Fighting resumed in the Gaza Strip on Friday. First objective of the Israeli army: to dismantle Hamas in its presumed stronghold, Khan Younes, the second city of the enclave.
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The Israeli army bombed the Gaza Strip on Saturday, December 2 for a second consecutive day since the expiration of the truce with Hamas which allowed the release of hostages and the delivery of emergency aid. In a statement Saturday, the Palestinian Islamist movement said Israeli forces had “particularly targeted Khan Younes, where dozens of houses were destroyed with the inhabitants inside”.
Today, the large southern city is, along with Rafah, on the Egyptian border, the main target of Israeli air force, artillery and ground commandos since the resumption of fighting. According to the Jewish state, it would hide bunkers, rocket launch pads, and perhaps some 150 hostages, still in the enclave, in its basements.
The goal is to dismantle Hamas
At the time when the Israeli army attacked the Al-Shifa hospital, in the heart of Gaza City, claiming that it housed Hamas HQ in its basement, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert claimed that Hamas’s infrastructure was not under the establishment but in Khan Younes.
Israel makes no secret of it: its goal is to dismantle Hamas and therefore attack its presumed stronghold, Khan Younes. Because it is also and above all the birthplace of the main sponsors of the October 7 attack: the leader of Hamas in Gaza, Yaya Sinwar, and that of the armed wing, Mohammed Deif, whom Israel promised to find dead or lively.
But the resumption of offensives on Gaza, particularly in the south, faces a major difficulty: after the order to evacuate the north of the Gaza Strip, the population of Khan Younes has tripled, and civilian losses could be even more important. While never since the start of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 1948 has a war caused so many deaths.