostages.
“On that terrible day, we failed in our mission. Those difficult events are burned in us [and] burned in me, deeply,” Maj. Gen. Finkelman said. “We still need to get to the bottom of that.”
• This article was based in part on wire service dispatches.
• Mike Glenn can be reached at mglenn@washingtontimes.com.
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