Israel at war: What happened on day 45?

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who was reelected to the post last week, will travel to Israel and the Palestinian Territories on Thursday, his office said in a statement on Monday.

Sanchez will travel alongside his Belgian counterpart Alexander de Croo, representing the current and upcoming rotating presidencies of the Council of the European Union, respectively.

Both leaders are set to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's President Isaac Herzog and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the statement added.

Turkey will not allow the issue of Israel's nuclear weapons to be dropped from the global agenda, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday, while attributing European support for Israel to what he called "the shame of the Holocaust."

Speaking after a cabinet meeting, Erdogan said the West was trying to "vindicate" what he said were Israel's war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, adding Western countries had a "fraternity of lies" with Israel which he called "shameful."

"The shame of the Holocaust has literally taken European leaders hostage," he said. "We, as Turkey, will not allow the issue of Israel's nuclear to be forgotten," Erdogan added.

Two Hamas terrorists who infiltrated Israel from Gaza during the October 7 terror attacks were arrested in the Arab city of Rahat two weeks ago - more than one month after the attacks, it was revealed on Monday.

The two were arrested by the undercover unit of the Border Police's Southern District Unit under the coordination of the Israel Security Service (Shin Bet) and were brought in for further questioning.

Hamas terrorists part of infiltration on October 7

Thousands of Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israeli territory from Gaza on October 7. Those who were caught were brought in for interrogation by the Lahav 433 unit in coordination with the Shin Bet and the IDF. 

Palestinians take part in a protest in support of Hamas, in Hebron, the West Bank, November 17, 2023 (credit: REUTERS/MUSSA QAWASMA)

On October 17, the IDF made an assessment saying that at the time there were still Hamas terror cells roaming the Negev region and waiting to come out from their hiding spots to attack civilians.

Reuters contributed to this article.

Shrapnel from a rocket struck a vehicle in Holon on Monday night, as a huge barrage of rockets hit central Israel. 

Israel Police are investigating and have closed off the area but have stated that there are no injuries. 

Tel Aviv, Holon, Ramat Gan and cities across central Israel saw a huge barrage of rockets from Gaza at around 6 PM on Monday night.

This is a developing story. 

Some 45 days after the Hamas massacre, the dining hall on Kibbutz Be'eri reopened on Monday, according to Kan news. 

Kan also reported that the dining hall is used mainly by those who are working for the Be'eri Printing Press. The Printing Press reopened on October 15, a little over a week after the war began.

One of the hardest hit during the October 7 massacre, Kibbutz Be'eri, which is situated about 4 km. from the Gaza border, lost more than 100 of its residents after Hamas terrorists invaded the kibbutz and massacred dozens of people.

Printing Press reopening

Ben Suchman, the director of the facility said during an interview with Maariv that they "aim to promote change and optimism to pursue a brighter future."

(credit: Arnold Nataev)

"We understand that the kibbutz's recovery would be a lengthy process," Noor Pakhtsiarez, a worker at the printing press, said. "We quickly realized that the factory was going to be the key to relaunching the kibbutz. Fortunately, the factory was not damaged. A week after the tragic events, we were back."

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) invited members of the international press last Thursday to a base in central Israel for a small taste of what Hamas terrorists used against Israeli civilians on October 7.

From the pickup trucks and motorcycles that ferried terrorists into Israel, as well as Israeli hostages back to Gaza, to AK-47s and thermobaric grenades, the armory collected for viewing was but a tiny fraction of what was recovered by the IDF in southern Israel’s civilian communities.

Lt. Col. Idan Sharon-Kettler, deputy commander of the IDF’s enemy equipment collection unit explains that the exhibit’s message was twofold.

First, to dispel the notion that Hamas is just some militia that targeted legitimate military objectives. Sharon-Kettler says the IDF saw “vast amounts of weapons, [and] of explosive materials used not against soldiers, but citizens and families in their own houses.”

Military-grade weapons used against civilians

The equipment included military-grade weapons like the Shawaz anti-tank explosive which was used to break into Israeli civilians’ protected shelters and safe rooms; and thermobaric grenades, which raise the temperature in a given space to 3,000 degrees Celsius.

Lt. Col. (res.) Idan Sharon-Kettler speaks about the AK-47 rifles used by Hamas, on an IDF base in central Israel, Nov. 16, 2023. (credit: Aaron Poris/The Media Line)

These grenades were used in houses and civilian cars at the Nova music festival to incinerate everything, and everyone, in their vicinity.

Second, the display was meant to put Hamas and the October 7 atrocities into the context of a more global war against Islamist fundamentalist terror.

“There is a general comment about Gaza as being an open-air prison,” Sharon-Kettler adds. “[These weapons] can’t be found in a prison. This is [the result of] organized smuggling into Gaza from many different countries. There’s a lot of money that goes into this. Someone is funding and planning for a long time, and we see the result—a massacre of civilians.”

Among the contributing countries: Iran with UAV attack drones, TNT, and RPG-7 dual warhead rockets. Also, Russia and North Korea provided Hamas with RPG-7 rockets and RPG-7 anti-personnel fragmentation rockets, respectively.

IDF Unit 504, the military’s human spying version of the Mossad, has been vital in unmasking Hamas’s abuse of hospitals for a variety of terror and military purposes, The Jerusalem Post can now disclose.

This information was previously provided to a closed group of military reporters but had been kept censored due to operational considerations.

In a recording of a Unit 504 interrogation of a Palestinian who had been in Shifa Hospital, he said there were many Hamas forces there, which upset the medical staff, who knew about their presence.

Infographic from the IDF detailing the efforts made by Unit 504 in warning Gaza's population to evacuate, November 20, 2023 (IDF Spokesperson's Unit)

The interrogated Hamas terrorist estimated that he himself alone had seen between 80-100 terrorists (likely only a portion of Hamas taking into account that Shifa is a large complex with many facilities.)

He added that Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists were “camouflaged” in the dress of various kinds of medical helpers, including using the emergency room for their activities.

Another Palestinian, Hamdoah Riad Assad Samlah, told how Hamas terrorists were using 50,000 Palestinian civilians at the large Palestine Red Crescent Society building in Gaza as human shields.

He said that no one would resist Hamas or they might be killed.

Further, he added that Hamas wrapped their rockets in civilian blankets to hide them from the IDF and were frequently shooting from the nearby surroundings of the building.

Another Palestinian told Unit 504  that he saw over 100 Hamas terrorists controlling Rantisi Hospital in Gaza, split up into tents of around five to six men per tent.

He said that he was also in a hospital known as the Sweden Hospital, where he saw at least seven Hamas terrorists. Though they were in civilian garb, he said he knew one of them personally, and that the rest were armed.

Another disclosure is that - after a hiatus dating back more than a decade - Unit 504 has reestablished a new physical center and unit to handle Gaza issues and security issues on Israel’s southern border.

This has been possible since Unit 504 has doubled its size since the Israel-Gaza war started, including with some of the most highly trained reservists in the IDF.

Until the war started on October 7, Unit 504 was focused more on Lebanon, Syria, and other Middle Eastern countries.

For example, the Unit’s involvement in arranging medical and infrastructure assistance for Syrian militias on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights during the Syrian Civil War of the 2010s has been previously reported by the Post and others.

In addition, the IDF said that Unit 504 has interrogated over 500 terrorists since October 7, and arrested and questioned over 300 terrorists since the start of the Gaza counter-invasion.

Next, an IDF statement said that Unit 504 has helped flag 300 terror sites for IDF operations, with over 100 of those sites having later been attacked by various IDF forces.

Over 300 Hamas terrorists captured and taken to Israel

A senior Unit 504 commander said, “Until now, we have arrested more than 300 terrorists as part of the invasion, who were taken for extended questioning to Israel. The information which came out of questioning such prisoners has had tremendous value, led to eliminating other terrorists, and to enhancing the security of our forces.”

The senior officer added that his unit had also received thousands of calls from Gazan Palestinians wanting to help them with intelligence or otherwise cooperate against Hamas, “an order of magnitude which we had never seen before. It seems that the residents of Gaza are unhappy with the barbaric conduct of Hamas.”

In order to accomplish these many missions, dozens of Arabic-speaking field interrogators are spread throughout the battle areas in Gaza at the division, brigade, and battalion levels.

Unit 504’s field interrogation personnel are not just bringing back terrorists to Israel for questioning, but are also questioning terrorists often in the field in real-time to assist IDF forces with their immediate battle maneuvers as well as finding Hamas’s sensitive locations on nearby Gaza streets.

Besides these interrogated detainees giving Unit 504 questioners information about sensitive terror locations in general, they have been especially helpful in locating Hamas’s tunnel network, the method of operation of the enemy, and how Hamas has tried to fade into civilian locations or the civilian population, said the IDF.

Another way that Unit 504 helps the invading ground forces is by collecting critical surveillance on the wider front they are about to face.

In addition, Unit 504’s technological team developed a 360-degree virtual reality device to help soldiers see and feel what it is like in battle areas of Gaza at street level. The VR program is based on real videos taken by spies in Gaza working on behalf of Unit 504.

The mix of real-time intelligence with operational knowledge has led to a huge number of successful targeting operations as well as smarter maneuvering in the face of potential enemy ambushes.

Unit 504 has also had a lead role in convincing the vast majority of northern Gaza Palestinians to evacuate.

This has been done by a mix of over 10 million electronic messages, nine million recorded messages, and over 30,000 telephone calls from officers trained not only in Arabic, but in connecting culturally with Palestinians, but also by various psychological and social media campaigns. Also, around four million flyers were dropped pressing Palestinian civilians to flee South.

In one case, the IDF learned from Palestinian civilians about a Hamas outpost that was blocking them from evacuating and was able to use that information to remove the Hamas forces that were interfering.

Argentinian President-elect Javier Milei said his first overseas trips ahead of his inauguration will be to the United States, then Israel, in a radio interview on Monday, following his election victory over the weekend.

He added he would also look to privatize state-energy firm YPF. 

The home of a Lebanese parliament member from the Amal Shiite movement in southern Lebanon, Kablan Kablan, was damaged by IDF air strikes, Israeli media reported on Monday.

Deputy Knesset Speaker Nissim Vaturi doubled down on his call to "burn Gaza" in an interview with 103 FM on Monday.

Vaturi's Twitter account was blocked after he tweeted on Sunday that Israel had to do "no less than burn Gaza". In his interview on Monday, he repeated the sentiment, adding that he doesn't need to be ashamed of it.

"Who's left in Gaza?" he asked interviewers Yishay Cohen and Ben Caspit. "Are there citizens? There are only tunnels, Hamas, and accursed terrorists who murdered children and are holding children hostage. We have to crush Gaza, Gaza is Hamas."

People carry placards during a protest calling for the immediate release of hostages held in Gaza who were seized from southern Israel on October 7 by Hamas terrorists during a deadly attack, at a square in Tel Aviv, Israel, November 11, 2023. (photo credit: REUTERS/AMMAR AWAD)

Gaza has a population of over two million, many of whom are civilians. While many of the residents of northern Gaza evacuated to the South, they are still within the Gaza Strip, and not all civilians evacuated.

Vaturi is the latest MK to make controversial statements about Gaza and its fate.

Politicians' faux pas

Earlier this month, Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu from Otzma Yehudit was suspended from government meetings after he said in an interview that nuking the Strip was an option and that hostages who would be killed in such an attack would merely be the price of war.

Following that interview, party leader National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir banned his party members from doing interviews.

Last week, Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter caused more controversy when he called the evacuation of Gazans to the south of the Strip "Nakba 2023."

After that statement, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instructed his government to be sensitive and exhibit caution in their public statements.