Today’s Image
Today’s image is a phot of one of the many fully underground surgical staging areas at Haifa’s Rambam Hospital. At this web page, of the hospital, you can read a description of the underground facility along with a 3 ½ video showing how quickly they convert the facility into use for patients. Basically, they provided oxygen, power, remote alarms, special lighting, etc. so that the underground parking lots can be quickly converted into fully operations medical facilities. Of course, they require a good scrubbing first. But once clean they can fully operate like a normal hospital. This is relevant because the order has been issued to the hospitals in the north to start preparing these facilities. How many countries do you know build fully operating hospital facilities to be used in the event of bombing attacks from the enemy?? Do you think Hamas or Hezbollah build hospitals underground to protect civilians??
Gaza Rockets
No rockets were fired from Gaza in the past 6 days.
Casualties
No casualties were reported by the IDF in the past 24 hours.
Gaza Operations
The main focus of IDF operations remains Rafah and the Netzarim Corridor. This is likely to remain the case for the coming months. It will take another 2-3 weeks to complete the operation in Rafah and after that it will take months to map out and destroy the many tunnels found there. At this point no effort is being made to destroy the tunnels in Rafah. The Air Force is called in to bomb an entrance to the tunnels so that it can no longer be used. Its location is noted and ground forces will return in the weeks ahead to dig out the entrance, map out the tunnel and then destroy it. This is all necessary to ensure that hostages are not killed accidentally and that the depth and range of the tunnels are understood. To my knowledge only one tunnel in Rafah has actually been mapped and destroyed so far. Its entrance was at an UNRWA school. This tunnel was about 500 meters long. Nearby the tunnel entrance the IDF located nine rocket launchers. They too were destroyed. You can read more here and see a video of the tunnel being destroyed. The IDF now places estimates of killed Hamas operatives in Rafah at 1,000.
And the operation in the Shejaiya neighborhood of Gaza City will typify other such operations in the months ahead. IDF will identify unusual activity in some area of Gaza through drone observation or human intelligence. They will then mount a targeted operation to eliminate the facility being used by terrorist combatants in planning their operations. They will then attack and destroy. This is exactly what happened in Nuseirat a couple weeks ago, then Jabaliya and now Shejaiya. The IDF can tell that Hamas is starting to suffer from a shortage of terrorists as each operation eliminates more and more of their active combatants. They can try to train new operatives, but they will be very young, without training and inexperienced… that is they are setting them up to be killed for almost no reason. Each time the IDF returns to one of these neighborhoods they find tunnels and arms storage facilities that they did not locate previously. Sometimes they deliberately avoided certain neighborhoods as it was determined to be too dangerous for the IDF and civilians. But they return when conditions are more suitable. With the Netzarim Corridor in central Gaza and the Philadelphi Corridor in south Gaza crossing East-West the IDF can dispatch ground troops quickly. They can arrive either undetected (at night) or in daylight within 40 minutes making it difficult for the terrorist combatants to react quick enough. Shejaiya was such an operation. First they provided notification to what civilians were still there, then they entered quickly. They encountered some stiff resistance resulting in house to house combat. In the process they eliminated many dozens of terrorists. When necessary they would call in an air strike. Then they could not track the number killed or wounded. They have destroyed two tunnels so far in Shejaiya. Those tunnels were not identified in the previous operation in the area near the beginning of the war. Here you can see a video and read more about what has been tacking place in Shejaiya. They found huge amounts of arms inside a medical clinic.
Lebanon Operations
Several kamikaze drones were launched by Hezbollah this afternoon. Most were intercepted but two landed in open fields near the northernmost part of Israel. Also, Hezbollah launched a missile which exploded in an open field. One, however landed in the northernmost city of Metula wounding 9 IDF soldiers, all of whom were rushed to the hospital.
Earlier today IDF fighter jets struck several buildings in south Lebanon that were identified as active Hezbollah operational facilities. This followed similar fight jet attacks that took place in the middle of the night in southern Lebanon.
As I remarked yesterday, hospitals in the northern part of the country have been put on high alert and to be prepared to move operations into underground facilities. This was made official today and extended not just to hospitals but clinics as well.
Yemen Operations
British maritime trade operations reports that it received a distress call this morning from a ship about 13 nautical miles off the Yemenis shore. No details have been provided.
Egypt/Iraq/Syria/Iran
In an article in the Washington Post it was reported that about 115,000 Gazan civilians bought their way into Egypt since the start of The War either paying for a tourist visa or bribing their way through a smuggling operation. Smuggling across the border of people and arms is commonplace and a major source of revenue for Egypt.
Hostages/Ceasefires
Prime Minister Netanyahu re-affirmed the Governments support for the “Three Stage” hostage deal as promoted by President Biden.
Osama Hamdan, senior Hamas official, said during a press briefing in Beirut, Lebanon on Saturday there had been no progress in ceasefire talks with Israel over the Gaza war
International
Today the Arab League deciding that it no longer considers Hezbollah a terror group. This reverses a decision made in 2016 by the same organization. The Assistant Secretary-General said that making this designation in 2016 was not done properly and that the Arab League, as a policy, does not designate who is and who is not a terror group.
An El Al flight that originated in Warsaw, Poland had to make an emergency landing today in Antalya, Turkiye on its way to Israel. One of the passengers became very ill and needed immediate medical attention. Passengers were not allowed to disembark and the Turkish authorities delayed the flight by refusing to refuel it. This is highly unusual since there are many treaties in place between countries to handle emergency medical situations. The flight had to leave Antalya and make its way to Rhodes, Greece, nearby where it could refuel.
Politics/Protests
A small spat broke out earlier today at a conference sponsored by one of the main Israeli newspapers between National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. Both are leaders of the far right parties in this Government. Smotrich, during his speech to the group, said that Iran is pouring arms into Israel and into Judea/Samaria (West Bank) in order to destabilize Israel. The arms entering Israel are finding their way to criminal gangs within the Arab towns. Organized Crime in the Arab Sector in Israel is a big deal. Ben Gvir demanded a larger budget for his police force in order to hire the necessary staff to take on the Organized Crime. Leaders of the Arab Party, Ra’am, who participated in the previous government made dealing with Organized Crime and investing in the Arab Sector a major party issue. But the previous government was not in power long enough to follow through on the policies. It remains to be seen what Ben Gvir does and how much progress his new budget can make on the problem. On the average, each month there are 2-3 murders in the Arab Sector caused by Organized Crime. It is a growing problem. I realize that these numbers, when compared to Chicago or parts of New York, are minuscule but for us here this is regarded as a serious problem.
Well, there is a different community now organizing demonstrations against the government - Druze and Circassian. These two groups are part of the Arab minority in the country, they serve in the IDF and are fully integrated into society. However, they do not see it quite this same way. Both communities not only suffer, in that their young men are also being killed in the war, but most of them live in the northern part of the country which is suffering greatly from the daily attacks from Hezbollah. But, I believe their main complaint is housing. In their societies, they are used to constructing residential buildings no more than 3-4 stories high. They are both very patriarchal societies so sons, along with their families, will live in the same building as the father. The problem is that there is not enough land to go around. Most Jewish Israelis live in buildings that are at least 8-10 stories high so as to deal with the shortage of land. So getting construction approvals for these villages is hard as they want to continue building 3-4 story residential facilities. This is, in my opinion, the main cause of friction.
Meanwhile, street protests are taking on a more violent tenor these days. Accusations are being made against the police for using unnecessary force, however when you build a bonfire in the middle of the freeway during heavy traffic hours I do not know what you expect to happen, particularly if you resist arrest. Today the country’s president released a statement reading something like this:
Statements “against families of hostages and bereaved families, against the chief and commanders of the IDF and the security agencies, against women and members of the media, against the judiciary and judges, against ministers and Knesset members and against the incumbent prime minister have become commonplace and not appropriate in civil discourse…. Verbal abuse is violence in every way and accusations of treason can lead to murder.
Here you can hear his speech delivered in Hebrew, but with an article quoting more of what he said.
Most importantly he ended saying:
As I have said time and time again during the previous government – verbal violence is violence for all concerned, and accusations of treason can lead to murder. Haven't we learned anything from our history?
An investigation has been launched into claims that police entered an altercation with a Parliament member from an opposition party last night outside the Prime Minister’s residence in Jerusalem.
And In Your Copious Spare Time…
Here is a speech delivered by Major John Spencer, the Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point, who recently spoke at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. You can view it or read it. In this speech he tells the public that Israel has been and is being held to standards never before applied to any country at war. That because of policies demanding its restraint, more civilians are being killed and the war is being unnecessarily prolonged.
Here is a sobering read on the tunnels traversing the border with Egypt and what to do about them.