Featured

  • Print Friendly, PDF & Email
  • Send to Kindle

BREAKING: Israel Launches Ground Op after Hamas Tunnel Assault

by TheTower.org Staff |

In response to the continued rocket and terror threat posed by Hamas, the IDF began a ground invasion of Gaza this evening.

The Times of Israel reports:

A heavy artillery barrage began at around 9.00 p.m. local time and an hour later considerable numbers of troops had moved into the Hamas-controlled territory. Large numbers of infantry, tanks, and military engineers poured into the coastal enclave under the cover of darkness. Multiple flares could be seen floating across the sky lighting the the ground below. …

Channel 2 reported that the Israeli Air Force struck a rocket warehouse at the Wafa Hospital in Gaza City, and that the Israeli Navy shelled Gaza’s harbor as well.

The New York Times reports:

The military released a statement at 10:39 p.m. saying the goal of the operation was to “establish a reality in which Israeli residents can live in safety and security without continuous indiscriminate terror.”

Palestinians and journalists in Gaza reported heavy artillery fire from ground troops in the north and Israeli gunboats stationed near Gaza’s port as well as a continuing air assault.

The government of Egypt blames Hamas for the ground invasion.

The Egyptian foreign minister said Thursday that Hamas is at fault for the IDF’s need to enter Gaza in a ground operation.

“Had Hamas accepted the Egyptian proposal, it could have saved the lives of at least 40 Palestinians,” said Sameh Shoukri, Egypt’s FM, as reported by Egyptian state news agency MENA.

Threats from Gaza escalated over the course of the day. After successfully thwarting a terror cell attempting to infiltrate Israel through a tunnel, Israel observed a five-hour ceasefire at the behest of the United Nations. While Israel held its fire, at least three mortars were fired into Israel during the ceasefire.

The Jerusalem Post reports:

Hamas bombarded Israel on Thursday with rockets after the end of the humanitarian truce, firing over 100 projectiles after 3 p.m. Eighty one rockets landed in open areas, two fell inside villages, damaging two homes, and 20 were intercepted by the Iron Dome air defense system.

The IDF on Thursday warned citizens of Gaza to evacuate their homes and make their way from less populated areas to the Strip’s major cities.

Much of central and southern Israel was under attack today.

On Thursday evening just before 6 p.m., sirens wailed in Petah Tikva, Kfar Saba, and in the area of Ben Gurion International Airport. No siren sounded in Tel Aviv, but the explosions from the Iron Dome rocket-defense system shooting down projectiles were audible in the city.

According to the IDF, two rockets were intercepted over the greater Tel Aviv area. An additional rocket fired at Ashdod was also shot down by the Iron Dome.

A rocket fired at the Ashkelon Coast Regional Council caused damaged to a house and one person suffered minor injuries in an attack. In the Eshkol Regional Council, which borders Gaza, 11 rockets fell in the Thursday evening barrage. 13 rockets have been intercepted over the Ashkelon area, according to the IDF.

Earlier today, The Israel Project, publisher of The Tower, held a conference call with Col. (Res) Miri Eisen, former deputy head of IDF’s combat intelligence corps. A recording of the conference call is available here. One of the topics she covered in her talk was the necessity of a ground invasion, and what Israel’s goals would be.

Everybody wants to know about the ground incursion, and why Israel needs a ground incursion, and why is the aerial [inaudible] enough, and there’s no question that the biggest challenge in that sense, and the reason that the ground incursion and the idea of doing a limited ground incursion, the effectiveness of it would be against the tunneling… I think though that the debate in Israel–it’s 5:15 in the afternoon today – has actually changed… they’re talking much more about the fact that what may be happening today, tomorrow, tonight, tomorrow, will be a limited incursion to take care of these tunnels, that mile- to two-mile depth to see that they won’t be able to continue entering into Israel and I fully recommend looking at those photos that were released by the IDF spokesperson, because you can see so clearly how they infiltrate with units, with an enormous amount of weapons, that are coming on and in to do a combined attack-kidnapping scenario.

In another conference call – available here – Maj Gen. (Res) Israel Ziv, the former head of the IDF’s Operations Directorate and former commander of its Gaza Division, explained why Israel needed to be on the ground in Gaza to achieve its goals, and described how cynical Hamas is.

The problem with the tunnels is of course that their detection is, is not accurate because you don’t have the visual aspect of the tunnel itself, you don’t have exactly the depth, and of course there are many other practical questions, is it protected, etc. etc. Usually what the IDF is doing is following and gutting the formation and waiting for the right moment either to ambush that, or to as we saw in Kerem Shalom a few weeks ago to bomb it in the last moment, this is the method that was chosen this time too. …

It is very clear that they were up to a very devastating killing act with a lot of ammunition, armament and I would say explosives in order to create a massacre, probably in the area of the Kibbutz Sufa or in Kibbutz Sufa itself. I would mention that for the IDF, it really came as a surprise. We had initial information and the IDF was deployed and prepared on that possibility of course, we never know until the last moment where pinpoint place it is, or the timing, or how big the group that will try to penetrate is, but overall, the act was finding the IDF forces well-prepared. As far as we know now, at least eight of the terrorists were killed, and as I mentioned, a very large amount of ammunition and armament [inaudible]. Basically I would just say I want to mention that just in the last two days, the Hamas were applying through the Palestinian Authority for humanitarian corridor and ceasefire. And the timing that they have chosen to do this terror act is not random because they were well-prepared [inaudible] specific timing. I believe one cannot ignore the similarity or the understanding how cynical can Hamas be, by on one hand asking to, Israel to stop fire and to support the humanitarian support to the Gaza citizens, and to at the same time send these killing machines, one of their strategic surprises that they have promised so many times.

Journalist Ron Ben Yishai explained the military considerations that made the ground invasion necessary.

This attempted infiltration was another effort by Hamas to rehabilitate its poor operational image and boost its bargaining power during the negotiations on a ceasefire. The relatively large group of terrorists entered through the tunnel that led under the fence close to Sufa, and were apparently intending a major attack with a high death toll and the abduction of soldiers and civilians. Had this plan succeeded, it would have drastically altered the face of this war.

Luckily, Military Intelligence, with the assistance of the Shin Bet, had information enough to issue a warning, and security forces were waiting for the would-be terrorists. But the danger of the tunnels is far from diminished, rather just further illustrated. The IDF knew of a major tunnel through which Hamas intended to attack the Kerem Shalom area with a large number of men. The tunnel was exposed, but it now appears that there are other networks branching in untold directions, including the one near Kibbutz Sufa that was uses Thursday morning. The question of how many more tunnels or offshoots there are cannot be answered without an IDF presence west of the Gaza border fence.

No responsible political or military leader can afford to have the kibbutzim surrounding Gaza under constant threat from tunnels once Israel and Hamas reach an agreement. So the dilemma of the Netanyahu-Ya’alon-Gantz troika over whether or not launch a ground operation has, with this foiled terror attack, been resolved by Hamas itself.

Former Director of Military Intelligence Amos Yadlin, now director of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), outlined last week some specific goals for Israel to pursue:

The strategic purpose of the operation is derived from the state’s obligation to fulfill its basic obligation to protect its citizens and enable them to pursue a normal way of life. Restoring deterrence to achieve another period of quiet was a major strategic achievement of prior operations and is a primary objective of the current campaign. While deterrence addresses the motivation to fire at Israel, the current operation should also deal with the capabilities of Hamas and smaller terrorist organizations, particularly Islamic jihad and the Popular Resistance Committees. The operation must be directed mainly against the military wing of Hamas and the other terrorist organizations, and strike a severe blow against their commanders, operatives, launching capabilities, and production capacity. Another important objective of the operation, which was not defined and thus not achieved in the past, is to prevent Hamas from undertaking a military buildup in the period after the operation. The fact that the tunnels used by Hamas for its military buildup after Cast Lead and Pillar of Defense were destroyed and closed by the Egyptians will make it possible to ensure that after a significant blow is struck at production facilities in Gaza, the post-operation buildup, if there is any, will be slow and limited.

The day before Operation Protective Edge started, the IDF foiled averted another tunnel-based terror attack. For some time now it’s been feared that Hamas had been planning a “spectacular” terror attack to shore up its deteriorating authority within Gaza.

[Photo: AFP news agency / YouTube]

tt