Five rockets were fired today from Gaza towards Israel this morning. Some of the rockets were intercepted and the others landed in open areas. No injuries or damage reported. But the IDF reported four casualties yesterday, just after I finished my post: Cpt. Ido Baruch, 21 (Z’’L), Sgt. Amitai Even Shoshan, 20 (Z’’L), Sgt. Ilai Zair, 20 (Z’’L) and Sgt. Reef Harush, 20 (Z’’L). You can tell by their ages that they are all active duty soldiers, not on reserve duty. They were all killed in the same ambush when terrorists emerged from a tunnel and opened fire on the troops. The terrorists then fled back into the tunnels.
Yesterday I reported on three large tunnels uncovered and destroyed by the IDF. I encourage you to see these videos of their destruction.
The IDF announced that it is pulling all but one brigade from Gaza. In the announcement it stated that the two brigades that are stepping out of Gaza have been fighting since the start of the war and need some R & R. The Chief of Staff qualified this to suggest that the same brigades needed to start preparing and training for the upcoming Rafah Operation. I suspect that all this is true, but there may be something more to it. The Defence Minister and Chief of Staff, as well as the entire country, were very pleased with the outcome of the operation at Shifa Hospital - no civilian casualties, more than 200 terrorist operatives killed, more than 500 captured terrorists and many senior commanders either killed or captured. In those areas of Gaza that have seen widespread operations to clear out the tunnels, armories, weapons manufacturing and operatives it is believed that “surgical strikes” like that at Shifa Hospital make more use of resources. I believe this is true and perhaps, also, with the reduction in active IDF in those parts of Gaza it might be easier to set up precision operations. The Chief of Staff, in his comments, made it clear that the was against Hamas is far from over. We, ordinary Israelis, expect that after the Rafah Operation is complete that fighting in Gaza will continue for another 2-3 years as terrorist operatives will resort to traditional guerrilla warfare. While such warfare is very challenging, the IDF is very familiar with it, conducting surgical operations in much of Judea/Samaria (West Bank) since about 2004 that continue today.
The Chief of Staff, in his press briefing, also spoke about humanitarian aid. He mentioned that the IDF is opening the northern Erez Border crossing and will start large scale delivery of aid trucks through the Israeli port of Ashdod. He stated that one of Hamas’ goals is to confiscate the aid in order to create an humanitarian disaster within Gaza. The purpose, of course, is to bring International Pressure to bear on Israel, which they know is their only way out of this situation. He also spoke about the hostages and how they remain a top priority of the IDF as well as enable the return of the more than 200,000 internal Israeli refugees from their homes in both southern and northern Israel.
I would say that the intensity of IDF operations in Lebanon have picked up pace, primarily through fighter jet missions. First we saw attacks on armories and rocket manufacturing facilities in north-eastern Lebanon, near the Syrian border. Lat last night Israeli fighter jets struck Hezbollah training camps in north-easter Lebanon. Today the IDF attacked and destroyed a portion of Hezbollah’s air defense infrastructure in north-eastern Lebanon. Now we are seeing attacks on major Hezbollah command centers, training facilities and armories in southern Lebanon, including those of the Radwan Force, considered to be the better trained force in the Hezbollah arsenal. From analyses I have read, it appears that Iran wishes to restrain Hezbollah more because it fears that should Israel destroy Hezbollah they will be left without their major proxy in their overall strategy to create chaos in the Middle East. It is my sense, although this not been stated publicly, that the IDF senses this and is taking advantage of the situation.
US military forces, CENTCOM, in the Red Sea area announced that they destroyed an entire mobile surface to air missile system in the control of the Iranian proxies - the Houthis. US forces also said that they shot down an Houthi drone after launch. The Houthis reiterated their threat to fire against any Israeli, British or American ships in the region. Meantime, the Houthis claim attacks on Israeli, British and US ships in the area in the past three days. No confirmation seems to have come from any of the targeted nations.
And another missile was fired from Iraq towards the Israeli southern city of Eilat. It landed short, in Jordan near the city of Arak in Jordan.
I think that President Biden’s message regarding aid is penetrating throughout the War Cabinet and upper echelons of the IDF. Defense Minister Gallant conducted a tour with US Ambassador to Israel, Jack Lew, of the IDF’s new Humanitarian Coordination and Deconfliction Cell, which was established earlier this week. This is very good news. Gallant went on to publicly state that it was now a strategic effort on the part of the IDF to ensure that aid was getting through to civilians in need in Gaza. The opening of the Erez Border Crossing in the northern border with Gaza should make a major difference. The intent is that this newly created division within the IDF will work in collaboration with the various aid groups to ensure that aid is delivered properly and legitimate aid workers are not put in the line of fire, where possible. Despite this, I would not expect to see IDF troops protecting the aid trucks directly as they make easy targets for random terrorist snipers. To quote Defense Minister Gallant “I would like to express my appreciation to the US administration for their longstanding support during this war, and for their leadership on the humanitarian issue…” For example, today more than 350 aid trucks entered Gaza. This is the highest number for any day since the start of the war.
The Israeli hostage/ceasefire negotiating team has just left Israel for Cairo with what appears to be a clear set of boundaries for the ongoing negotiations. The Egyptians are claiming that the parties are not far apart at this stage. If the Egyptians are right that means that Hamas announcements are just a lot of bluster with no substance as their leadership still demands that Israel put in place a permanent ceasefire, instruct the IDF to evacuate Gaza and enable Hamas to return to power as preconditions. There is no way Israel would agree to any one of those conditions. A report in the Saudi news channel Al-Hadath said that sources told them that Hamas introduced a new demand that the IDF stop attacking its senior members. So we are left to assume that either the Egyptians have a lot of wishful thinking or Hamas leaders are out of touch.
This morning marked six months since the October 7 attack and the beginning of this war. This war is very, very different for Israelis. Except for the 1948 War of Independence and the 1982 Lebanese War of no war has lasted more than a month. The Lebanese war was on foreign territory and was of a very different nature. Most Israelis today were not alive to have experienced the 1948 war. So for most of us, we are on unfamiliar territory. But, this may become the new norm. The IDF used the day to announce some statistics, some of which I will list here. But I found that the most important statistic announced today is that 70% of the Israelis evacuated from southern Israel immediately after October 7 have returned home. It is expected that all those whose homes are intact will be back by July. Those needing to rebuild are expected to get loans and assistance from the government to rebuild their houses and that might take additional time. In the meantime, 60,000 Israelis from the north still cannot return to their homes because of the real threats and attacks from Hezbollah.
Some of the statistics posted by the IDF include -
between 13,000-14,000 terrorist operatives killed during Gaza operations along with 1,000 killed inside Israel during cleanup operations, post October 7,
five Hamas brigade commanders , more than 20 battalion commanders and more than 100 company commanders killed,
more than 4,500 terrorist suspects interrogated, many of whom remain in retention while others have been released,
260 IDF soldiers were killed during Gaza operations and 444 were killed on Israeli soil. A total of 3,193 IDF soldiers have been wounded, 1,552 during October 7 operations
the Hamas run Health Ministry lists 33,000 killed in Gaza. There are many good reasons to doubt this number (some of which I have presented in previous posts), if we assume that this number is accurate, it suggests that for every combatant killed in Gaza about 1.2 civilians have died. You will not find any other war, particularly and urban war, that shows numbers like that.
The issue of the ultra-orthodox draft exemption just hit another bump in the road. More than eighteen prominent Sephardi Rabbis in the country announced that their students will not comply with any draft call. As I have said before, this is going to be THE issue that will either force the fall of this government or enable it to persist.
And what make come as a surprise to many of you, the Ministry of Aliyah and Absorption announced that since October 7 Israel received more than 13,000 new immigrants which is a 4X increase over the same period in the previous year. You can read first hand here. Most of the new immigrants came from the west - France, Canada, USA, South Africa, Ukraine and Australia. A large bump included Jews emigrating from Russia. Aliyah is a Hebrew term for “going up”. It is often used to describe the process of immigrating to Israel. Among the immigrants are technology engineers, doctors, along with some economists and accountants.