Israel plans Hamas defeat with fighters expelled and Gaza tunnels flooded
Israel said its forces had breached Khan Younis on Tuesday after some of the warโs fiercest fighting, with heavy casualties reported throughout the city, as military sources have put forward proposals to eliminate Hamas by expelling the group from Gaza or flooding its network of tunnels.
Satellite images have shown Israeli armoured vehicles to the north of Khan Younis, the largest city in southern Gaza. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have published videos purporting to show fighting inside the city.
IDF Southern Command Chief Major General Yaron Finkelman said that soldiers had reached โthe heart of Khan Younisโ on โthe most intense day since the start of the invasionโ.
Hamas released a video purporting to show footage from an attack on an Israeli military base in Gaza, which it claimed had killed dozens of soldiers. The IDF said seven soldiers had been killed in action on Tuesday.
Palestinian media reported mass casualties from Israeli air strikes, with images showing corpses of children said to be taken from the aftermath of an attack on Maโan school in Khan Younis.
Local authorities in the Hamas-run enclave have reported that 43 bodies had arrived at the cityโs Al-Nasser hospital before noon on Tuesday.
Israel has dropped leaflets instructing residents of north and eastern Khan Younis to remain at home as operations intensified, while Palestinians elsewhere in the city reported orders to flee south to the city of Rafah on the southern border with Egypt.
Aid workers criticised the messaging. โOrders to relocate from Israeli forces are causing fear and confusion, as there is nowhere safe to go,โ said Bob Kitchen of the International Rescue Committee. โEven in Rafah and Khan Yunis where people have been encouraged to flee to, daily bombardment continues to kill civilians and damage infrastructure.โ
Israeli military strategists have discussed options for an ending to the war. American officials told the Wall Street Journal that the IDF is preparing for an operation to flood the vast network of tunnels below Gaza that Hamas uses for shelter, storage, and to launch ambushes.
Pumps are already in place to draw water from the Mediterranean Sea, although the plan has yet to be approved, the sources said. The IDF did not confirm or deny the report.
The logistics of the plan are said to be challenging, with the volume of water required for such as task unclear. Flooding the tunnels could also risk the lives of more than 100 Israeli hostages still held in Gaza.
The groupโs senior leadership is thought to have remained largely intact underground, despite two months of heavy bombardment that has killed nearly 16,000 people according to local authorities. Hamas has continued to fire rockets throughout with sirens sounding in northern Israel on Tuesday.
Professor Kobi Michael, a senior researcher at Israelโs Institute for National Security Studies, a military think-tank close to the IDF, said the war could also finish with the expulsion of Hamas from Gaza.
โIf Hamas says it will release the hostages and leave the Gaza strip with their political and military leadership, Israel will show them a safe path from Gaza to leave for an Arab country willing to host them, and the war can be ceased,โ said Professor Michael, citing confidential conversations.
This could be modelled on the expulsion of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) from Lebanon after the 1982 Lebanon War, the analyst said. He did not comment on whether the plan had been raised during indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas in Qatar.
Palestinian sources in Gaza have said that they fear the succession of evacuation orders could eventually lead to permanent displacement from Gaza. Israeli officials have proposed that refugees could be accommodated in Egypt or other nations.
