Brian McDonald
The Israel Defense Forces said five of its soldiers, all aged 20 to 22, were killed by Israeli tank fire in northern Gaza on Wednesday night. An initial internal investigation found that two tanks fired at a building in the Jabalia refugee camp where soldiers had gathered. The building was being used by the battalion’s deputy commander, according to an IDF statement.
“It appears that the tank fighters, from the ultra-Orthodox paratrooper company ‘Hatz’, identified the barrel of a gun protruding from one of the building’s windows and headed to fire at the building,” the IDF statement said. he said.
“This is a very difficult incident, the working environment is under very complex operational stress and in a very crowded area,” IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari said on Thursday. “We are in the middle of the investigation, we will learn the lessons. Maintaining the security of our forces is a central task.”
The incident occurred when Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, after an assessment of the situation on the Gaza border in Rafah, said that more Israeli troops would enter Gaza.
“Several tunnels in the area have been destroyed by our troops and additional tunnels will be destroyed soon,” Gallant said Wednesday. “This activity will intensify – Hamas is not an organization that can be reorganized, it has no reserve troops, it has no supply reserves and it does not have the capacity to deal with the terrorists we target. The result is that we are wearing down Hamas .”
Israeli defense chief calls for “day after” plan in Gaza
As IDF operations continued, Gallant publicly challenged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week over his post-war plans for the Gaza Strip.
In addition to military action, Gallant said in a televised statement that “the establishment of an alternative government in Gaza” following nearly 20 years of Hamas rule was also crucial to Israel’s stated goal of dismantling the group. “In the absence of such an alternative, only two negative options remain: Hamas rule in Gaza or Israeli military rule in Gaza.”
Gallant said he would oppose the latter scenario and urged Netanyahu to formally rule it out.
He said he had been trying to promote a plan to create a “non-hostile Palestinian government alternative” to Hamas since October, but had received no response from the Israeli cabinet.
Gallant has previously suggested that the Palestinian Authority (PA), which administers the Israeli-occupied West Bank, could have a role in governing Gaza after the war. Netanyahu rejected this suggestion, also presented by the United States, as did several members of the PA.
On Tuesday, IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari was asked whether the lack of a post-war strategy for Gaza was hampering military operations there.
“There is no doubt that an alternative to Hamas would generate pressure on Hamas, but that is a matter for the government level,” he said.
