After eight months of fighting, Hamas pokes its head out of the ruins of Rafah. Yesterday morning at 5 a “nagmash”, an armored vehicle with eight soldiers inside, was returning, part of a procession, from an operation that lasted all night, a very tough clash with Hamas, of which Rafah is the main base. What the cause of the explosion was is not entirely clear, but the result was eight deaths, including the Druze commander Wassim Mahmoud, 23 years old: in his village of Beit Jann, his family had to mourn farewell to their son right during the Feast of Sacrifice, the Korban. Hamas, while all of Israel studies the event in pain and discussion, immediately proudly claimed responsibility for the event: perhaps a missile or a charge attached by Hamas to the vehicle caused the fatal explosion of the explosive carried by the Namer (the Tiger). It took hours and more gunfire to reach the Namer and recover the bodies of the soldiers from the vehicle that exploded in the north-western part of Rafah in the elegant neighborhood of Tel Sultan, where around fifty Hamas men had been killed in the battle. In the evening, with a sad face, Netanyahu commemorated the fallen and promised: “The objectives do not change, free the hostages and eliminate Hamas.”
Hamas’ satisfaction is an affirmation of survival, of dominance, of the will to continue to challenge Israel, it is a signal to the Russian, Iranian and Hezbollah allies that it is still worth focusing on Sinwar. Ever since Israel moved its tanks into Rafah, the Hamas stronghold, the terrorist organization has inaugurated a “hit and run” strategy, in which it uses all local resources, tunnels, weapons reserves, and unleashes its weapons from under the ground. terrorists specially prepared for war. In short, it mobilizes all the preparation prepared before October 7 for a long-term war. He wants to demonstrate that Netanyahu’s goal of destroying the monster who carried out the October 7 pogrom cannot be achieved, much less in the short term. Probably without the soldiers who went to fight to bring home the bodies of the soldiers killed yesterday, Hamas would also have kidnapped the bodies of the killed soldiers, as it already did for example in 2014 with Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin, thus adding other horrifying elements to his game.
Also yesterday, Hamas fired missiles into Israel, in Sufa, in Sdei Avraham, in Holit, and it did so from the humanitarian zone, which should be demilitarized. According to Sinwar himself, by creating an indispensable reaction from Israel (it cannot let missiles rain down from Gaza on the citizens inside the border) it is drawn into a war trap that puts the people inside Gaza at risk, and forces Israel into a siege in which the world demands a ceasefire. It is a circle that closes on the tragedy of the kidnapped people: Hamas, even for Biden and Blinken, refuses any agreement, the kidnapped people remain for Sinwar an instrument of war, of supreme blackmail to ultimately gain control of the Strip. And here in Israel last night pressure was reopened on Netnayahu to design a future for Gaza after the war, as Biden would like, i.e. an Arab team of which the Palestinian Authority is part. But how is this possible when in the PNA the population is all in favor of Hamas? Here, those who call for two states for two peoples have not yet provided an answer.
For now, Israel has no chance to give in, unless it hands Hamas a victory. So his soldiers take courage: they will continue to fight until, somehow, a defeat for Hamas is achieved. A noble goal for the whole world, which can lead to the only true peace.
