JERUSALEM (AP) — The Israeli military said Wednesday it has discovered a major Hamas command center in the heart of Gaza City, dealing a major blow to the Islamic militant group as pressure mounts on Israel to scale back its devastating military offensive in the coastal enclave.
The army said it had uncovered the center of a vast underground network used by Hamas to transport weapons, militants and supplies throughout the Gaza Strip. Israel said destroying the tunnels was a key aim of the offensive.
The announcement came as Hamas' supreme leader arrived in Egypt for talks aimed at negotiating a temporary ceasefire and a new deal for Hamas to exchange Israeli hostages for Palestinians detained by Israel.
Israeli leaders have vowed to continue the two-month-long offensive launched in response to a bloody cross-border attack by Hamas in October that killed around 1,200 people and took 240 others hostage.
The offensive has devastated large parts of the northern Gaza Strip, killing nearly 20,000 Palestinians and forcing around 1.9 million people – almost 85% of the population – from their homes. The widespread destruction and the high number of civilian deaths have sparked increasing international calls for a ceasefire.
Hamas militants have put up fierce resistance against Israeli ground forces recently, and their forces appear to remain largely intact in the southern Gaza Strip. In addition, rockets continue to be fired at Israel on a daily basis.
The United States, Israel's closest ally, continues to support Israel's right to defend itself while calling for greater efforts to protect civilians in the Gaza Strip.
But in some of the strongest American language, Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday called on Israel to limit its use.
“It is clear that the conflict will shift and must move to a phase of lower intensity,” Blinken said. He said the U.S. wants “more targeted operations” with smaller troop sizes focused on specific targets such as Hamas leaders and the group's tunnel network.
“If that happens, I think you will also see a significant reduction in the harm inflicted on civilians,” he said.
His comments were clearer than those made by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who said during a visit to Israel this week that the U.S. would not dictate time frames to its ally.
TUNNEL NETWORK
The Israeli military escorted Israeli reporters to Palestine Square in the heart of Gaza City to show what it described as the center of Hamas' tunnel network.
Military commanders boasted of discovering offices, tunnels and elevators used by top Hamas leaders. The military released videos from underground offices and claimed to have recovered a wheelchair belonging to shady Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif, who had not been seen in public for years.
The army's chief spokesman, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, said the army had discovered a huge underground complex. “They all used this infrastructure routinely, during emergencies and also at the start of the war on October 7,” he said. He said the tunnels stretched across the Gaza Strip and into major hospitals. The claims could not be independently verified.
Hagari also indicated that Israel was halting its operations in the northern Gaza Strip, including in Gaza City, where it has been fighting Hamas militants for weeks. He said the army had advanced into a last remaining Hamas stronghold, the Tufah neighborhood of Gaza City.
But the army also acknowledged a significant misstep. An investigation into his soldiers' mistaken shooting of three Israelis held hostage in Gaza found that five days before the shooting, a military search dog with a body camera captured audio of them calling for help in Hebrew.
Hagari said the recording was only reviewed after the hostages were killed while trying to make themselves known to Israeli forces.
The incident sparked uproar in Israel and put pressure on the government to reach a new agreement with Hamas. The military chief said the shooting violated his rules of engagement.
The Israeli military campaign is now largely focused on the southern Gaza Strip, where Hamas leaders are said to be hiding.
“We will continue the war until the end. “It will continue until Hamas is destroyed, until victory,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a video statement. “Anyone who thinks that we will stop is out of touch with reality.”
Ceasefire talks are gaining momentum
As Netanyahu vowed to continue the war, there were new signs of progress in ceasefire talks.
Top Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh traveled to Cairo for talks about the war, part of a flurry of diplomatic talks. Senior Israeli, American and Qatari officials have also held talks on a ceasefire in recent days.
“These are very serious discussions and negotiations, and we hope they go somewhere,” White House national security spokesman John Kirby said aboard Air Force One as he traveled to Wisconsin with President Joe Biden.
However, Biden indicated that an agreement was still a long way off. “There are no expectations at this point, but we are pushing,” he said. Asked about the rising death toll in Gaza, Biden said: “It’s tragic.”
Hamas says no more hostages will be released until the end of the war. It insists on the release of large numbers of Palestinian prisoners, including senior militants convicted in deadly attacks, for the remaining prisoners.
Osama Hamdan, a senior Hamas official in Beirut, said efforts were currently focused on “stopping this aggression, especially because our enemy now knows that he cannot achieve any of his goals.”
Israel has so far rejected Hamas's demands for a mass release of prisoners. But there is a history of one-sided exchanges for captured Israelis, and the government is under intense public pressure to bring the hostages home safely.
Egypt, along with Qatar and the United States, helped broker a week-long ceasefire in November in which Hamas released over 100 hostages in exchange for Israel's release of 240 Palestinian prisoners. Hamas and other militants still hold an estimated 129 prisoners, although around 20 are believed to have died in captivity.
FILE – In this photo released by the Lebanese government, Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, speaks during a press conference after a meeting with Lebanese President Michel Aoun at the presidential palace in Baabda, east of Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, April 28. June 2021. (Dalati Nohra/Lebanese Official Government via AP, File)
U.N. Security Council members are negotiating an Arab-backed resolution to somehow end the fighting to allow an increase in urgently needed humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza.
A vote on the resolution, originally scheduled for Monday, was postponed again on Wednesday in hopes of persuading the U.S. to support it or pass it after vetoing an earlier ceasefire call.
Palestinians inspect a house after it was hit by an Israeli bombardment on Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2023. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)
HUMANITARIAN CRISIS
On Wednesday, mobile phone and internet services were again down throughout the Gaza Strip. The outage could complicate efforts to communicate with Hamas leaders inside the territory who went into hiding after Oct. 7.
The war has led to a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Tens of thousands of people are crammed into emergency shelters and tent camps due to a lack of food, medicine and other basic supplies. Israel's foreign minister traveled to Cyprus to discuss the possibility of establishing a maritime corridor that would allow large quantities of humanitarian aid to be delivered to Gaza.
A Palestinian woman shows the body of her grandson, her father, outside a mortuary in Rafah on Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2023, after he was killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip. (AP Photo/Hatem Ali)
At least 46 people were killed and more than 100 injured early Wednesday after Israel bombed the Jabaliya urban refugee camp near Gaza City, according to Munir al-Bursh, a senior Health Ministry official.
Palestinians search for bodies and survivors in the rubble of a residential building destroyed in an Israeli airstrike in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2023. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)
At least five people were killed and dozens injured in another attack that hit three homes and a mosque in the southern Gaza town of Rafah on Wednesday, health authorities said.
The health ministry in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip said on Tuesday that the death toll since the start of the war had risen to over 19,600. No distinction is made between civilian and combatant deaths.
According to the Israeli military, 134 of its soldiers were killed in the ground offensive in the Gaza Strip. Israel says it has killed around 7,000 militants without providing evidence. It blames Hamas for civilian deaths in Gaza and says it uses them as human shields when it fights in residential areas.
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Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel, Bassem Mroue in Beirut and Aamer Madhani aboard Air Force One contributed.
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