Operation Iron Swords - Day 101 - 15 January 2024

Contents

NEW - Operations NEW - Operations Maps NEW - By-Standers NEW - Axis of Resistance NEW - Allied for Democracy UPDATED - Oasis of Martyrs UPDATED - Hostages

Gallant: High-intensity fighting finished in northern Gaza, will soon end in Khan Younis too.

The Al-Qassam Brigades - the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement ( Hamas ) - revealed that its two Israeli captives, Yossi Sharaabi and Tice Frisky, were killed in an Israeli army bombing of Gaza, while one prisoner survived.

Exactly 100 days after October 7th, Hamas released a video showing three of the Israeli hostages, Noa Argamani, 26, Yossi Sharabi, 53, and Itai Svirsky, 38. The video was the first sign of life for all three hostages. Hamas has announced that Yossi Sharabi, 53, and Itai Svirsky, 38 have been executed by the terrorist group which kidnapped them to Gaza. They forced Noa Argamani to relay the message. Hamas has released an incredibly graphic video saying that both Yossi Sharabi and Itay Svirsky are dead, and Noa Argamani is badly injured but still alive.

Operational Update

In terms of field developments, Israeli Army Radio said that the 36th Division withdrew from the Gaza Strip, and 3 army divisions remained in the Strip; They are 99, 162 and 98. Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper said that Israeli army estimates indicate that the majority of Hamas fighters and leaders in Gaza are alive after 100 days of war. In this context, the Israeli army announced that 18 officers and soldiers were injured in the battles in the Gaza Strip during the past 24 hours.

At the same time, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant said that this year will be a year of war, and stressed that military pressure is the way to return the detainees, while demonstrations continue in front of the government headquarters and the Knesset to demand the conclusion of a prisoner exchange deal and the resignation of Netanyahu’s government.

The Palestinian resistance announced the implementation of a series of operations against the occupation forces in the central and southern Gaza Strip , and also bombed the Sderot settlement with missiles , while Israel announced the injury of more of its soldiers and officers during the last hours. The Al-Qassam Brigades , the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement ( Hamas ), said on Monday evening that its fighters raided an Israeli foot force with machine guns from a distance from one of the tunnels, and were able to eliminate 5 soldiers, east of the city of Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip.

It also announced that another foot force was targeted with an anti-personnel missile, killing and wounding them east of the city of Khan Yunis as well. In the same axis, Al-Qassam said that its fighters detonated a “thunder” anti-personnel device against an Israeli foot force that advanced towards the eye of one of the tunnels.

Al-Qassam also bombed two gatherings of occupation vehicles and soldiers in the city of Khan Yunis with heavy-caliber mortar shells, according to what was stated in its posts on Telegram, and it also targeted an Israeli bulldozer with an Al-Yassin 105 shell. In the center of the Gaza Strip, violent clashes are taking place in the Bureij, Maghazi and Nussirat camps, and the Al-Qassam Brigades announced that they bombed crowds of Israeli soldiers east of Bureij with heavy-caliber mortar shells.

For its part, the Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad movement, announced this evening that it had bombed Sderot and the settlements of the northern Gaza Strip with missile attacks. Israeli media said that 14 missiles were fired towards Sderot, while the municipality announced that 5 missiles were intercepted in the sky of the city.

On the other hand, Soroka Hospital in the Negev announced that it received 15 Israeli soldiers during the day as a result of the battles in Gaza. Earlier, the Israeli army announced that 18 of its soldiers and officers were injured as a result of the fighting in Gaza within 24 hours.

In the occupied West Bank , 3 Palestinians were martyred and dozens were injured in confrontations with the occupation forces. This coincided with statements by Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant that the presence of a strong Palestinian authority is an Israeli security interest. In the same context, the occupation army decided to transfer Duvdovan's unit from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank in anticipation of the situation there erupting.

In the Red Sea, a Yemeni military source told Al Jazeera that the forces of the Ansar Allah Houthi group targeted a ship in the Red Sea that was heading to Israel, noting that "the targeting came after the ship rejected the warnings directed to it." US Central Command confirmed that the Houthis fired a ballistic missile and hit an American container ship flying the Marshall Islands flag.

In a related matter, the Washington Post quoted American officials as saying that the two American soldiers missing in the Gulf of Aden since last Thursday were participating in an operation to search for an arms shipment heading to Yemen.

Maps

All maps are lies. But it is impossible to comprehend the war in Gaza without reference to maps, otherwise the entire conflict is reduced to an endless series of meaningless acts of random violence and the suffering of civilians. The first characteristic of guerrilla warfare is the loss of a front line. Evidently, different mappers have different ideas of how to depict the war in Gaza, notably those that seek to depict Israeli progress in the ground campaign. Part of the problem is latency. The news that forms the basis of the maps takes time to filter out to mappers, and the cartographers take time in crafting their maps, and it takes time to curate them. These processes are uneven among mappers, so their maps may differ in detail. Probably there is some ideological bias, or at least thematic apperception, which is understandable in wartime. It may come as no surprise that al-Jazeera maps depict rather less Israeli territorial progress than other sources. Finally, there remains the epistemological question of just exactly what are the colored in areas depicting. Naively, this might be understood as areas of Israeli control, that are no longer contested by the HAMAS. Or possibly these are areas of Israeli presence, in many of which the possibility of an RPG-wielding HAMAS militant popping out of a tunnel unexpectedly remains a live possibility. With the "zero-range" combat characterized by small unit tactics on both sides, maps may be prey to a fallacy of misplaced concreteness.

Bystanders

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that the prolonged conflict in Gaza “will increase the risks of escalation and miscalculation,” stressing that nothing can justify collective punishment of the Palestinian people. Guterres also called - during a press conference in New York - for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” in the war that has been ongoing in the Strip for more than 100 days.

He stressed that "the number of civilian deaths in Gaza over the course of 100 days is unprecedented in any conflict since I took office, and most of the dead are women and children." "We need an immediate humanitarian ceasefire to ensure that aid reaches those in need, to facilitate the release of hostages, and to extinguish the flames of a broader war," he said.

He also expressed his concern about the expansion of the conflict into Lebanon or beyond, saying, "We cannot see in Lebanon what we see in Gaza, and we cannot allow what is happening in Gaza to continue." He continued, "The specter of famine looms over the residents of Gaza, with the risks of disease, malnutrition, and other health threats."

Regarding the humanitarian situation in Gaza, a spokesman for the Palestinian Red Crescent in the Strip said that the situation is very catastrophic due to the extreme cold and conditions of displacement. For his part, the Secretary-General of the Norwegian Refugee Council confirmed that the residents of Gaza were exposed, within 100 days, to one of the worst humanitarian crises of this century. As for the head of the emergency department at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, he said that the hospital is facing a health catastrophe due to the lack of medicines, power outages, and fuel scarcity.

Axis of Resistance

Allied for Democracy

Butcher's Bill / Oasis of Martyrs

Palestinian armed group Hamas launched thousands of missiles at Israel and deployed its militants to infiltrate Jewish settlements near the country’s border with Gaza on 07 October 2023. The 1,200 Israelis killed on the first day would be the equivalent of 36,000 Americans killed in an attack, as a proportion to Israel’s population of 9.3 million people (compared to 332 million in the USA). Israeli President Isaac Herzog stated: “Not since the Holocaust have so many Jews been killed in one day". PM Netanyahu stated "On October 7th, Hamas murdered 1,400 Israelis. Maybe more. This is in a country of fewer than 10 million people. This would be equivalent to over 50,000 Americans murdered in a single day. That’s twenty 9/11s. That is why October 7th is another day that will live in infamy."

It is the second largest loss inflicted on the Israeli forces after the 1973 war, as the Palestinian resistance killed more than 1,200, wounded more than 5,132 others, and captured more than 250, most of them military personnel, some of whom were high-ranking officers in the army.

The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Observatory revealed shocking numbers resulting from 100 days of the ongoing Israeli war on the Gaza Strip , noting that “100,000 Palestinians were killed and injured.” The Observatory said in a statement, “There are 100,000 Palestinians killed, wounded and missing on the 100th day of the Israeli genocide against the Gaza Strip.”

It added, "Israel committed horrific war crimes that killed an average of 1,000 Palestinians from the Gaza Strip every day, in the bloodiest statistic in the modern history of wars." It continued, "About 92% of the victims in Gaza were civilians, including 12,345 children, 6,471 women, 295 health workers, 41 civil defense members, and 113 journalists."

According to the Observatory, “two million and 955 thousand Palestinians were forcibly displaced from their homes and residential areas in the Gaza Strip, without the availability of safe shelter for them, meaning 85% of the total population.” It accused Israel of "deliberately destroying and causing serious damage to infrastructure facilities in the Gaza Strip, and making it an uninhabitable area for residents."

The HAMAS Ministry of Health in the besieged sector announced that the number of victims of the Israeli operation its beginning had risen to about 23,968 dead, and the killing of nearly 10,000 Palestinian children and 6,600 women killed. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

The number wounded was 60,582. The Palestinian Government Media Office in Gaza had said much earlier that the number of missing people had risen to more than 7,500, including including 4,700 children and women, and this number had not changes in recent weeks.

The IDF intensified its military operations in the West Bank, and increased the pace of incursions and raids into cities, towns, and camps, resulting in the martyrdom of 342 Palestinians, the injury of about 3,950, and the arrest of 5,780, according to official HAMAS sources.

More than 130 Hezbollah fighters were killed in Lebanon during exchanges of bombing operations with Israel.

Israel revised down the death toll from the October Hamas attacks in southern Israel from 1,400 to 1,200. IDF had said previously it was holding 1,500 bodies of terrorists, a total that now would increas to about 1,700.

The officially announced number of deaths among the Israeli army since the start of the ground incursion on October 27th to 193, and 522 deaths since the Al-Aqsa Flood operation on the 7th of the same month. Among them are 56 with the rank of platoon commander, 43 with the rank of company commander, 9 with the rank of battalion commander, and 5 with the rank of brigade commander. These officers constitute 23% of the total deaths of the Israeli army in the war on Gaza.

Israeli media reported that 27% of the Israeli military casualties in the war were officers. In detail, the media highlighted that three brigade commanders, four battalion commanders, and other senior officers have been killed in the war so far.

The Israeli Broadcasting Corporation reported that 29 of the army's deaths were caused by "friendly fire" and operational incidents since the start of the ground war in Gaza, late last October. The Israeli authority explained that "18 army soldiers were killed by friendly fire, two were killed as a result of gunfire (without explanation), and 9 Israeli soldiers were killed in ammunition, weapons, or run-over accidents." The Jerusalem Post newspaper revealed that 15 soldiers were killed in the Strip without their bodies being found.

According to some reports statistics indicate that 20% of the Israeli losses were due to friendly fire. Because the nature of the battle has become completely different from what was expected, and it lacks a front line.

According to the latest data published by the army, the number of wounded soldiers and officers has risen to 1,042 since the start of its ground attack on Gaza on October 27, including 228 seriously wounded, while the total number has reached 2,523 wounded since the outbreak of the war on the 7th of October.

The Israeli army reported that 2,438 soldiers - including 355 seriously injured - have been injured since the beginning of the war on Gaza, including earlier reports of 576 moderate, and 1,161 minor. The number of wounded since the start of the ground operation in the Gaza Strip on October 27 had risen to 1,042.

At least 12,957 Israelis were injured, according to i24 TV.

Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper had reported that 5,000 soldiers had been wounded since the beginning of the war on October 7, and that the Ministry of Defense had recognized 2,000 soldiers as disabled so far.

An estimate by the Israeli Ministry of Defense expected that the number of soldiers with disabilities in the war taking place in the Gaza Strip since October 7 of last year would reach 12,500 soldiers. The Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth said that the Soldiers' Rehabilitation Department of the Ministry of Defense has dealt with 3,400 soldiers who were classified as disabled in the army since last October 7.

The Israeli army revealed that about 9,000 of its soldiers have received “psychological assistance” since the beginning of the war on the Gaza Strip on October 7, and about a quarter of them have not returned to combat. This came according to a new statement revealed by the Army Medical Corps, according to Channel 12 and the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. According to the statement, nearly 9,000 soldiers have applied for psychological assistance since the beginning of the war, and approximately a quarter of them have not returned to combat.

The statement continued, "In total, about 13,000 regular and reserve soldiers required accompaniment or medical treatment at some level during the fighting, and thousands of them were injured in the battles."

Al Jazeera military and strategic expert Major General Fayez Al-Duwairi expressed his conviction that the numbers of dead and wounded announced by Israel “cannot represent the truth,” due to a discrepancy between the Israeli army’s data and the Walla website, which is close to the army itself.

Hostages

Al-Qassam Brigades publishes a video clip of Israeli prisoners and hostages: “Tomorrow we will inform you of their fate.” In the clip, the prisoners called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stop the war in order to return them to their families. An Israeli prisoner said in the clip: “Stop this madness and return us to our families.”

Earlier, Abu Ubaida, spokesman for the Al-Qassam Brigades, said in an audio recording, “The fate of many of the enemy’s prisoners and detainees has become unknown in recent weeks, but the rest have all entered the tunnel of the unknown due to the Zionist aggression.” He added, "Most likely, many of them will have been killed recently, while the rest are still in imminent and great danger every hour, and the enemy's leadership and army bear full responsibility."

Abu Ubaida continued, "We were informed from several parties on the resistance fronts that they are seeking to expand their strikes against the enemy in the coming days in light of the continued aggression against Gaza." He declared, "After a hundred days of battle, confrontation, and confrontation of aggression, this is the enemy's leadership swallowing pain and wading through the mire of failure and failure."

Israel had previously estimated there were 116 living hostages in Palestinian custody. Israel declared 20 out of 136 people in Gaza captivity dead in absentia, after announcing its forces had recovered the bodies of two hostages. By another count, 132 of them are still being held in Gaza, and 25 of them have been confirmed dead. Israel considers those still held by Hamas to be hostages regardless of whether they are dead or alive.

Israeli government spokesperson Eylon Levy earlier had told reporters that Hamas still held 137 captives. The resistance released 10 Israeli detainees, 4 Thais and 2 Russian women, who were released outside the agreement. Over the course of 6 days, Israel has received 102 detainees, women and children, including 78 Israelis, in exchange for the release of 234 Palestinian prisoners, women and children.

Eylon Levy, the Israeli government spokesperson, told reporters 01 December 2023:

• Hamas still held 137 hostages from the October attacks, in addition to four others who went missing before the war
• The hostages include two children aged four and 10 months, who, Hamas now claims, are dead
• 117 male hostages are still kept in Gaza, including the two children, as well as 20 females
• 126 hostages are Israelis, and 11 others are foreign nationals
• Foreign nationals are eight Thais, one Nepalese, one Tanzanian and one French Mexican citizen
• Ten of the remaining hostages are 75 and older.
• There are seven missing people since the October 7 attack
• Hamas had released 110 hostages so far – 86 Israelis and 24 foreign nationals.

Some of the rest are soldiers, seized when Hamas raided military bases in Israel. They may end up being held the longest. The Israeli military had not specified how many soldiers were captured, nor their ranks.

According to some estimates, Hamas was initially holding nearly 210 of the 240 hostages, while Palestinian Islamic Jihad was holding the remaining 30. About 40 Israelis remained missing. More than 40 hostages taken from Israel into Gaza on October 7th are not currently in the custody of Hamas, the group responsible for the attack, according to a CNN report based on a diplomatic source briefed on the negotiations, CNN's prior reports had indicated that an estimated 40 to 50 hostages were held by Palestinian Islamic Jihad or other unidentified groups or individuals.

Abu Ubaida, the spokesperson for the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, said on Hamas’ telegram account that 23 bodies of the 60 missing Israel hostages were trapped under the rubble. “It seems that we will never be able to reach them due to the continued brutal aggression of the occupation against Gaza,” he said.

The Palestinian Prisoners' Club revealed that about 11,000 arrests were carried out by the Israeli army during the year 2023 in the West Bank, including occupied Jerusalem, in addition to arrests from the Gaza Strip before the seventh of last October. The total number of prisoners in Israeli prisons is 8,800, as documented by the club until the end of December 2023. The Prisoners' Club explained that arrests after the 7th of October amounted to more than 5,975, in contrast to the detainees in Gaza after the 7th of the same month. The Prisoners' Club stated that cases of arrest among women amounted to (300), and this toll includes women from the occupied interior detained after October 7, while the number of cases of children reached 1,085. The arrest campaigns affected all groups, including women and children, as the number of women who were arrested reached about 200, while the number of arrests among children until the end of last December exceeded 355 children. The number of administrative detainees in Israeli prisons reached more than 3,290, which is the highest percentage since the years of the 1987 Intifada.

Israel said on 14 January 2024 that, since the beginning of the war, approximately 2,650 wanted persons have been arrested throughout the Judea and Samaria Division and the Bekaa and Valleys Division, approximately 1,300 of whom are affiliated with Hamas. On 08 January 2024 it was reported that more than 1,350 wanted persons had been arrested throughout the Judea and Samaria Division and the Bekaa and Valleys Division, more than 870 of whom are associated with the terrorist organization Hamas.