Israel's War Against Hamas - Updates

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From Times of Israel on the dramatic rescue of Israeli hostages Fernando Simon Herman and Louis Norbeto:

IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari offers details on the rescue of hostages Marman and Har.

“The IDF and the Shin Bet have been working on this operation for a long time,” he says.

“Conditions were not ripe to carry it out until now, and we waited for them to ripen.”

He adds: “Reaching the target in the heart of Rafah was very complex.”

Forces clandestinely arrived at the target at around 1 a.m., and carried out a very complex action on the premises and the second floor where the hostages were held.”

He says preparations included “backup, a major aerial envelope, and intimate intel.”

He says forces then broke into the building through a locked door and exchanged fire with gunmen in the building and in adjacent buildings, while extracting the hostages to armored vehicles.

“There was intense firepower from the air. Fire was opened from nearby buildings. The Air Force struck intensively there,” he says. At the same time, the armored corps also provided cover for the extraction.

Hagari says “many terrorists were eliminated tonight in this action.”

One soldier was lightly injured, but beyond that no Israelis were hurt.

“The entire operation lasted about an hour from start to finish.”

Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt and the US have been pressuring Israel not to operate in Rafah. After seeing that hostages are kept there and Israel saved some, practically no Israelis will agree.

The terrorists, knowing that their hope that Israel won't invade Rafah have dwindled, decided to make up a story about massive massacres there without mentioning the rescue. Islamic Jihad's Palestine Today almost admits that terrorists were killed, but not quite:

The Israeli occupation committed a massacre in the city of Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip, leaving dozens of martyrs dead and hundreds wounded.

Medical sources reported that more than a hundred martyrs so far and hundreds of injuries arrived at Al-Kuwaiti Hospital and Abu Youssef Al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, after the occupation aircraft targeted several homes and mosques with dozens of raids, noting that the sounds of violent clashes between the Palestinian resistance and the occupation army were taking place near the vicinity.

Ramallah News reports that "The Palestinian Red Crescent said that the city of Rafah is witnessing violent Israeli raids concentrated in the center of the city, targeting inhabited homes opposite the headquarters of the Red Crescent Society."

This indicates that Hamas is keeping hostages near areas like medical facilities in order to dissuade rescue attempts.

Altogether this was an extremely impressive operation. It points to the need for the IDF to go into Rafah in order to get rid of the rest of the major Hamas battalions and leaders - if there are any left who haven't already fled under tunnels from Rafah to Egypt.

This also points to how Israeli successes breed more success. Intel received from detained terrorists, computers and documents captured make it easier for Israel to mount pinpoint operations that can be better planned and better executed.

Two hostages rescued in dramatic IDF operation in Rafah. Terrorists claim "massacre."

Blogging about Israel and the Arab world since, oh, forever.

elderofziyon.blogspot.com

 

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Fernando Marman and Louis Har cooked for the family that held them captive, but lived mostly on pita bread and white cheese and returned having lost much of their body weight; they had not seen sunlight during the 129 days since their abduction; they told their kidnappers they were Argentinian and talked about soccer with them​

(full article online)

Rescued hostages say they were held by a family in Rafah and 'we were hungry'

Fernando Marman and Louis Har cooked for the family that held them captive, but lived mostly on pita bread and white cheese and returned having lost much of their body weight; they had not seen sunlight during the 129 days since their abduction; they told their kidnappers they were Argentinian...

www.ynetnews.com

 

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How much does a kilo of sugar cost? This is how the trade of humanitarian aid in Gaza looks like.
A resident of Gaza revealed how much the products that come to Gaza with humanitarian aid cost and told Hamas: "We will reckon with you after the war."

A kilo of sugar - NIS 40.
3 liters of oil - NIS 120.
Small oil, instead of five shekels, now costs 22.
Lentils instead of five shekels now cost 17 shekels.
Canned meatloaf - 10 shekels.

https://media-proxy.walla.cloud/2024/2/2/videos/1707682499_408x720/index.m3u8

 

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Grossly misleading regarding the Oslo Accords, AP’s Julia Frankel alleged yesterday that “Under intermin peace deals from a generation ago, the self-rule government was meant to expand and eventually run a future Palestinian state” (“The economy of this Palestinian village depended on Israel. Then the checkpoint closed“).

In fact, the interim accords said absolutely nothing about a future Palestinian state.

As Martin Indyk, the former U.S. ambassador to Israel, made clear in a piece for the Atlantic marking the 25th anniversary of the agreements, the Oslo Accords “did not provide for a Palestinian state.” He also re-emphasized that the two-state solution is “a concept that is nowhere mentioned in the Oslo Accords.” (Emphases added.)

Prominent critics of Israel agree with Indyk. In the New Yorker, Rashid Khalidi wrote, “In Oslo and subsequent accords, the Israelis were careful to exclude provisions that might lead to a Palestinian political entity with actual sovereignty.”
Palestinian statehood, he continued “are never mentioned in the text.” Avi Shlaim stated in the Guardian that the Accords “did not promise or even mention an independent Palestinian state at the end of the transition period,” and reiterated in the Journal of Palestine Studies that “The most basic criticism [of the Accords] was that the deal negotiated by Arafat did not carry the promise, let alone a guarantee, of an independent Palestinian state.” The State Department’s Office of the Historian recounts that under the terms of the Oslo Accords:

Israel accepted the PLO as the representative of the Palestinians, and the PLO renounced terrorism and recognized Israel’s right to exist in peace. Both sides agreed that a Palestinian Authority (PA) would be established and assume governing responsibilities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip over a five-year period. Then, permanent status talks on the issues of borders, refugees, and Jerusalem would be held.

The State Department history makes no mention of commitments, intentions or plans for a Palestinian state.

Writing in the New York Times, Henry Siegman, president emeritus of the US/Middle East Project and a past senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relation, acknowledged: “The Oslo accords obligated Israel to engage in negotiations of ‘final status’ issues, but the accords provided no hint as to what Palestinians had a right to expect as the outcome of those negotiations. Indeed, the very term ‘Palestinian state’ did not appear in the accords.”

As an April 11, 2019 New York Times correction affirmed:

An earlier version of this article misstated a commitment of the Oslo accords, the 1993 agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians. The Oslo accords called for a negotiated settlement, but did not commit both sides to a two-state solution.

The Financial Times likewise corrected this point in 2019, and MSNBC issued a similar correction the following year.

Notwithstanding the facts, Frankel’s article about the economic hardships of West Bank Palestinians in face of the Israeli decision to ban entry to Palestinian workers following Hamas’ barbaric Oct. 7 bloodbath relentlessly advances the faulty narrative that the still stateless Palestinians are free of any responsibility for their current hardships. The tendentious headline — “The economy of this Palestinian village depended on Israel. Then the checkpoint closed” — sets the stage featuring singular Israeli culpability and the lack of Palestinian agency.

“They’ve been here centuries, far before the Palestinian family’s livelihood came to depend on the whims of Israeli occupation,” Frankel asserts in the opening paragraph, linking Palestinian welfare solely to the whims of Israeli occupation, and not the whims of Palestinians who carry out mass atrocities prompting Israeli measures to safeguard Israeli life.

Two paragraphs later, Frankel gives a perfunctory nod to the Hamas attacks which prompted the Israeli closure:

But the [parking] lot [from which the Massoud family had made a living] has been empty since Oct. 7, when Hamas militants attacked Israel from the Gaza Strip, and Israel, fearing more attacks, barred Palestinian workers from the West Bank from entering Israel.

But then she quickly redirects to the real culprit:

Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed more than 28,000 Palestinians, unleashed an unimaginable humanitarian crisis and decimated the strip’s economy. But Israel’s near-complete severance of economic ties with the West Bank also has had serious repercussions for Palestinians there.

Quashing any potential doubt about who’s at fault for the economic hardship in Nilin and other West Bank villages, Frankel wrote: “The fallout from Israel’s decision is felt keenly in Nilin.”

The fallout from Israel’s decision. Not the fallout from Hamas’ decision to send thousands of terrorists into southern Israel, exploiting detailed information gathered by Palestinian workers so as to slaughter the coexistence minded Israeli employers and their entire families.

The economy of this Palestinian village depended on Israel. But then Hamas carried out horrific mass atrocities — murdering, torturing, wounds, kidnapping and traumatizing. That’s the real story. It’s just not AP’s.

The State of Palestinians: AP Errs on Oslo Accords, Strips Palestinians Of Agency

AP's Julia Frankel falsely reports that under the intermin peace deals, 'the self-rule government was meant to expand and eventually run a future Palestinian

www.camera.org

 

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