Israel’s offensive against Hamas enters its crucial stage

Author: Editors Desk Source: The Economist

December 5, 2023 at 10:32

A race against the clock in southern Gaza

In december 1st Israel embarked on what could be the most crucial stage in its war in Gaza. Its week-long truce with Hamas collapsed early that morning and its forces began to converge on the Islamist movement’s main remaining strongholds throughout the coastal strip. The tactics will be different in this phase but to many watching the mounting Palestinian death toll, that will be of little relevance. Israel is acutely aware that time and support for its offensive in Gaza are running out—and that it has an impossible set of aims to achieve before that happens.

In the northern sector, where Israel was already in control of most of the by-now largely depopulated Gaza city, it launched air-strikes on the Shujaiya neighbourhood and Jabalia refugee camp. Most of Hamas’s remaining fighters in the north are believed to be holed up in those areas. In the south Israel has struck buildings in Khan Younis, the hometown of Yahya Sinwar and Muhammad Deif, Hamas’s most senior leaders in Gaza, where both are now believed to be hiding. On December 3rd Israel Defence Forces (idf) tanks were spotted on the city’s outskirts as its ground offensive, until now mostly limited to the north, seemed to be expanding.

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