Israeli casualties, recruitment crisis mount as resistance operations intensify in Gaza
As they go deeper inside Gaza, the Israelis are getting hit by the resistance.
Just as the Israelis have begun to increase their troop presence inside Gaza, resistance operations of the various Palestinian factions have started inflicting heavy casualties on them. Both Al-Qassam Brigades (the military wing of Hamas) and Al-Quds Brigades (the military arm of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad) have issued updates of deadly ambushes and sniping operations against the genocidal Israeli army inside the Gaza Strip over the past few days.
On Sunday, Al-Qassam Brigades issued the following update:
Al-Qassam mujahideen detonated a booby-trapped house in a special Zionist force that infiltrated the Abu al-Rus area east of Rafah city in the southern Gaza Strip, killing and wounding them.
On Monday, Al-Quds Brigades had a statement of its own:
Our mujahideen managed to snipe a Zionist sniper who was on Muntar Hill in the Shuja’iyya neighbourhood, east of Gaza City.
Al-Quds Brigades later published a video of the operation that showed a clear hit:
Around the 35-second mark, the text in the video says that the targeted Israeli soldier was conducting sniping operations against civilians in Shuja’iyya. Instant karma!
Al-Quds Brigades had last week published a video documenting the destruction of an Israeli tank with an improvised explosive device:
Between these updates there have been several other communiques from the resistance factions about seizing Israeli reconnaissance drones and shelling troop presence in various parts of the Gaza Strip. Moreover, several rocket barrages from Gaza toward surrounding Jewish settlements have seen Israelis scurrying for cover, unsure if their life will ever go back to the relative pre-October 7 calm.
Multiple reports in the Western press have regularly reported on the resistance regaining strength and replenishing its fighting force to the levels before the start of Israel’s genocidal campaign on October 7, 2023. Back in January, the outgoing Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Hamas had replaced almost all killed fighters in Gaza with new recruits. Despite reporting a bloated number of Hamas casualties, Israeli press has also said that the number of fighters in the ranks of the leading Palestinian resistance faction is nearly the same as before the war.
On the equipment front, the Palestinians likely have explosives to last them several years courtesy of the unexploded Israeli ordnance that they have hoovered up and are undoubtedly repurposing to welcome the Israelis in the enclave. These riches in explosives are a far cry from the days when trained divers had to dive deep in the Mediterranean to fish for the metallic remains of a World War I ship in order to fashion them into weapons.
The same, however, cannot be said about Israel’s fighting strength.
Israeli army chief Eyal Zamir recently told his political bosses that his genocidal military lacks the manpower and resources to fulfil its expansive and ever-changing war goals. Only 60-70 percent of the reservists are reporting for duty. Even this number could be an undercount. Last month, one military officer told Haaretz, “In the next round, I don’t know if we’ll be able to reach 50 percent reporting.”
“The gaps in the reserve units today are in all positions. There is not a single battalion commander today who will tell you that he is ready to go on operational duty or return to fighting in Gaza and has all the equipment he needs,” a senior reserve officer told Haaretz. “And when I don’t have drivers, fighters, medics, a special operations team and a special operations team leader, I take what I can get and from where I can,” he added.
With desertions on the rise, some reserve units are taking to social media to recruit soldiers.
One former refusenik told +972, that the Israeli army hasn’t seen such desertions in over 40 years: “Refusal comes in waves, and this is the biggest wave since the First Lebanon War in 1982.”
Last Thursday, over 1,000 former and current reservists in the Israeli Air Force published a letter asking their leadership to prioritise the return of the prisoners of war in Gaza back over the continuation of the genocide. Later, around 150 ex-Navy officers and 250 reservists of the 8200 intelligence unit jumped on the bandwagon with a letter of their own. On Sunday, The Times of Israel reported that “[f]ormer Mossad members, along with ex-IDF paratroopers, doctors and graduates of an elite military program were the latest to throw their support behind a letter signed by air force veterans and reservists.”
But make no mistake, these letters are not calling for an end to the genocide, merely to prioritise the return of the Israeli soldiers captured on their concentration camp duty by the Palestinian resistance on October 7.
Even those refusing the call of the genocidal mission are not doing it because of their opposition to the senseless killing of the Palestinians, as +972 explains: “The majority of those defying enlistment orders appear to be what’s known as “gray refusers” — people who have no real ideological objection to the war but rather have grown demoralized, weary, or fed up that it is dragging on for so long.”
It’s worth remembering that the January ceasefire was primarily due to the Israeli failure to subdue the Palestinian resistance. Hamas killed dozens of Israelis in the heavily destroyed northern Gaza Strip in the first two weeks of January before the Zionists agreed to a truce on January 15.
The resistance’s resilience had made life extremely difficult for the Israeli troops, who were routinely sniped and ambushed in the same localities they thought they had cleared. One soldier’s mother told the Israeli outlet HaMakom, “They keep going back to the same buildings they’ve already cleared, only to find them booby-trapped again. In the Zaytoun neighbourhood alone [in Gaza City], they’ve been there three times. They understand that it is futile and pointless.”
However, despite obvious trouble in its ranks and Hamas’s willingness to go the extra mile for a ceasefire, the Israelis are still showing no interest in a permanent ceasefire.
Today, Hamas’s delegation in Cairo returned to Doha without an agreement. They were offered a new deal by the Israelis. It entails the Palestinians releasing ten Israeli prisoners in exchange for their own hostages held in Israeli dungeons, along with a 45-day ceasefire during which the entry of food, aid, and shelter will be allowed. The Israelis would begin talks for a permanent ceasefire during the 45-day period.
However, by the evidence of the last ceasefire deal (and dozens more in previous years and decades), Israelis don’t fulfil their obligations. Moreover, they have thrown a massive wrench in the already fragile talks: there will be no ceasefire agreement without negotiating the disarmament of the resistance.
In an interview to Al-Araby Al-Jadeed on Sunday, Hamas official Husam Badran was clear that disarmament is a non-starter for the resistance: “These weapons possessed by Hamas and other resistance factions, mostly locally manufactured, belong to the entire Palestinian people. These weapons exist to protect and defend the people, which is guaranteed by all international charters and treaties.”
With ceasefire talks going nowhere, Israel’s barbarism against civilians continues unabated in Gaza. Since it resumed its full-scale genocide on March 18 after refusing to proceed to the second of the three-phase deal it agreed to in January, the Israelis have killed over 1,600 Palestinians, adding to the hundreds of thousands it killed in the months prior. As international institutions continue to play impotent, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are forced to endure the ongoing blockade and relentless bombardments, with no end in sight.
The resistance, however, is unlikely to make life any easier for the genocide enthusiasts in the Israeli military.
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Your update today is a sight for sore eyes. I was beginning to wonder if the resistance was defeated after so little action the past few weeks. And so much genocidal violence done against the people. Stay firm and keep going, guys, we've got your back! 🔻🇵🇸
May you continue to be protected and tell the truth of what these sub human motherless pigs are doing.
I wish our spineless zionist cocksucking leaders in the west and the hollow words of Arab leaders, had one ounce of your courage. I am ashamed of ALL them. They say they support Palestine but continue to feed the zionist pigs with weapons, fuel and by turning a blind eye.
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