The Israeli security cabinet convened an emergency meeting on Monday to discuss a culmination of alerts over the past few weeks that indicate that Hamas has been making preparations for another invasion into Israeli territory, N12 reported.
Separately, Defense Minister Israel Katz reiterated these concerns in a meeting with the Otef Israel Forum, a group primarily composed of residents from the Gaza border region, on Tuesday morning,
“There are constant preparations being made by Hamas for an invasion [into Israel], similar to October 7,” Katz said in the meeting.
“We must strike them and completely finish the job through both offense and defense,” Katz added. “This is the goal that drives me.”
According to the report, security forces have identified a sharp increase in Hamas’s efforts to carry out attacks against the IDF in Gaza, potentially indicating a desire to prepare for an incursion into Israel.
Similarly, the IDF has struck Hamas terrorists numerous times over the past few weeks, as they used the ceasefire to move around Gaza and attempt to plant explosives near IDF soldiers.
Hamas published a statement on Tuesday saying that Israel’s allegations regarding Hamas’s preparations to launch an attack on IDF forces “are baseless and merely flimsy pretexts to justify its return to war and escalation of its bloody aggression.”
Israel, however, has publicly said that the ongoing strikes in Gaza are not related to fears of an impending attack but are instead in response to Hamas’s unwillingness to release the hostages and refusal to advance talks.
This comes just two days after MK Gadi Eisenkot, alongside members of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee from the opposition, sent a letter to Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman Yuli Edelstein demanding a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz.
The meeting would focus on the “failure to achieve the war’s objectives and the damage to national security interests.”
Building its ranks
In the letter, Eisenkot claimed that Hamas currently has over 25,000 armed terrorists, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad has over 5,000, adding that the government has not advanced the war’s objectives.
Hamas is reportedly increasing recruitment drives in Gaza and training the new recruits for combat against the IDF. In January, sources told the Jerusalem Post that Hamas is making a substantial comeback by recruiting new forces, with an increase of about 12,000 at the time.
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