Israel-Hamas War: What happened on Day 125?

US President Joe Biden said on Thursday that conduct in Gaza has been "over the top," adding that he is working to get a sustained pause in fighting in place.

"I'm of the view, as you know, that the conduct of the response in the Gaza Strip has been over the top," Biden told reporters at the White House, in some of his sharpest criticism to date of the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

He added that he has been pushing for increased humanitarian aid for Palestinian civilians and to get a temporary pause in place to allow the release of hostages taken by Hamas.

Biden intent on a ceasefire 

"I'm pushing very hard now to deal with this hostage ceasefire," Biden said. "There are a lot of innocent people who are starving, a lot of innocent people who are in trouble and dying, and it's gotta stop."

IDF troops patrolling inside the Gaza Strip (credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON UNIT)

The Israel-Hamas war began after the October 7 massacre in which Hamas terrorists murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped 253 people into Gaza. 

There has been one ceasefire to date, lasting a week at the end of November.

Hamas's leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, lost contact with fellow terror leaders "weeks ago," KAN News reported on Thursday, and was not involved in Hamas's response to the hostage deal and ceasefire proposal.

Israeli forces are "peeling back" Hamas infrastructure in Khan Yunis, more than two months after entering the Gaza Strip's main southern city, and believe the terror group's Gaza chief is hiding there, a senior military officer told Reuters on Thursday.

However, multiple sources have stressed to the Jerusalem Post that Sinwar is hiding in the southern city of Rafah.

Progress in Khan Yunis has prompted Israel to describe Rafah, further to the south and abutting Gaza's border with Egypt, as next in line for a ground sweep by troops and tanks.

The majority of Gaza's 2.3 million people are now sheltering in the area since being displaced from elsewhere in four months of fighting, afraid they are next in the line of fire.

The situation in Rafah watched by Cairo

The situation in Rafah - after Khan Yunis, the biggest southern city - is also being watched by Cairo, which has ruled out allowing any refugee influx across the fence into its Sinai peninsula.

A senior Israeli military officer said Khan Yunis operations to destroy Hamas and retrieve any hostages who might be held there would continue "whether it will take two hours, or two days, or two weeks or two months - or even more."

Israeli soldiers operate in the Gaza Strip, February 8, 2024 (credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON'S UNIT)

Israeli troops have killed 2,000 gunmen, wounded 4,000, and captured "hundreds" more, the officer told Reuters on condition of anonymity. That had largely demolished Hamas' Khan Yunis Brigade, whose pre-war strength was five battalions, he said.

This could not be independently verified. Hamas has seldom published its deployments or losses.

"The Khan Yunis Brigade was the most powerful that Hamas had, with a very dominant commander," the officer said. "We are peeling it back, layer by layer."

Attacks by Palestinian gunmen were increasingly scattershot, suggesting a loss of command and control, the officer said. Hamas says its ambushes continue to inflict Israeli casualties.

Khan Yunis is the hometown of Hamas' Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar, mastermind of the Oct. 7 killing and kidnapping spree in southern Israel that sparked the war.

'No doubt' that Yahya Sinwar is in Khan Yunis

"I assess beyond a doubt that he is in Khan Yunis - along with some of the remaining Hamas leadership," the officer said.

The military has published images of what is said were Hamas tunnels uncovered in Khan Yunis, with white-tiled living spaces and barred cells assumed to have held hostages.

Multiple source 

The officer side-stepped a question on whether the tunnels were extensive enough to allow senior Hamas figures to slip out of Khan Yunis and evade Israel's dragnet. "You can move quite a few kilometers (underground)," he said without elaborating.

The military says 228 soldiers have been killed and 1,314 wounded in Gaza Strip ground operations that began on Oct 20, figures that did not specify casualties from Khan Yunis.

One scenario that is not being publicly discussed, but which former top Israeli officials are aware of, is the possibility that at some point Israel may request a global alliance to finish destroying Hamas’s tunnel in Gaza, the Jerusalem Post has learned.

The reason for such a scenario, though ideally, Israel would prefer to destroy all of the tunnels itself, is simply that it may run out of time to do so before a point at which it can no longer operate standing forces deep within Gazan cities and towns.

Getting a global alliance to sign on to the idea of finishing the job, top sources say, could delegate achieving the goal beyond the point at which Israel can work on the issue itself, and potentially justify targeted Israeli returns into Gaza to handle the issue if such a global alliance failed to follow through.

A scenario that is under the wraps

Such a scenario is not being publicly discussed because delegating an Israeli security issue to a global third party could be politically unpopular, and in any event, the government is currently avoiding discussing any concrete plans related to how Gaza will be managed once the IDF withdraws.

Two weeks ago, The Wall Street Journal reported that only 20-40% of all of Hamas’s tunnel network had been destroyed or neutralized in the three months of the Gaza invasion.

Khan Yunis tunnel unearthed under the Bani Suheila cemetery. January 29, 2024. (credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON'S UNIT)

On December 3, the Post reported that while the IDF had taken control of 80% or more of northern Gaza by mid-November, it still may only have destroyed 20% or less of northern tunnels to date, without even having done much against southern Gaza tunnels.

On December 21, the Post reported that IDF sources had said that it would take “years” to destroy the entire tunnel network.

Later and despite an entire additional month of fighting, including taking over most of Khan Yunis, multiple additional defense officials confirmed this estimate was unchanged – as recently as January 29.

On Wednesday, the IDF announced that it had found yet another humongous “strategic tunnel” of Hamas in Khan Yunis where 12 hostages had been kept in cages.

While an additional success in taking apart Hamas’s underground infrastructure, the fact that such a large tunnel was only discovered in February also showed how far away the IDF is from fully eliminating the tunnel threat, especially since that would include destroying the immense number of yet untraversed smaller tunnels.

There are even tunnel areas that the IDF has not touched on at all, especially in Rafah.

If a ceasefire is signed before the IDF invades Rafah, the IDF may not even start destroying the whole additional underground network there.

Within the Rafah problem, the IDF is also stuck on destroying tunnels between Egypt and Gaza, a major source of Hamas’s rearming and financial capabilities.

Cairo has refused Jerusalem’s numerous requests to take over the Gaza side of the Philadelphi Corridor in order to destroy the tunnels, such that the IDF has started to discuss with Egypt the possibility of trusting it to destroy the tunnels.

The timing problem itself has multiple scenarios.

Many possible scenarios that can occur

In one scenario, the IDF signs a ceasefire deal soon with Hamas which could lead to a complete halt in IDF destroying tunnels or at least an extended pause in various areas.

In another scenario, the IDF can continue destroying tunnels for some extended period of months in 2024, but at some point will still need to make arrangements with a global alliance to take control of Gaza – still far short of the estimated years needed to finish the mission.

Top Israeli officials have discussed some kind of hybrid of handing running Gaza over to a mix of local groups disconnected from Hamas, a reformed Palestinian Authority, Arab allies like Egypt, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Western allies like the US and portions of the EU.

It is possible that this process may be mandated by the UN or may be a separate multilateral effort, but either way, most or all of these authorities would insist, as a condition of their participation, on IDF withdrawal to points outside of Gaza’s cities and towns at some point.  

The IDF and the government have made it clear that Israel plans on maintaining some kind of larger security zone running along its border with Gaza to make it much harder for any potential future invasion, such as what took place on October 7.

In addition, the IDF and the government have made it clear that they would demand the right of hot pursuit and to, on a targeted and temporary basis, preemptively raid Gaza territory to prevent an imminent terror attack.

But without a physical presence in Gaza’s cities, as it has now, sources say it could become difficult or impossible to continue the years-long process of destroying the tunnels.

If the new alliance running Gaza would not accept a years-long IDF presence deep inside Gaza cities, the idea would be to negotiate with this alliance to take on the job of finishing destroying the tunnels, say sources.

As a matter of principle, most or all of the members of the global alliance would see eye to eye with Israel that the tunnels have no civilian value and are a negative influence and military asset of Hamas which only continue the terror group’s power.

In addition, Israel might be able to convince the alliance to sign on to a timeframe, and if the time frame was not complied with, sources say that Israel could regain legitimacy for entering Gazan cities temporarily to destroy tunnels.

IDF sources have repeatedly said that unlike the 2014 Gaza conflict when the IDF merely sought to neutralize portions of tunnels, this time the IDF seeks to destroy all aspects of Hamas’s tunnel network.

After the IDF neutralized portions of Hamas’s tunnel network in 2014, the terror group responded by simply digging around the cave-ins to reconnect the largely intact disparate tunnels at other spots.

Israel Police found weaponry and equipment used by Hamas Nukhba terrorists in a Hadera boarding school on Thursday.

The equipment, which included a Kalashnikov rifle, knives, and Hamas flags, were found in the dorm of a 33-year-old Hadera resident and IDF reservist who works as a counselor at the school.

Police officers carried out a targeted raid at the dormitory following intelligence gathered on the suspect, they said.

According to police, the weapons taken by the reservist were used by Hamas terrorists during their infiltration and massacre of southern Israelis on October 7.

The man was detained for questioning, and the weaponry was seized by police.

Son of Hamas co-founder Mosab Hassan Yousef, also known as 'the Green Prince', spoke up in support of Israel during an interview conducted with the spokesman of the Prime Minister's Office for Arab media.

The interview delved into personal topics, as Yousef discussed his childhood, describing his experiences growing up as the son of Hamas co-founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef.

Yousef also discussed his experience of studying at a UNRWA high school in the West Bank and explained that the education he received there was one where hatred towards Jews was encouraged. 

T

Israel has begun the process of replacing the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters on Wednesday night as he spoke of the organization, which services 5.9 million Palestinian refugees.

“We will have to replace UNRWA. I directed that this process be started, and I informed US Secretary of State Antony Blinken about it today,” he said.

He spoke close to two weeks after Israel provided the UN with data alleging that 12 UNRWA staff members had participated in the October 7 massacre, including in kidnappings. It has also alleged that 190 of the UNRWA staff members were connected to Hamas. 

Investigations into UNRWA

The UN has opened two investigations into UNRWA, which operates in Gaza, the West Bank, east Jerusalem, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. The first investigation deals with the allegations against the 12 staff members and the second is an overall independent review of the organization’s neutrality.

Over 16 countries have temporarily suspended funding to the agency pending the results of the investigations.

UNRWA truck crosses into Egypt from Gaza at Rafah border crossing, November 27, 2023 (credit: REUTERS/AMR ABDALLAH DALSH)

On Thursday Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich (Religious Zionist Party) said he planned to cancel the organization’s tax breaks due to them as a UN agency.  

In the Knesset, the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Subcommittee for Foreign Policy and Public Diplomacy discussed the issue. 

MK Ze’ev Elkin (National Unity), who chairs the committee, used the format to attack Netanyahu, as he noted that while foreign governments had taken policy decisions on UNRWA, Israel was just formulating one.

"I am shocked” that two weeks since the revelations on UNRWA, “not a single discussion has taken place under the leadership of the Prime Minister.”

The United States is aware of reports that two Americans in Gaza were detained by Israeli forces in a raid early on Thursday and is seeking more information, the State Department said.

The department did not identify the two US citizens, citing privacy concerns.

But the family of US-Palestinian dual nationals Hashem Alagha, 20, and Borak Alagha, 18, say the two brothers were detained in a raid on a home west of the city of Khan Younis on Thursday morning.

Four other relatives were detained, including the brothers' Canadian father and an uncle who is mentally disabled, according to the brothers' cousin, Yasmeen Elagha, who lives near Chicago.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the State Department said it was "aware of reports of (the) detention of two US citizens in Gaza and (was) seeking additional information."

The Israeli military had no immediate comment.

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Israel Police found weaponry and equipment used by Hamas Nukhba terrorists in a Hadera boarding school on Thursday.

The equipment, which included a Kalashnikov rifle, knives, and Hamas flags, were found in the dorm of a 33-year-old Hadera resident and IDF reservist who works as a counselor at the school.

The man was detained for questioning and the weaponry was seized by police.

The United States on Thursday warned that any Israeli military operation in Rafah, where more than one million people are sheltering, with no planning or little thought, would be a "disaster."

"We would not support the undertaking of something like this without serious and credible planning as it relates to the more than a million people who are sheltering there, as well as without considering the impacts on humanitarian assistance and the safe departure of foreign nationals," State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel told reporters.

The US had not seen evidence Israel had undertaken serious planning for such an operation, Patel said, despite US Secretary of State Antony Blinken meeting with Israel's war cabinet on Wednesday.

Netanyahu: Israel ordered IDF to begin operating in Gaza's Rafah

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the most direct statement to date about the IDF being ready to act in Rafah on Wednesday night.

"We have instructed the IDF to also take action in Rafah and in the two camps in the center [of Gaza], the last remaining strongholds of Hamas. The IDF will facilitate the civilian population to move away through a humanitarian corridor according to international law,” said Netanyahu.

Until now, Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and top IDF officials have repeated generic threats about eventually going into Rafah, but they had all refrained from any concrete statements, such as those made by Netanyahu.

However, multiple defense sources threw cold water on the idea that any major change in policy or imminent invasion of Rafah was taking place.

Yonah Jeremy Bob contributed to this report.