At least 90 Palestinians have been reported killed in an Israeli strike on a displacement camp in southern Gaza which Israel said targeted Hamas’ military chief, who was an alleged mastermind of the October 7 attacks….
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Video footage taken by Mustafa Abutaha, a professor of English, showed a large crater in a tree-lined plot of land near a four-story residential building. A high wall separated part of the plot from the road, suggesting that it was an enclosed compound. But as he filmed the video, Mr. Abutaha said the plot had housed displaced people. Shortly afterward, a second man passed in front of the camera, holding a motionless child.
Two Israeli officials said that Mr. Deif had been targeted while he was above ground, after leaving Hamas’s tunnel network under Gaza. All the Israeli officials spoke on condition of anonymity, because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
Here’s what else to know:
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Israeli officials said the strikes on Saturday had also targeted Rafah Salameh, the top Hamas commander in Khan Younis, who was with Mr. Deif at the time of the attack.
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The Gazan authorities said that a second, smaller strike hit the center of Khan Younis, a nearby city to the east of Mawasi.
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A senior American official said that Israel had told Washington that it targeted Mr. Deif, but the official said that neither Israel nor the United States could yet confirm his status.
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On Saturday, relatives of hostages held in Gaza completed a four-day march between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The marchers aimed to heighten pressure on the Israeli government to agree to a deal with Hamas that would stop the fighting in Gaza and release their relatives…..
Hamas tactics to keep going against the Israeli forces….
They hide under residential neighborhoods, storing their weapons in miles of tunnels and in houses, mosques, sofas — even a child’s bedroom — blurring the boundary between civilians and combatants.
They emerge from hiding in plainclothes, sometimes wearing sandals or tracksuits before firing on Israeli troops, attaching mines to their vehicles, or firing rockets from launchers in civilian areas.
They rig abandoned homes with explosives and tripwires, sometimes luring Israeli soldiers to enter the booby-trapped buildings by scattering signs of a Hamas presence.
Through eight months of fighting in Gaza, Hamas’s military wing — the Qassam Brigades — has fought as a decentralized and largely hidden force, in contrast to its Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which began with a coordinated large-scale maneuver in which thousands of uniformed commandos surged through border towns and killed roughly 1,200 people….
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Hamas’s decision to keep fighting has proved disastrous for the Palestinians of Gaza. With Hamas refusing to surrender, Israel has forged ahead with a military campaign that has killed nearly 2 percent of Gaza’s prewar population, according to Gazan authorities; displaced roughly 80 percent of its residents, according to the United Nations; and damaged a majority of Gaza’s buildings, according to the U.N.
By contrast, fewer than 350 Israeli soldiers have died in Gaza since the start of the invasion, according to military statistics — far fewer than Israeli officials had predicted in October.
Yet despite the carnage in Gaza, Hamas’s strategy has helped the group fulfill some of its own goals….
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An analysis of battlefield videos released by Hamas and interviews with three Hamas members and scores of Israeli soldiers, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, suggests that Hamas’s strategy relies on:
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Using hundreds of miles of tunnels, the scale of which surprised Israeli commanders, to move around Gaza without being seen by Israeli soldiers;
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Using civilian homes and infrastructure — including medical facilities, U.N. offices and mosques — to conceal fighters, tunnel entrances, booby-traps and ammunition stores;
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Ambushing Israeli soldiers with small groups of fighters dressed as civilians, as well as using civilians, including children, to act as lookouts;
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Leaving secret signs outside homes, like a red sheet hanging from a window or graffiti, to signal to fellow fighters the nearby presence of mines, tunnel entrances or weapons caches inside;
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Dragging out the war for as long as possible, even at the expense of more civilian death and destruction, in order to bog Israel down in an attritional battle that has amplified international criticism of Israel.
“The aim is to vanish, avoid direct confrontation, while launching tactical attacks against the occupation army. The emphasis is on patience,” said Salah al-Din al-Awawdeh, a Hamas member and former fighter in its military wing who is now an analyst based in Istanbul. Before Oct. 7, the Qassam Brigades operated as “an army with training bases and stockpiles,” Mr. al-Awawdeh said. “But during this war, they are behaving as guerrillas.”
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Jul 13, 2024 – ISW Press
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) conducted an airstrike in the al Mawasi humanitarian zone targeting Hamas’ top military commander, Mohammad Deif, on July 13. The strike also targeted Hamas Khan Younis Brigade Commander Rafe Salamah. Israel is still assessing whether the strike killed Deif or Salamah. Israeli officials confirmed that they conducted the strike based on specific intelligence collected over the prior 24 hours. The IDF Air Force dropped eight 2,000-pound precision munitions targeting a building in which Deif and Salamah were assessed to be.