Important Takeaways:
- There were three other ways besides the recent smuggling of weapons through the corridor that were likely responsible for the vast majority of Hamas’s massive weapons buildup, the sources said.
- Although these points were made in a technical and professional context, they could also have significant implications for the ongoing debate within Israel over how crucial it is for the IDF to hold onto the Philadelphi Corridor or whether it can be temporarily given up as part of a deal for the return of dozens of Israeli hostages.
- According to people familiar with the matter, it could take Hamas years to rebuild its cross-border tunnel network, meaning certainly not during the 40-plus days Israel would theoretically leave the area during Phase I of one of the proposed hostage deals.
- Regarding the use of the tunnels for long-range rockets, IDF sources said Rafah, in general, and the corridor, in particular, had turned out to have one of Hamas’s largest long-range rocket arsenals that the military found, compared with any other part of Gaza.
- Hamas’s strategy was to place the long-range rockets and their launchers next to the border with Egypt to deter Israel from striking them and risking an international incident with Cairo, either by accidentally hitting Egyptian soldiers or merely causing explosions so close to another sovereign nation’s territory, the sources said.
- Furthermore, Hamas rocket teams would hide in the large tunnels, which had launchers and inventories of rockets connected to them via their extensive space and storage capabilities, they said.
- The Hamas rocket teams would briefly pop out of the tunnels at selected moments, only meters from the Egyptian border fence, and then either fire the rockets or set timers for them to launch, IDF sources said.
- After a brief time of being exposed and in an area in which Israel would be very worried about attacking, even if it had much time to calculate a precision strike carefully, the rocket teams would rapidly disappear back into the cross-border tunnels, they said.
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Important Takeaways:
- Israel Defense Forces Chief Spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari stated on Sunday, “A few hours ago, we informed the families that the bodies of their loved ones had been located by IDF troops in an underground tunnel in Rafah. According to our initial assessment, they were brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists shortly before we reached them.”
- The nation is mourning as six hostages, including American citizen Hersh Goldberg-Polin, were found murdered in Gaza. Just a few days before this grim discovery, Hersh’s mother Rachel stood at the Gaza border, shouting a blessing to her son: “May God bless you and keep you. May God shine His face upon you and be gracious to you. May God lift up His face toward you and may God give you peace and may God bring you home now.”
- Some Israelis blame Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for not being willing to approve a ceasefire deal. However, Netanyahu insisted a deal must have acceptable terms – and Israel must be able to stop Hamas from attacking Israel again.
- “The fact that Hamas is continuing to perpetrate atrocities like those it carried out on October 7 requires us to do everything so that it will be unable to perpetrate these atrocities again,” Netanyahu declared.
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Important Takeaways:
- Military assesses it will take months to locate all tunnels along the Gaza-Egypt border, but Rafah Brigade mostly dismantled; half of terror group’s military leadership killed
- The IDF believed that its intelligence indicating that Deif arrived at a compound belonging to Rafa’a Salameh, the commander of Hamas’s Khan Younis Brigade, was highly accurate, and that the pair were together in the building that was targeted with several heavy munitions.
- Salameh was killed in the strike, the IDF announced Sunday after obtaining final confirmation on the matter. It has yet to receive the same kind of information on Deif, and if he was dead, Hamas would attempt to hide the truth for some time.
- Deif was one of the chief architects of the October 7 massacre in southern Israel, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists broke through the border, killed some 1,200 people and took 251 hostages.
- He has been one of the figures most wanted by Israel since 1995 for his involvement in the planning and execution of many terror attacks, including bus bombings in the 1990s and early 2000s.
- The IDF has also been working to locate Hamas’s attack tunnels, which approach the Israeli border, as well as tunnel junctions that connect between various underground networks in the Strip.
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Important Takeaways:
- IDF: Half of Hamas Battalions Destroyed in Rafah; Operation to Last Two More Weeks
- The IDF entered Rafah in early May — against the wishes of the Biden administration — to destroy the four Hamas battalions that remained there, having destroyed at least 18 of the 24 battalions in fighting elsewhere in Gaza since late October. The White House relented but insisted on a slow pace, with limited use of heavy munitions, and care to avoid civilian casualties.
- The IDF raced to secure the Philadelphi Corridor — the road along the Gaza-Egypt border — and the Rafah border crossing. It has since fought a steady, methodical, house-to-house and tunnel-to-tunnel battle against Hamas there.
- The Jerusalem Post reported:
- The IDF on Monday said that its Division 162 has defeated half of Hamas’s battalions in Rafah, including killing at least 550 terrorists, as well as destroyed around 200 tunnel shafts, and eliminated the terror group’s last major rocket inventory.
- Further, the IDF said that within a couple of weeks it would likely be in control of all of Rafah and that the final battles with the remaining two Hamas battalions in parts of Tel al-Sultan and the eastern part of Shabura are already underway.
- Currently, the IDF says Division 162, commanded by Brig. Gen. Itzik Cohen, has already achieved operation control of over 60-70% of all of Rafah with all of the 1.4 million or so civilians having long fled to al-Muwasi on the coast, central Gaza and Khan Yunis.
- Once it is concluded, the IDF will shift to a counterinsurgency strategy in Gaza — and will likely shift focus to a potential clash with Iran-backed Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
- There are still 116 Israeli hostages in Gaza, of whom 41 are known to be dead. They are being hidden — possibly underground.
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Important Takeaways:
- Judges at the top United Nations court ordered Israel to halt its offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah and withdraw from the enclave, in a case brought by South Africa accusing Israel of genocide, citing “immense risk” to the Palestinian population.
- While orders are legally binding, the court has no police to enforce them.
- South Africa’s lawyers had asked the ICJ in The Hague last week to impose emergency measures, saying Israel’s attacks on Rafah must be stopped to ensure the survival of the Palestinian people.
- The ICJ has also ordered Israel to report back to the court within one month over its progress in applying measures ordered by the institution.
- Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich said “Those who demand that the State of Israel stop the war, demand that it decree itself to cease to exist. We will not agree to that,”
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Important Takeaways:
- Israel has insisted that it must invade Rafah, a city in southern Gaza where more than 1 million people had sought refuge, in order to accomplish its core objective of “eliminating” Hamas’ presence in the enclave after months of fighting further north.
- But Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Sunday that even a full-scale ground assault on Rafah would fail to achieve that goal.
- Israel is “on the trajectory, potentially, to inherit an insurgency with many armed Hamas left or, if it leaves, a vacuum filled by chaos, filled by anarchy and probably refilled by Hamas,” he said in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
- “Even if it goes in and takes heavy action in Rafah, there will still be thousands of armed Hamas left,” Blinken said, noting that “we’ve seen, in areas that Israel has cleared in the north, even in Khan Younis, Hamas coming back.”
- Blinken said that instead of focusing on an assault on Rafah, Israel should prioritize presenting a credible post-war plan for Gaza.
- Talks for a new cease-fire deal have seemingly broken down, and President Joe Biden threatened last week to halt the shipment of certain arms to Israel should it launch a full-scale assault on Rafah.
- Nearly 360,000 people have fled the city since Israel ordered a partial evacuation a week ago and sent tanks in, according to the United Nations.
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Important Takeaways:
- Joe Biden has been hiding intelligence on the whereabouts of Hamas leaders and their command tunnels, depriving Israel of vital information that could lead to an end to the war. That revelation came in a report on Saturday and was framed as the administration offering that information now if the ongoing operation in Rafah is canceled.
- The story first broke in The Washington Post , with the paper describing the offer as follows.
- The Biden administration, working urgently to stave off a full-scale Israeli invasion of Rafah, is offering Israel valuable assistance if it holds back, including sensitive intelligence to help the Israeli military pinpoint the location of Hamas leaders and find the group’s hidden tunnels, according to four people familiar with the U.S. offers.
- There’s no other way to read this except that the Biden administration has been protecting Hamas. If intelligence exists that can help “pinpoint the location of Hamas leaders,” it should have been given to Israel the moment it was produced. The same goes for any information about the terror tunnels.
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Important Takeaways:
- Final proof Biden’s America is utterly adrift, ignored – and barreling toward disaster: ANDREW NEIL’s expert analysis of an infirm, incoherent President… now losing all control
- The words were forceful enough on Tuesday when President Joe Biden rightly condemned the current ‘ferocious surge of anti-Semitism in America and around the world.’
- He was speaking, appropriately enough, at a Holocaust memorial ceremony in the US Capitol on May 7 – seven months to the day of Hamas’s unprovoked and barbarous attack on Israel.
- Biden was even explicit about Hamas’s crimes and its responsibility for the war that inevitably followed October 7.
- ‘I have not forgotten,’ averred the President.
- But the most remarkable feature of his speech was how little his words seemed to matter. They disappeared in the wind almost as soon as they were uttered.
- There was a time when America — indeed the world — took serious notice of what a US president said. Biden, it appears, can be safely ignored.
- Certainly, few seem to heed his warnings these days.
- He told Iran ‘don’t’ when it threatened to retaliate for Israel’s fatal attack on its Revolutionary Guard HQ in Damascus, Syria. Tehran proceeded to launch over 300 missiles and drones at Israel, nearly all of them thankfully taken out before reaching their targets.
- He informed Israel that rooting out what’s left of Hamas in the southern Gaza city of Rafah was a ‘red line’ the Jewish State must not cross because of the potential for more civilian casualties. This week Israel started rooting out Hamas in Rafah.
- He informed Israel that rooting out what’s left of Hamas in the southern Gaza city of Rafah was a ‘red line’ the Jewish State must not cross because of the potential for more civilian casualties. This week Israel started rooting out Hamas in Rafah.
- On Tuesday, he addressed the poisonous anti-Semitism now rampant on university campuses.
- He highlighted ‘vicious propaganda on social media … Jews forced to hide kippahs under baseball caps, tuck Jewish stars into their shirts … Jewish students blocked, harassed, attacked while walking to class .. anti-Semitic posters, slogans calling for the annihilation of Israel … too many people denying, rationalizing, ignoring the horrors of the Holocaust and October 7th … it’s absolutely despicable — and it must stop.’
- He is, of course, absolutely right to call this out. The pity is that it’s taken him so long to do so.
- The so-called National Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), instigators of many of the encampments, has called October 7th ‘a historic win for the Palestinian resistance.’
- New York’s Columbia University SJP has declared ‘full solidarity with Palestinian resistance,’ praising the ‘historic’ attack ‘despite the odds.’
- These are not protestors pleading for peace to be given a chance. They want to see Israel destroyed and Hamas victorious.
- Biden’s own campaign supporters are funding this pro-war rabble.
- Money from Democratic megadonor George Soros has gone to a group called Jewish Voice for Peace which immediately after October 7 blamed, ‘Israeli apartheid and occupation — and United States complicity,’ for the slaughter.
- Yet as President, Biden couldn’t even bring himself to condemn the notorious anti-Semitic ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ chant so beloved of the protestors.
- As Biden claimed his support for Israel is ‘ironclad even when we disagree’ we learned that his administration was holding up shipments of precision bombs to Israel to signal to the Israeli government that Washington really doesn’t want it to pursue the all-out defeat of Hamas.
- To be fair, Biden’s intervention, well-meant and heartfelt – as it no doubt was despite all its inadequacies – was over-shadowed by Stormy Daniels testimony in the Donald Trump hush-money trial in New York.
- The media was more obsessed with that than Biden’s important words about anti-Semitism, which is not the President’s fault.
- But you can’t help feeling that a President with more authority and respect would also have commanded more attention.
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Important Takeaways:
- Rockets fired at Israel from the North and the South following overnight Rafah op
- US military shoots down Houthi UAV • Activists block aid from entering Gaza • Son of Hamas leader warns ceasefire is a ‘trap’
- On October 7th terrorists took some 240 hostages into Gaza
- 132 hostages remain in Gaza
- 38 hostages in total have been killed in captivity, IDF says
- Turkey says Israel’s Rafah operation is another war crime
- IDF takes over Palestinian side of Rafah crossing – report
- According to the army radio, troops of the 401st Brigade had taken full operational control of the crossing.
- During the operation, Israel Air Force jets and troops of the 215th Fire Brigade struck and destroyed Hamas terror targets, among which were military buildings, underground infrastructures and other terrorist infrastructures from which Hamas operated in the Rafah area.
- During the overnight operation, 20 terrorists were killed in action, according to the IDF’s estimates, and many others were wounded.
- According to southern Command officials, 50 Hamas targets were attacked in the operation.
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Important Takeaways:
- The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) urged residents of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, to evacuate to nearby “safe” zones on Monday as a long-delayed attack by Israel against the last Hamas strongholds appeared to be imminent.
- The apparent mobilization of the IDF came after Hamas fired rockets from close range at the Kerem Shalom crossing, where humanitarian aid crosses from Israel into Gaza, on Saturday, killing four soldiers and wounding several others.
- The U.S. has been telling Israel, privately and publicly, not to attack Rafah since February. Israel insisted it would do so, regardless of international pressure and regardless of hostage talks, to complete its goal of destroying Hamas.
- The IDF has been dropping flyers on Rafah with maps indicating where residents should take refuge during the fighting.
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