IDF will keep up military pressure on Hamas to create conditions for hostage deal, vows DM Gallant

The IDF will continue to exert maximum pressure on Hamas in Gaza in order to create the conditions for a hostage deal, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant vowed during a visit to troops in the southern Gaza Strip on Wednesday.

Gallant was shown the location where Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was eliminated in Khan Younis, visited soldiers deployed in Rafah and in the Philadelphi Corridor, before holding an operational situation assessment with the the top brass of the IDF forces in Gaza.

“In any place where Hamas rears its head, it meets the IDF – whether in Rafah, Khan Younis, or Jabaliya- wherever Hamas rises, it is taken down. Your [military] actions led to the conditions that ultimately caused Sinwar to make a mistake [leading to his elimination],” Gallant said.

Around two weeks ago, Sinwar was killed in a chance encounter with a routine IDF patrol in Khan Younis, after a 11-month long manhunt.

“The central issue here is to continue exerting as much [military] pressure on Hamas as possible, in order to create the conditions necessary to ensure the return of the hostages. Your duty is to exert military pressure and eliminate and imprison terrorists.”

The killing of Sinwar has created new momentum to restart the deadlocked hostage deal talks in recent weeks. According to the most recent Qatari proposal, a first, smaller deal would see 11-14 hostages – primarily women, children and the elderly – released in exchange for a 30-day ceasefire and several Palestinian prisoners.

“The political echelon must do what is necessary to bring about a deal. You [referring to the troops] must apply military pressure and do what is necessary to create the conditions required for us to carry out a deal. This is our most important mission in Gaza at this time,” Gallant emphasized.

“We have routine tasks as well – defending Israeli communities and troops, and maintaining our freedom of operation in Gaza. You apply pressure – do what is necessary and we will bring about a deal because you created the conditions for us to carry it out, and I hope that we will do it.”

While the IDF has significantly reduced the troops active in Gaza, and recently wrapped up its single large-scale ongoing operation in Jabaliya, smaller raids and airstrikes continue all the time.

On Thursday, the IDF said soldiers of the 162nd, 252nd and the Gaza Divisions continued to fight Hamas terrorists. In Jabaliya, dozens of terrorist buildings and munitions warehouses were attacked, while in the center of the enclave, forces destroyed a munition production site and military infrastructure.

Over the recent weeks, several alleged mass-casualty airstrikes by the Israeli Air Force have received renewed attention by the international media.

On Tuesday, Palestinian sources reported that over 90 people were killed in a strike in Beit Lahiya on Tuesday, including at least 20 children. U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller called the strike “a horrifying incident with a horrifying result” and said the Biden administration had asked Israel for information about the strike.

The IDF in response first urged media outlets “to be careful with information published by Hamas, as has been proven [wrong] in several previous events,” adding that the area is an active combat zone and that residents were warned to evacuate earlier this month. 

On Wednesday, an anonymous IDF source told the Times of Israel that the strike was aimed at a Hamas spotter holding binoculars and wasn’t meant to bring down the whole building. The source said the IDF didn’t know the building was used as a civilian shelter.

The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry later corrected its claims to say that around 70 people died as a result of the strike, half of them women and children. Casualty counts from Gaza do not differentiate between terrorists and civilians.

The military source added that IDF intelligence indicated lower casualty numbers, which also included several known terrorists.

The difficulty in distinguishing between civilian and terror targets was underlined again when the IDF announced Wednesday that it had struck Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists operating in the humanitarian zone in Khan Younis.

“Before the attack, many steps were taken to reduce the chance of harming civilians, including the use of precision weaponry, aerial observations and additional intelligence information,” the IDF noted.

Almost all announcements of significant airstrikes by the IDF in recent months noted that the targets had hidden in schools, hospitals or humanitarian zones.