In parallel with the commemoration events of the month of the attack by the jihadist group Hamas to remember the 1,400 dead and ask for the release of the 240 kidnapped, Israel carried out attacks and fighting in Gaza. From this city, in the north of the Palestinian strip, thousands of inhabitants left this Tuesday towards the south in a war that seems to have no end in sight.
“A month ago, in a shocking murderous massacre, Hamas attacked us and beat us severely. On that terrible day, we did not fulfill our mission“, admitted the head of the Southern Command, Yaron Finkelman, alluding to the greatest failure in the history of the Israeli Army before lifting some of the secrecy around the location of its ground forces: “For the first time in decades, the Army is fighting in the heart of Gaza City. In the heart of terror.”
For some soldiers it is a also personal mission. Like the reservist captain who blew up a tunnel found in northern Beit Janun, remembering his uncle, Ofir Lipstein, a well-known community leader who died trying to stop terrorists a month ago in southern Israel. “Ofir used to say that the towns near the Gaza Strip were 95% paradise and 5% hell (in reference to the Palestinian projectiles). I want, not as an act of revenge but of defense of the nation, to dedicate this explosion to him as one of the efforts to return 100% paradise to our populations”.
Israel attacked a Palestinian command near Al Quds Hospital which, according to the Army, “caused significant secondary explosions indicating the presence of a Hamas weapons depot in a civilian area” while Hamas accused the Air Force of “indiscriminate attacks.” The Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, conditioned the humanitarian truce on the release of the hostages and assured that one of the objectives of the war is “the liquidation of the terrorist leadership including Yahia Sinwar” without specifying whether he believes that the Hamas leader is in a bunker in Gaza that, due to its tunnels, he defines as “the largest terrorist base ever built.”
The armed wing of Hamas asked “not to believe Zionist propaganda” and boasted of damaging the advance of the Israeli Army, causing it “great losses.” The militiamen trust the tunnel effectiveness distributed over several hundred kilometers to surprise and hit the enemy forces – who fight with the help of the Air Force – while waiting for some type of truce as a result of international pressure or the negotiation of hostages.