Israel-Hamas War: What happened on day 116?

A ceasefire agreement which would include a hostage deal is expected to be reached next week, Kan 11 reported on Tuesday, citing Qatari sources. 

Visting IDF troops in the West Bank, IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi said there will be no refuge for terrorists, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit said on Tuesday.

"There will be no shelter for terrorism in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Lebanon, neither above ground nor in tunnel shafts. We will operate in the most complex places to strike terrorists," he said.

In his 27 years in the Shin Bet security agency, former division head Shalom Ben Hanan has seen it all, including past raids of hospitals to arrest wounded terrorists.

Still, Ben Hanan told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday that he was impressed by his agency’s (he retired in 2022) creativity and audacity with the operation in a Jenin hospital against a terrorist cell that was planning an invasion of a Jewish village for a mass casualty attack.

He said that there were operations he worked on in hospitals over the years, both during the Second Intifada and also after, but it was not this kind of a targeted killing operation to thwart a terrorist cell like what happened here.

“Here, they were very deep into planning a mega terrorist attack which would kill massive numbers of people,” said the former senior Shin Bet official, who retired with the equivalent rank of a major-general in charge of a whole division of the IDF.

Israeli commandos, dressed as doctors, foil terror attack in Jenin hospital on January 30, 2024 (credit: screenshot)

In this case, Ben Hanan said, “There was a special level of urgency, because it [the terrorist attack] was on the verge of being carried out – this made the situation exceptional.”

“A hospital is a very hard area to maneuver in. You need intelligence that allows you to strike the target without hitting innocent persons. You can’t just fire a missile, not even a precision one which might just hit his room,” he said, because the risk and consequences of missing are too grave.

Ben Hanan said that such an operation can be split into the intelligence gathering stage and the operations stage. 

Intelligence vs. Operations stage

The intelligence collection stage itself can also be divided into separate components: intelligence mapping out the threat and intelligence for the operation that will remove the threat.

He explained that it was crucial to “obtain the most precise and intimate intelligence regarding the details and infrastructure, which are the backbone of the terrorist threat.

“This can help lead to an actual operation. If someone is on the verge of invading a village to perpetrate a mass killing, and you know about it, you know how they connect to foreign commanders, you know they have money, you know they have tried to commit terrorism before and were wounded in the process,” then top decision-makers can cut through the red tape and order an immediate operation, he said.

Ben Hanan emphasized how important the quality of the intelligence about the immediacy of the threat is, since a targeted killing operation like the one ordered on Tuesday requires re-purposing resources from other potential threats.

Next, there is the intelligence for carrying out the operation itself.

“You need precise intelligence of what is going on inside the hospital. You do not want to send your elite forces to travel through the whole hospital,” which would leave them exposed for longer.

Also, “You do not want to have to close the whole thing down and send patients outside and risk hostages being taken. You want a narrow and targeted operation where your forces get quickly to the specific room for surgically removing the threat.”

He said that to carry out an operation like Israel pulled off on Tuesday, which “had no collateral damage, no harm to patients, medical staff, nor to any innocents – was a high aspirational standard.”

Moving on to the operational components themselves, Ben Hanan said that you need “a very high planning capability, an understanding that time is short and that you don’t want to risk enough time passing such that the target might move to another room or leave the hospital. You need hot, real-time intelligence.”

Next, he said, “Significant operational talent is required to arrive in enemy territory and even to get into the hospital without your cover being blown. You need to dress up, fade into the atmosphere and have high-level Arabic speakers so that until the moment where they take out their weapons, no one knows they are there to attack. They need to think that the attackers are locals.”

In addition, he said, even the exit strategy must be very carefully planned and executed. In the current context of high tension, any exit from such West Bank areas almost automatically invites significant amounts of gunfire, improvised explosive devices, and other threats.

Escaping through that maelstrom without losing any Israeli agents requires perfect execution.

Finally, Ben Hanan said that the operation was a powerful message to all Palestinian terrorists in both the West Bank and Gaza that there is no civilian location that they can abuse with impunity.

He said that in the past hospitals were more out of the question for operations like this, but that with terrorists not going to hospitals merely when they are wounded, but also using them on purpose to perpetrate terrorist planning and logistics organization, Israel can no longer hold back.

However, he added that, as long as the Shin Bet succeeds with surgical operations that only kill the terrorists, and do not harm any nearby innocents, such operations can continue and do not provide global critics any basis to condemn Israel.

A Hamas delegation is set to land in Cairo on Wednesday to meet with Egyptian intelligence officials amid talks of a potential hostage deal, Israeli media reported on Tuesday, citing Egyptian sources. 

IAF jets targeted Hezbollah's operational headquarters and an observation post in the Al-Khiam area of Lebanon, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit said on Tuesday.

In addition, near the villages of Ayta ash Shab and Mhaibib, IDF warplanes attacked an observation post and a military structure belonging to the organization, the IDF said.

Earlier on Tuesday, a launch was detected from the territory of Lebanon and fell in an open area near the west of Arab al-Aramshe, according to the IDF.

No casualties were reported, the IDF concluded.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Tuesday said that war with Hezbollah could be getting closer and that such a conflict could lead the terror group to seriously strike Haifa.

Gallant said that in light of the increasing likelihood of war in the North, Haifa needs to make more comprehensive preparations for being hit by large numbers of the terror group's rockets.

Hezbollah has 150,000 rockets and mortars and could fire potentially up to 8,000 rockets per day, several levels of magnitude greater than what Hamas was able to do other than for one day on October 7. 

Its rockets are also more precise, long-range, and destructive.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant speaks during a joint press conference with U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin at Israel's Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv, Israel December 18, 2023. (credit: REUTERS/Violeta Santos Moura)

How much damage could Hezbollah do to Haifa?

Combining those factors together, defense officials believe that even if Iron Dome maintained an 80-90% shoot-down rate, enough rockets would get through the missile shield to do major damage to Haifa and some other cities.

Israeli defense officials still believe Israel would "win" such a war in the military sense and that unprecedented levels of air force strikes in Lebanon would degrade Hezbollah's rocket power within several days or a couple of weeks, but that the early period would harm the home front far more than Hamas, and that Hezbollah could manage rocket fire for longer than Hamas.

The IDF on Tuesday finally allowed the Israeli media to publish more comprehensive details about its anti-tunnel flooding project against Hamas in Gaza.

Israeli officials have been leaking details to foreign media about what they called "Atlantis" for months, but the censor has actively prevented The Jerusalem Post and others from disclosing these details.

The IDF said that the flooding tool is one of many for fighting Hamas's tunnels, including also explosives, robots, air strikes, and sending in soldiers.

While the system has made real contributions to combatting Hamas's tunnels in some areas, there are many limits, and it is not seen as a solution to the whole tunnel problem by "snapping one's fingers" type solution. It is well known that Hamas's tunnels move in many different directions and use blast doors and other items, which could thwart or reduce the effectiveness of the flooding system.

ISRAELI SOLDIERS walk, last week, through what the IDF said was an iron-girded tunnel designed by Hamas to disgorge carloads of Palestinian fighters for a surprise storming of the border, in the northern Gaza Strip (credit: AMIR COHEN/REUTERS)

Flooding system most effective closer to coast

The flooding system is most effective near the Mediterranean Sea and cannot be used in areas where the IDF has concerns that it could harm the Gaza land in the long term.

Special IDF analysts study different kinds of topography also to see where it is likely to be most valuable in destroying tunnels.

In addition, the IDF said that it took time to deploy the system since a whole specialized array of units had to be trained to deploy it.

A statement said that the system is " a breakthrough" for fighting Hamas's tunnels and exemplified positive cooperation between the Defense Ministry, the IDF, and other defense bodies.

The IDF declined to provide any data about how many tunnels have been destroyed by the system.

A proposal for a new ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza would involve three stages, including the release of Israeli hostages held by the terror group and Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, a senior Hamas leader told Reuters on Tuesday.

Women, children, the elderly, and the wounded would be released in the first stage, the Hamas leader said.

"There's no storming of the [al-Amal] hospital, entry into it or any ordering of people to leave at gunpoint," the IDF stated on Tuesday in response to earlier reports.

Earlier on Tuesday, it was reported by Reuters citing Palestinian Red Crescent sources, that IDF troops in Khan Yunis entered the city's al-Amal Hospital, 

According to the sources, Israeli soldiers were beginning to evacuate the hospital.

Hamas has been known to use Gaza's hospitals as a cover for their terror operations. A terror tunnel complex was discovered near Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, and video footage of Israeli hostages inside the hospital was released by the IDF. 

Pro-Hezbollah Lebanese news outlet Al-Akhbar reported on Saturday that a senior German intelligence official met with the second most powerful leader of Hezbollah, Sheikh Naim Qassem, with a view toward stopping attacks from the Iran-backed Shi'ite movement against Israel.

The Washington, D.C.-based Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) located the Al-Akhbar report and translated it into English. The Al-Akhbar report claimed that "the most prominent of these visits was made by the Deputy Director of German Foreign Intelligence, Uli Diyal, who came to Beirut about two weeks ago and stayed for one night to meet with the Deputy Secretary-General of Hezbollah, Sheikh Naim Qassem."

According to Al-Akhbar, the report said Diyal was accompanied by "the director of the German Intelligence Station in Beirut."

The meeting between Diyal and Qassem produced no results, according to Al-Akhbar. "On the contrary, sources from both sides said that Sheikh Qassem was firm in emphasizing the resistance's decision and its ability to defeat the enemy if the latter decided to expand its aggression. He refused to discuss anything before [Israel] stops the war on Gaza. He urged Germany to put pressure on Israel to stop its aggression, “ wrote the news outlet.

German special police leaves the El-Irschad (Al-Iraschad e.V.) centre in Berlin, Germany, April 30, 2020, after Germany has banned Iran-backed Hezbollah on its soil and designated it a terrorist organisation (credit: REUTERS/HANNIBAL HANSCHKE)

A spokesperson for the foreign intelligence service of the Federal Republic of Germany (Bundesnachrichtendienst) told The Jerusalem Post, “We have, of course, taken note of the report you have mentioned in your email. As a matter of principle, the Federal Government never publicly comments on matters that concern potential intelligence information or activities, including alleged missions by the Bundesnachrichtendienst leadership. This does not amount to a statement on the accuracy of the facts. The Bundesnachrichtendienst reports to the Federal Government and the competent secret committees of the German parliament on relevant topics.”

The Post also questioned the foreign intelligence service if the meeting was a violation of Germany’s law banning Hezbollah activities.

Edy Cohen, who was born in Lebanon and is a leading Israeli expert on Hezbollah, told the Post, “The Germans give legitimacy to Hezbollah when they meet them. This is a terrorist organization. They should not meet. They have to ban it.”

Cohen, a fluent Arabic speaker, added, “The Germans are not so pro-Israel. They have good ties with Iran that kills homosexuals.” The Iranian regime-backed Hezbollah is a key ally of Hamas in its war against the Jewish state.

According to the Al-Akhbar report, Germany has "always maintained back [communication] lines with Hezbollah, based on a previous relationship during which Germany succeeded in completing a prisoner exchange deal in 2004 between the resistance and the enemy [i.e., Israel]. But things changed when Germany

followed a policy of complete alignment with Israel against Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine, and risked its political and economic status in the eastern Mediterranean."

Germany outlawed all Hezbollah activities within its territory in 2020 following heavy pressure from then-US ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, and Israel’s government. One of Grenell’s main objectives was to secure the ban on Hezbollah in Germany.

MEMRI wrote in its analysis of the Al-Akhbar article that “The report explained that Qassem did not provide further details on Hezbollah’s vision for the future, or

any conditions it would accept concerning the situation in Gaza to order Hezbollah forces to stop their military operations.”

According to Germany’s most recent 2023 domestic intelligence report, there are at least 1,250 active Hezbollah operatives in Germany who are in a position to raise funds for Hezbollah and recruit new members.

Post queries to Israel’s ambassador to Germany, Ron Prosor, and the foreign ministry spokesman, Lior Haiat, were not immediately returned.