Israel’s ongoing  battle to dismantle Hamas is just that, and obscured by the press obsession over fighting near a hospital under which lies a terrorist command center is some significant progress that IDF forces have made.

The Golani Brigade, one of Israel’s toughest, lost about 70 soldiers on October 7.  Slightly more than a month later, its fighters have successfully eliminated most of one of Hamas’s strongest battalions. The vanquishing of the Sabra Tel al-Hawa Battalion followed a week and a half of intense fighting. 

According to Israel Defense Forces data, Golani troops teamed with armored forces from the 7th Armored Brigade to deliver a series of serious blows to the Sabra battalion terrorists, leaving around 300 of them dead. A further 150 were said to be pinned under the rubble of buildings and destroyed terror tunnels in or around Gaza City. Many had scattered south of Gaza City after IDF forces killed their commander, Mustafa Dalul. 

During pitched ground battles, when Golani troops destroyed thousands of weapons including anti-tank launchers and rockets,  several terrorists managed to flee. An IDF officer was quoted in Israeli media as saying that many of the battalion’s terrorists retreated or “hid in a hospital,” without specifying which.  According to Israeli press reports, the IDF has killed 14,000 Hamas fighters since that terrorist group attacked on October 7. As with most such reports from the war, the number has been questioned by some.

As of Monday, Israel soldiers and Hamas terrorists were trading fire in the vicinity of al-Shifa hospital, but the facility itself was not under siege. Israeli forces have provided a safe corridor for people to flee south from the hospital area as fighting continues. 

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According to the IDF, a full reserve division has been actively participating in combat for the first time since the first Lebanon war. Reserve Brigade 252 has been operating in the Gaza Strip, where it  played a key role  in taking control of the city of Beit Hanoun in the northern section of the Strip.

Separately, the IDF has confirmed that 9,500 rockets have been fired at Israel since Hamas initiated the war on October 7. Most of these rockets as well as mortars have come from the Gaza Strip.

The IDF also stated that for the first time ever, all of Israel’s air defenses are activated.  A statement to that effect read in part, “The air defense array is deployed in the most extensive way ever, and carries out interceptions from Mount Dov in the north to the Red Sea in the south.”

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Hezbollah’s firebrand head terror cleric, Hassan Nasrallah, the puppet of Tehran and enduring scourge of Lebanon, has been operating as a backseat commentator to Israel’s war on Hamas. As a summit was under way at Riyadh, Nasrallah called for international pressure in America to sway Israel to halt its campaign against Hamas. He also said, with characteristic bombast, that the recents assaults against American forces in Iraq and Syria were part of “the ongoing operations to contribute to the liberation of the two countries from the U.S. occupation.”

Since October 7, Hezbollah has launched repeated, sometimes deadly attacks against Israeli military and civilian targets from locations in heavily fortified southern Lebanon. Touring Israel’s north on Saturday, the defense minister, Yoav Gallant, said that Hezbollah was “dragging Lebanon into a war that may happen, and it is making mistakes,” adding, “if it makes mistakes of this kind, the ones who will pay the price are first of all the citizens of Lebanon. What we are doing in Gaza we know how to do in Beirut.”

Mr. Gallant also said that the Israeli air force is using less than a tenth of its power in the Gaza Strip.

There were reports on Monday of  pro-Iranian fighters from Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, as well as Palestinians, deploying in southwestern Syria close to the Golan Heights. An Israeli lieutenant colonel, Richard Hecht, stated that he hopes Hezbollah “does not cross” what Israel would consider to be red lines.

Following the wounding of at least two Israeli civilians in a cross-border Hezbollah missile attack on Sunday, Israel’s military spokesman,  Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, said, “The IDF has operational plans for changing the security situation in the north.”

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When Hamas isn’t using people in Gaza as human shields, it often resorts to torturing them. In 2021 the Ramallah-based Independent Commission for Human Rights registered 193 complaints of torture by the terrorist group inside Gaza, including beatings with truncheons and gun butts.

The torture sites included a detention center in Gaza City and a former outpatient clinic beside the Al-Shifa hospital — below which, as is now widely known, Hamas operates a terror command and control center. The ICHR stated that no steps were ever taken to investigate the complaints of torture that it received. 

In 2022 the UN Human Rights Council accused Hamas of using “excessive force” against people who tried complaining about it, but failed to use the word torture. In August some of the complaints turned into protests, to which Hamas responded by arresting and assaulting a number of journalists and announcing it would hang six men for “collaboration.”

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Heard about the Hamas heavies living it up in that desert bastion of moral rectitude, Qatar? London’s Private Eye has. A squib from the satirical review under the parodic headline, “Gaza residents weep for Hamas leaders trapped in Qatar,”reads in part, “We have heard unconfirmed reports that the Hamas leaders are having to endure shortages of food and drink, with only seven types of cheese platters and freshly squeezed juices being made available at the poolside bar … the international community should ensure a steady and reliable supply of up to 50 room service trolleys to their suites daily, where they can plan more terrorist atrocities which we’ll be punished for.”

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Israel-bound travelers, take heart. Several airlines suspended service to Israel following the October 7 Hamas assault, but United says it plans to resume some of its nonstop flights to Tel Aviv as soon as next week. 

The news comes amid a sharp drop in rocket and drone attacks.

While the IDF believes Hamas is still stockpiling rockets, launching them has become more difficult for the terrorists now that Israeli forces are in control of northern Gaza.