“Golani’s troops have returned to Shejaiya to ‘close a circle’. This time they will not give it up until all the terrorist infrastructure there is eliminated,” the Israeli defense minister said. Yoav Gallantreferring to a bloody battle between the The same Golani Brigade and members of Hamas in this neighborhood of Gaza City in 2014.
Speaking from the Gaza-Israel border, wearing binoculars and a bulletproof vest, he also said that what is happening in the north of the Strip “will soon lead to the destruction (of Hamas) of the entire Gaza city and the north.” of the Strip.” He added that his troops were already operating in the south Where “The fate of the terrorists of the Hamas battalions will be the same as those in the north or worse.”
Gallant, like the other Israeli officials, continues to assert that victory will be achieved when two goals are achieved: The Elimination of Hamas and that Return of the hostages to Israel.
However, many people, including the families of the hostages, do not understand how the two goals can be reconciled.
Corridor to escape
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF), meanwhile, announced a new humanitarian corridor in the south of the Palestinian enclave They advanced towards the city of Khan Yunis.
The Arabic-speaking spokesman for the IDF, Lt. Col. Avijay Adraeereported in X that the main road that crosses Gaza from north to south Saladin, in the areas northeast of Khan Yunis, is now a “battle zone.”
So civilians have to take a bypass route west of the city provided by the IDF. “Transit from the areas of Rafa and Khan Yunis to Deir al-Balah and the camps in the central Gaza Strip will be possible via the following routes: al-Rashid coastal road and al-Shuhada road in Deir al-Balah,” he explained.
Almost 1.9 million people have been forced to leave their homes in the Gaza Strip since Israel’s military offensive began, and around 1.2 million of them have ended up in facilities run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). ).
According to UNRWA, 80% of the Gaza Strip’s population has now been displaced. UNRWA has lost 111 of its staff since Israel launched the operation in response to Hamas attacks on October 7.
Khan Yunis is the birthplace of Gaza’s two Hamas leaders, Yahya Sinwar and Mohamed Deif., and Israeli intelligence suspects they are hiding there. They also assume that the Islamists’ central operational command is currently in the tunnels under the city.
New information on the task of the kibbutzim
More and more fragmented information is emerging about Israel’s systemic failures that made the October 7 Hamas attack possible.
According to a report by the public broadcaster Kan two IDF companies stationed on the Gaza border during the Jewish high holiday season September and October were sent to the West Bank two days before the Hamas massacre.
The approximately 100 soldiers were deployed to the West Bank city of Huwara after a shooting attack on an Israeli family occurred there. And the reason why this is news: The army had previously said that troops had not been withdrawn from the Gaza border to the West Bank before the October 7 attack.
Against sexual violence by Hamas
Thousands of people, including women from Jewish organizations and American state and federal representatives, gathered at the United Nations in New York on October 7 for a special session on Hamas’s use of sexual violence, amid protests against the supranational organization’s long silence this issue issue.
The executive director of the National Council of Jewish Women, Sheila Katzsaid: “We have come together to advocate for accountability. We came together to convene the meeting that UN Women should have held weeks ago.”
Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, criticized UN Women for allegedly ignoring letters it sent them that contained photographic evidence of sexual violence against Israeli women. “The UN Women ignored and did not see all the evidence,” she said.
Hours earlier, the Israeli actress Gal Gadot also criticized the international community for its silence in the face of the widespread sexual assaults of Israeli victims by Hamas on October 7, and expanded it to include the detention of hostages in Gaza.
“The world has failed the women of October 7th. We affirm that we are against rape and violence against women. We will not allow women to be bullied and then silenced. We say we believe in women, we support women, we speak for women,” Gadot wrote in an Instagram post.
He added: “On October 7, the world witnessed Hamas carrying out its violent plans in real time.” A few hours after the October 7 attack, the first chilling video appeared Shani Louk She was dragged naked and defiled by her proud attackers. But two months later, the women are still in the hands of these rapists and The world didn’t know what to call this situation by its name: an emergency requiring a decisive response.”
Gadot, on behalf of women and women’s allies, called on international organizations, including the United Nations, to demand this Hamas is demanding the immediate release of the women it is holding.
“These women cannot survive another moment of this horror,” he added.