[Ynet] Barrage of some 50 rockets targets Netivot and surrounding areas causing damage but no injuries; mayor says residents of city surprised that Hamas was able to launch such an attack even after 102 days of war
The rockets were fired from an area in the central Gaza Strip soon after IDF troops left the region amid the redeployment of forces in the new phase of the war and occurred shortly before the war cabinet convened in the south with IDF command there to discuss the return of residents to their homes, evacuated in the Hamas massacre of October 7.
The rocket barrage came as the Paleostinians reported Israeli tanks storming back into parts of the northern Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response ...
Strip they had left last week.
The reports follow the IDF announcing that it had begun to transition into smaller, targeted operations in northern Gaza, after it said it had defeated Hamas
 ...the braying voice of Islamic Resistance®,...
’s "military framework" in the area. The IDF has withdrawn several units from the Strip, as part of its plans for a long war.
Local authorities in Netivot said more than 50 rockets were fired in the barrage, but other media reports suggested that only some 25 projectiles were launched. Hamas later grabbed credit.
In Netivot, a rocket caused damage to a storefront, while another rocket hit a warehouse in the adjacent community of Givolim, also causing damage.
Emergency services said there were no reports of injuries.
On Monday, the IDF began to withdraw the 36th Division from the central Gaza Strip, as part of its plans for a long war, which is expected to include smaller, targeted operations against Hamas, once its main fighting force is defeated.
The IDF’s 99th Division remains in other areas of central Gaza, where intense fighting is currently taking place between Israeli troops and Hamas’s operatives.
The rocket fire came shortly after the IDF announced that Sgt. First Class (res.) Nitzan Schessler was killed in fighting on Monday in the southern Gaza Strip. Schessler, 21, from Hadera, was in the 55th Brigade’s 7155th Battalion.
The army said that another reservist from Schessler’s battalion was maimed during the same battle and that in a separate incident, a soldier in the Combat Engineering Corps’ 603rd Battalion was seriously hurt fighting in southern Gaza.
Additionally, the army announced the death of a soldier who succumbed to injuries sustained during fighting in Gaza in December, bringing the toll of slain troops in the ground offensive against Hamas to 190.
The most fierce fighting is now in the south and center of the enclave. Troops have been carrying out operations at a lower intensity in northern Gaza, after the military said it had defeated all of Hamas’s battalions in the area.
The military said Tuesday that IDF troops operating in northern Gaza’s Beit Lahiya located some 100 rocket launchers as clear-up operations continued in the northern part of the Strip. It added that troops battled and killed dozens of Hamas operatives in the area.
Moshe Tetro, an official with COGAT, said last week that aid delivery would be more streamlined if the UN provided more workers to receive and pack the supplies. Tetro said more trucks were needed to transfer the aid from Egypt to Israel for security checks and that the working hours at the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza needed to be extended. Israel has additionally accused Hamas of stealing and stockpiling aid, keeping it from an increasingly desperate civilian population.
The UN says the war has displaced roughly 85 percent of Gaza’s population, many of whom have been forced to crowd into shelters and struggle to get food, water, fuel and medical care as temperatures fall.
"We were displaced with the people who fled, first to schools, then to Deir al-Balah," Umm Jihad, who had returned to visit her home in central Gaza’s al-Bureij, told AFP.
The IDF has assessed that fighting in Gaza will likely last throughout all of 2024, though at lower intensity than before, as Israel works to strip Hamas of its military and governing capabilities. The army is also preparing for the potential of fighting escalating further on the Leb
...an Iranian satrapy currently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else? It is the home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers...
border, where Hezbollah and allied Paleostinian terror groups have carried out daily rocket, missile, and drone attacks, at the same time as the war in Gaza.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Monday that the "intensive phase" of Israel’s ground offensive in northern Gaza had ended, and would soon be over in the Khan Younis area of the Strip’s south as well.
Troops have been carrying out operations at a lower intensity in northern Gaza, after the military said it had defeated all of Hamas’s battalions in the area. The soldiers have been working to locate the remaining Hamas sites and kill or capture the terror group’s last operatives there.
In northern Gaza, Gallant said, "All the [Hamas] battalion frameworks have been dismantled. We are now working to eliminate pockets of resistance. We will achieve this via raids, Arclight airstrike
...KABOOM! ...
s, special operations and additional activities."
In central Gaza, he said, "We are destroying Hamas’s military industry, its production centers. These are the places that produce rockets, IEDs, explosives and other weapons to be used against us. The achievements [of our troops] are very impressive."
In southern Gaza, Gallant said "IDF troops are focused on the head of the snake, the Hamas leadership. As part of this action... the Khan Younis Brigade is gradually disintegrating as a fighting force."
"We also cut off the roads that lead to Rafah above and below ground," he said. The IDF has not yet operated on the ground in the Rafah area, on the Egyptian border, but has indicated it will eventually expand the offensive there.
While indicating the high-intensity fighting was nearing an end, Gallant said only continued military pressure on Hamas would bring about a new hostage deal.
"If the fire stops, the fate of the hostages will be sealed for many years in Hamas captivity. Without military pressure, no one will talk to us. Only from a position of strength can the hostages be freed," he said.
He delivered his comments at a time when hostages’ families have been expressing growing frustration with the government, arguing that this policy has proven ineffective given that no hostages have been released in over a month. Israel resumed its ground offensive at the start of December after a seven-day truce that saw over 100 hostages released. 
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