FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
JERUSALEM — At four in the afternoon, the sun sets on this area of fields and poorly plastered cubes that is dark even without war. According to the army's initial reconstructions, the soldiers are tasked with demolishing two of the now-uninhabited buildings, a few floors and empty rooms that overlook the sand kicked up by the tanks' tracks. The barrier destroyed by Hamas terrorists on October 7 is not far away, six hundred meters and you could – the fundamentalists arrived there that day – go to Kibbutz Kissufim.
On Monday, the troops, protected by a tank, move in a quadrant in the mid-north of the strip said to be under the control of the Israeli army, the square kilometers where “clearance operations,” as the prime minister called them, are already underway , telling Benjamin Netanyahu that they will last at least six months. Or as Herzi Halevi, the chief of staff, explained: “They were working to ensure the return of residents to their villages in Israel.”
Because if the generals still don't have a clear explanation for what might have gone wrong near the Al Maghazi refugee camp, it seems clear what the order was: destroy the houses and create explosion after explosion for miles in the buffer zone Gaza Strip, which the Prime Minister has suspected since the war began 109 days ago.
The teams, all reservists between the ages of 23 and 38, plant around twenty mines in the houses when a jihadist commando fires an anti-tank missile. The shot would have triggered the accusation: tons of concrete collapsed on the soldiers. The tank is also hit with a shoulder launcher, a weapon that provides mobility, and the militiamen manage to escape. The death toll is 21, another 3 were killed in another battle: it is the day with the highest number of victims after the massacres of October 7th.
“If you read these words, something has happened to me. If I am captured by Hamas, I ask you not to allow any deals in exchange for my release. Maybe I fell in battle, it's sad, but don't be sad when you say goodbye to me: sing, hold hands and give each other strength. It's the letter Elkana left for Vizel before answering the call. She lived in a religious community founded by settlers who were evacuated from the Strip nearly 19 years ago. Abu Latif, “proud to be an Israeli Bedouin,” came from Rahat, where “I like to invite my friends to eat maqluba,” the rice, meat and vegetable pie that means “upside down” in Arabic Mission.
Satellite photos analyzed by The New York Times show bulldozers leveling the ground as troops advance south. Army spokesmen announced that the encirclement of Khan Younis – the town where Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar lives – had been completed.
Nearly 26,000 Palestinians have been killed, Unicef reports that “a thousand children are being mutilated,” while the United Nations warns that the population is “at risk of famine.”
What Netanyahu calls “one of the most difficult days” while repeating that he expects “nothing less than total victory” appears to confirm some officials' concerns: The lack of vision for the consequences risks putting troops in harm's way devices.
The American Institute for the Study of War says Hamas paramilitaries are returning to the north, where Tsahal has reduced its presence. Anshel Pfeffer, an analyst at the local newspaper Haaretz, instead questions the idea of taking risks to create the buffer zone: This will not be enough to deter attacks on Israeli villages and is contrary to the promises President Joe Biden wants do not shrink Arab areas.