Israeli Press: Our path to achieving the goal is full of obstacles, and the political and security levels are trapped

Isaac Brick

The Israeli army has succeeded, so far, in removing parts of Gaza City from the face of the earth, while Israeli army forces are moving towards the heart of Gaza City. There were almost no clashes with Hamas "saboteurs" above ground, and no enemy combatants stood in front of the Israeli army. As is known, Hamas chose to hide in underground tunnels, instead of fighting the Israeli army. The army was able to kill a few hundred "saboteurs" in the movement's sites that the army decided to attack, and in these attacks, we lost quite a few victims.

We have not yet begun working to achieve the goal for which we launched this campaign, which is to eliminate the rule of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements in the Gaza Strip. There are tens of thousands of “saboteurs” hiding in tunnels extending about a thousand kilometers in length under Gaza City, in the southern Gaza Strip, Khan Yunis, and other towns. The talk is about two Hamas brigades in Gaza City, and three Hamas brigades in the southern Gaza Strip, where we have not yet begun fighting.

Simultaneously with the process of removing these parts of Gaza City, international pressure began calling for an end to the fighting there. The source of this pressure is the thousands of dead Gazans not involved in the hostilities, whose images are spread all over television channels around the world, and in some countries we are given names such as “child killers and perpetrators of war crimes.” These international pressures also stem from the situation experienced by approximately two million Gazans in the southern Gaza Strip, where hundreds of thousands of them fled Gaza City. They live in very dire conditions, with very serious humanitarian problems, and the imminent arrival of winter may make their deteriorating situation much worse.

Pressure on Israel from countries around the world is increasing, due to the possibility of the war expanding into a regional war. All of this will not provide the Israeli army with the time required to address the issue of the tens of thousands of “terrorists” present in the city of tunnels located under Gaza City, and it will certainly not allow the issue of the tens of thousands of “terrorists” present in the southern Gaza Strip, in the Khan Yunis area, to be addressed. And the towns we haven't reached yet. The goal of the war, as we mentioned, is to uproot Hamas’ authority in the Gaza Strip and its military structure, but estimates indicate that this uprooting process will take a few years.

Our entry into the fighting in the southern Gaza Strip (in Deir al-Balah, then Khan Yunis), after completing our activity in Gaza City, will force us this time to displace about two million Gazans, some of whom live in that area, and some of whom fled from Gaza City to South, with our encouragement, so that they can receive humanitarian assistance. Where exactly can we emigrate these people to? Will the world agree to displacement? Do we have a chance to fight for the next two years in the Gaza Strip?

The solution is for the political echelon to announce that in exchange for us recovering the 240 kidnapped sons of ours, it will stop the campaign. This is a request that the world will understand, and after we get the kidnapped ones, we will think about how we can continue.