The IDF on Wednesday engaged in limited operations against Hamas in Gaza and against Hezbollah in Lebanon while awaiting the all-important answer about whether it will finally execute its Rafah invasion plans or whether those plans will be indefinitely postponed in a new hostage deal.
In Gaza, the IDF on Wednesday struck ammunition depots, military buildings, rocket launchers, and firing positions belonging to Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement.
Fighter jets and the IDF’s 99th Division, which recently replaced the 162nd division which had run most of the Gaza war, targeted several terrorists who directed indirect fire at Israeli forces in Gaza.
Additionally, soldiers from the 679th Brigade spotted a terrorist squad that was approaching Israeli forces in central Gaza and directed an airstrike on the squad.
Shortly afterward, the soldiers spotted another squad planting an explosive device in the area and directed another airstrike against that squad.
Stockpiles uncovered
The soldiers also found stockpiles of weapons, documents, and military equipment in a nearby building while conducting further operations.
Notably, the numbers of killed terrorists were low and since the IDF pulled out of Khan Yunis on April 7, the number of killed terrorists per week has dropped dramatically.
In the North, Hezbollah hit two houses in Shtula with anti-tank missiles late Wednesday.The houses sustained severe damage, but no injuries were reported.
Earlier Wednesday, Hezbollah claimed to target an Israeli army base at Biranit.The terror group put out a statement to the pro-Iran Al-Mayadeen media claiming that the “Islamic Resistance in Lebanon-Hezbollah announced that its fighters targeted, this Wednesday morning, a deployment of Israeli occupation soldiers in the vicinity of the ‘Branit’ barracks with rocket weapons and artillery shells.”
Hezbollah last claimed to have targeted the site on April 17 and has also targeted it in January and in November 2023.
Sirens also sounded in northern Israel at 8:11 a.m. on Wednesday in the communities of Al-Kosh, Matat, Netua, Fassuta, and Hurfeish.
The IDF said early Wednesday that overnight it had attacked a wide number of Hezbollah targets in five distinct areas of southern Lebanon.
The IDF had not yet issued a response about counterattacks to Hezbollah’s Wednesday attacks, but that might also come in later Wednesday night or Thursday based on how the IDF has been operating.
Meanwhile, the IDF announced on Wednesday that it had opened the Erez Crossing, destroyed by Hamas on October 7, for the first time since the start of the war.
Although Israel and the IDF had promised never to reopen it so as to send a message to Hamas and the Palestinians about destroying a crossing for providing humanitarian aid, Israel shifted its position on the issue in recent weeks, especially after pressure on Israel because of the World Central Kitchen incident in which the IDF accidentally killed seven aid workers.
Separately, there was a dispute on Wednesday about the extent of the US’s role in blocking Iran’s around 350 aerial attacks on April 14.
Previously, CENTCOM has said that its forces, supported by US European Command destroyers, “successfully engaged and destroyed more than 80 one-way attack uncrewed aerial vehicles (OWA UAV) and at least six ballistic missiles intended to strike Israel from Iran and Yemen.”
Israel gave the US tremendous credit for its role in defending against the Iranian attack, while claiming that it had shot down the majority of the attack targets.
However, on Wednesday, Army Radio reported that only two out of eight US “interceptors” succeeded in hitting Iranian missiles during the drone and missile attack that targeted Israel on April 14.
The source of the report was unclear, and it was also unclear what subset of the targeting it was referring to, given that the US engaged not eight targets but over 80.
One possibility was that the subset referred to US attempts to shoot down ballistic missiles with a specific set of batteries.
Sources with knowledge in the US vehemently rejected the report to the Jerusalem Post as incorrect, although at press time, the Pentagon had not responded to requests for more specifically relating to the report’s allegations.
It was unclear what the motivations were of the sources who leaked the allegations to Army Radio, though clearly they were trying to portray Israel as having done more and achieved a higher level of accurate shootdowns.
In contrast, some media reports have said that the US did far more than it has been given credit for and raise questions about whether Israel actually shot down a majority of the threats.
Seth Frantzman contributed to this report.