Goal: Enter Rafah as the Final Refuge of Hamas Terror

"Only continuation of the forceful military pressure that we have applied, and will yet apply, will return our hostages, will return everyone."

"We are holding the northern Gaza Strip and Khan Younis."

"We have bisected the Strip and we are preparing to enter Rafah."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks with members of Israel's Nitzan 636 Battalion. (Kobi Gideon/GPO)

 

To Gaza's terrorist government, Hamas, Netanyahu has responded to their negotiations for a ceasefire by speaking of their conditions as utterly delusional, that Israel intends, following any hostage release, to continue fighting until Hamas is entirely destroyed.  Hamas negotiators suggested a phased release of all remaining hostages. They demand in return an end to the war that they initiated in a horrendous spasm of savagery, along with full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. 

 

As well as the opening of borders for aid and reconstruction and the release of hundreds of Palestinians kept incarcerated in Israeli prisons which would include those serving life sentences. Hamas leaders suffer from the delusion that no matter how horrific their crimes against Jews and Israel, global antisemitism can be aroused to readily counter the reality of their declaration of war causing Israel to respond, resulting in Hamas agents with their worldwide infiltration of the West launching orgies of outrage against Israel's ground offensive in Gaza to eliminate Hamas.

With the financial support of Qatar and the propaganda emanating from Al Jazeera, Hamas, another terror puppet of the Islamic Republic of Iran whose al-Quds Republican Guard Corps trained, supports, arms and finances, Hamas leaders appear to feel their terrorist movement is invincible and their agenda of Palestinian sacrifice as 'martyrs' to the 'cause' of destroying Israel is secure, since Palestinians both in the West Bank and Gaza offer their unflinching support to terrorism in the cause of 'restoring' Palestine claimed by Arab Palestinians.

The one hundred Israeli hostages -- minus an undisclosed number that have died in captivity, the result of abuse or chronic illness and lack of medical care -- along with the remains of an estimated 30 others who were murdered by the invading terrorists on October 7 and whose bodies were taken to Gaza as potential trades for Palestinian terrorists held in Israeli prisons -- remain an urgent cause for return for Israelis, and Hamas plays with their captivity, holding out hope, then withdrawing offers for exchange.

 

The Gaza Health Ministry, a creature of the terrorist Hamas group, offers numbers to the media of civilians -- mostly women and children, they claim -- victimized not by Hamas's butchery of Israelis as a declaration of war against Israel, but by Israel in responding to the bloody carnage of its citizens -- moving the international community to compassion and forgetfulness of the cause of their dilemma as human shields for Hamas in their public relations campaign.

 

A war monitor located in Britain, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, in opposition to the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad linked to Iran's axis of Shi'ite conquest, accurately noted that Israeli airstrikes close to Aleppo hit Hezbollah missile depots in the southern suburb of Jibreen and the nearby town of Safira, the locale of a sprawling Hezbollah military facility where armaments supplied by Iran are maintained; and which Israel is focused on destroying.

Israel is intent on hampering, if not entirely stopping the entrenchment of Iran in Syria, and to that end has carried out hundreds of strikes on targets in parts of Syria controlled by its government in recent years. Today it went a step further, in striking and destroying an Iranian Consular building in Damascus. In the event, seven members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were killed, among them Brig-Gen Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior commander of the elite Quds Force, and Brig-Gen Mohammad Hadi Haji-Rahimi, his deputy. Iran's role in the October 7 Hamas invasion of southern Israel is well known.

Israel plans to proceed with its promised ground invasion of Rafah, the city on the border with Egypt, earmarked as the final remaining Hamas stronghold in Gaza. Hamas had encouraged Gazans to flood Rafah with their presence, yet another pretense at having any regard for the safety and security of ordinary Palestinian civilians during a time of Israel's military carrying out the nation's intention of destroying terror infrastructure and eliminating Hamas operatives in active momentum.