The IDF on Sunday continued its third day of bombing parts of the southern Gaza Strip, with a special focus on Khan Yunis, while its ground forces remained focused on the north.
Two more soldiers were named as killed in action on Sunday: St.-Sgt. Aschalwu Sama, 20, from Petah Tikva, who died from wounds sustained in battles in the north on November 14, and St.-Sgt.-Maj. (res.) Or Brandes, from Shoham, killed in central Gaza on Saturday.
IDF sources hinted there is more than meets the eye when it comes to the southern operation, with no Palestinian reports of a serious invasion yet, though these moves are likely setting up positions for an upcoming one.
IDF Chief-of-Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi told troops they would be taking the same tactics used to seize most of northern Gaza – for the south.
Past attacks
One notable attack happened late on Saturday, when the IDF killed Wissam Farhat, the head of Hamas’s Shejaia Battalion, who is behind a 2014 attack that resulted in the abduction of the body of Oron Shaul, still being held in Gaza, along with the hostages from October 7. Farhat was also behind the deadly massacre in Nahal Oz.
In 2014, Farhat commanded Hamas terrorists in an attack on an armored personnel carrier in Shejaia, killing seven soldiers, including Shaul.
He was also one of the terrorists who planned a deadly attack against a pre-military school in Atzmona in Gush Katif back in 2002 and an anti-tank attack against a bus in 2011.
In 1995, Farhat was arrested while on his way to carry out a suicide attack and was imprisoned for 10 years. After he was freed and returned to Gaza, he worked in rocket production for Hamas.
Following his killing on Sunday, IDF Arabic Spokesman Avichay Adraee warned the commanders of the Shejaia Battalion on X after the IDF resumed military operations in Gaza, presenting them with two options: surrender, or end up like Farhat.
Hamas fired dozens of times on southern Israel, one of which directly hit a synagogue in Sderot.
At press time, Hamas had not fired on Sunday toward the center of the country, namely Tel Aviv, something it had done both on Friday and Saturday after the temporary pause collapsed.
On Sunday, the IDF announced that its special joint operations unit within the air force carried out over 10,000 air strikes since the invasion began. This unit is unique because it is trained from the start to work in direct cooperation with ground forces.
Although the IDF tried to make this kind of joint operating activity between air and land forces standard practice in the war, for most of military history in which air forces existed, there was nowhere near this level of coordination.Additionally, the amount to which air forces of democracies could support ground forces advancing in real time in dense urban settings was minimal, both because of the concern of hitting civilians, and the concern of accidentally hitting friendly forces, given the blunt power of bombs dropped by aircraft.
The unit within the IAF has flipped all of these problems using a mix of unique training with ground forces long before the war, along with using advanced precision munitions.
These new trends have allowed the special unit – which at first was mostly made of attack helicopters, but over time has added drones and even some other kinds of aircraft – to strike within 150 meters of advancing IDF forces, most often without hitting civilians or IDF forces.
A senior IDF official told of three particular instances where the elite unit saved IDF forces who would have taken larger losses without its intervention. In one case, a battalion from Brigade 551 was pinned down by Hamas’s anti-tank missiles and sniper units while operating in Beit Hanun of northern Gaza. Despite their efforts, the IDF infantry could not even get near the Hamas positions without being gunned down. Within 15 minutes of being warned, the IDF special unit struck from the air and removed the Hamas threat.
In another instance, Unit 401 was being ambushed in Jabalya in northern Gaza, by a complex trap again of anti-tank missiles and other Hamas forces. In this case, the IDF already had wounded soldiers and it was unclear whether there would even be a safe way to evacuate them. In one hour, the Joint Special Forces-Air Force unit attacked Hamas 11 times, ended the ambush, and succeeded in spiriting off the wounded IDF soldiers.
In the third incident, Golani forces were being ambushed and having trouble extracting themselves. The special unit carried out eight attacks against Hamas within 15 minutes, helping the Golani forces deal with the situation.
Questioned about whether these tactics could work in southern Gaza, where there are even more Palestinian civilians than before, and the urban setting may be even more dense, a senior IDF official said the same tactics used in the North should work in the South, and that years of training and drilling together had made his special unit ready for the current challenges.
Halevi said that a large component of IDF victory in Gaza would be the strong joint work of the different arms of the Israeli military.
The IDF said late Saturday that the 551st brigade completed a mission in Jabalya, having eliminated Hamas terrorists and destroyed terrorist infrastructure, which included tunnels and subterranean structures.
During the operation, which began before the initiation of the temporary pause, IDF troops destroyed a terrorist tunnel that extended dozens of meters underground, located in the courtyard of a school compound. Another one was located and destroyed in the home of a Hamas naval force operative, the IDF stated.
Soldiers of the 551st brigade, along with special forces, also worked to eliminate subterranean infrastructure north of Jabalya, where troops subsequently isolated and secured an area to facilitate further IDF activity.
Additionally, along with the air force and artillery units, troops destroyed numerous pieces of Hamas combat equipment, including weapons, explosives, launchers, and ammunition.
Overall, the IDF said on Sunday that it had discovered over 800 tunnel shafts in Gaza since the ground invasion against Hamas began, of which 500 have been destroyed.
Many of the tunnels connected strategic Hamas locations underground and were located in civilian areas, such as in or near kindergartens, mosques, and children’s playgrounds, amounting to further evidence of Hamas’s use of Gaza’s civilian population as a weapon of war.
After discovery, the IDF carries out in-depth research to understand the layout of the tunnel network and then prepare it for demolition. The 500 tunnel shafts so far destroyed have been done with a mix of explosives, blockages, and flooding.
Despite this success, IDF sources failed to deny that the vast majority of tunnels in Gaza have yet to be destroyed, given that each tunnel can have many shafts branching off to others.
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