Israel-Hamas war: What happened on day 76?

Soldiers for the Yahalom special operations unit of the IDF’s Combat Engineering Corps, along with troops from the 401st Brigade combat team, destroyed the secret underground web of tunnels seized on Wednesday by Israeli forces, the IDF said on Thursday.

The demolition of the subterranean structure followed the revelation that the IDF had taken control of Hamas’s Gaza City “senior quarter,” the IDF added. The network of tunnel branches reportedly contained apartments, offices, and living quarters of senior Hamas officials.

Tunnels beneath an urban center

The tunnels led to above-ground sites in the Shejaia neighborhood's Palestine Square.

The Jerusalem Post reported on Wednesday that Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh, Yahya Sinwar, and Muhammad Deif had used this network to manage the organization’s operation and movement through the center of Gaza City, which has nicknamed the area “Commander’s Square.”

Colonel Beni Aharon noted that the tunnels were used to store equipment taken from civilians that could enable Hamas leadership to shelter there for an extended period of time.

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, the daughter and former senior advisor to former US president Donald Trump, arrived in Israel, the Knesset spokesperson announced on Thursday.

The couple arrived in the Jewish State earlier that morning in a move to express solidarity with the country as it wages a war against the Gaza-based Islamist terror organization, Hamas.

Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana accompanied the pair on the first stop of their 24-hour visit to Israel.

In Kfar Aza, mere kilometers from the Hamas hotbed of Shejaia, Trump and Kushner heard testimonies from local residents who lived in the community up until the Hamas attack.

The former residents spoke about their experiences on October 7, as well as of their neighbors and friends who were kidnapped and butchered by Hamas.

One of the residents who spoke with the couple, Shachar Schnorman, who had the date “07.10.23” tattooed on his hand, stated that he and his wife, Ayelet Cohen, were the first, and so far only, residents to return to the community.

Jared Kushner stands in the wreckage of Kfar Aza. December 21, 2023. (credit: NOAM MOSHKOWITZ/KNESSET SPOKESPERSON)

Iraq said on Thursday it had sent a fuel tanker to Egypt to help alleviate shortages in the Gaza Strip that have hampered relief efforts amid an Israeli siege which has caused a humanitarian crisis.

"An Iraqi tanker carrying a cargo of 10 million liters of fuel has left Basra port for the Suez Canal as an aid to the Palestinians in Gaza and the government of Iraq is planning to send further aid cargoes in future," said Zedan Khalaf, an adviser to the prime minister for humanitarian affairs.

Around 19,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to Hamas health officials, since Oct. 7 when Hamas terrorists killed 1,200 people and captured 240 hostages in a surprise raid.

The IDF's 36th Division completed the dismantling of Hamas terror capabilities in the Shejaia neighborhood of Gaza City, the Israeli military said Thursday evening, hours after the 99th Division completed its operations in Gaza City's southern area and has begun expanding its area of activity to the central Strip.

German shipping company Hapag-Lloyd said on Thursday it was the latest company planning to avoid the Red Sea after attacks there by Yemen's Houthi group on merchant vessels, which have disrupted global trade and triggered a multinational naval action.

Hapag-Lloyd said it would reroute 25 ships by the end of the year from the key waterway as freight rates and shipping stocks have increased because of the disruption. Avoiding the Red Sea and Suez Canal means following a far longer route around Africa.

The Iran-aligned Houthis, who control much of Yemen, have been attacking ships passing through the Bab al-Mandab Strait at the southern end of the Red Sea for weeks in what they say is a response to Israel's war in Gaza.

Traders are meanwhile scrambling to find alternative shipping routes to get consumer goods to retailers, with journeys around Africa adding roughly 10 days extra to voyage times.

Analysts have said the delays could start causing some shops to run low on stocks by February.

The war in Gaza is expected to continue for the foreseeable future. The intensity of the conflict may change, but it will continue for months or even years.

To prepare for this long haul, Israel has already put in place many of the processes necessary to underpin the war effort. Among the two most important are the use of new technology on the battlefield in Gaza and also preparation for more local production of munitions.

On December 20, Yediot Ahronot reported that “in an effort to enhance Israeli self-reliance in military supplies, the Defense Ministry aimed to establish local production of the chemical agents necessary for bomb manufacturing.

The details of the initiative 

This initiative was coordinated with local defense industries. The transition to domestic armament production is projected to cost billions, with payments distributed to major producers, as well as smaller subcontractors.” Israel had already sought to contrast with many local companies to participate in the war effort after October 7.

Shoring up various munitions is important, especially as the Ukraine war has acted as a sponge for certain types of shells and weapons, such as 155mm ammunition.

The war in Gaza has illustrated that modern war cannot escape the need for large amounts of munitions. The idea that war was going to become more precise and that this might fundamentally change the nature of war, has not been realized in Ukraine or Gaza. While small wars that enable the use of special forces may have increased over the last decades, the large wars still require a lot of brawn.

Israel's Shin Bet foiled an Iranian honeypot network that aimed to recruit unsuspecting Israeli civilians to gather intelligence and commit terror attacks under the guise of criminal activities, the Israeli Security Agency announced Thursday.

The Iranian network turned to Israelis through social media and employment websites.  Speaking in Hebrew, English, and Arabic, the network operatives introduced themselves as salespeople or real estate agents and, in some cases, sought out Israelis who expressed interest in online dating.

The network also attempted to reach out to families of fallen soldiers and Israelis taken hostage by Hamas on October 7.

Israeli civilians helped expand Iran's intelligence pool

The Israelis were then sent on paid reconnaissance missions, gathering information on certain addresses and taking photos of sites of interest to the operatives in an attempt to expand the Islamic Republic's intelligence pool on Israel.

The tasks were given to the civilians in a manner that made them appear harmless, the Shin Bet said. Some of the Israelis who received such suspicious inquiries avoided answering them, and alerted security officials about them, the security agency added.

IDF fighter jets struck a series of Hezbollah terrorist targets in Lebanon on Wednesday night and Thursday, the IDF said.

One of the targets hit by the aircraft on Wednesday night was a launcher that had been used earlier that day to fire rockets toward Israel.

Concurrently, Israeli artillery hit targets near the Israeli-Lebanese border, the IDF added.

Two injured, vehicle hit by rocket

Subsequently, the military stated that an anti-tank missile fired from Lebanon landed in the Upper Galilee areas of Dovev, Mount Dov, and the northern moshav of Avivim on Thursday morning. One vehicle in Avivim was hit. The IDF later said that two civilians were lightly wounded by the rocket attacks directed at Dovev, which caused a direct hit to a home.

Additional rocket launches from Lebanese territory were aimed at the area of Arab el-Aramsha, but these failed to cross into Israel, the IDF added.

The IDF has successfully targeted four out of seven senior Hamas brigade commanders, the Israeli military's Arabic spokesperson Avichay Adraee wrote Thursday on X.

"The IDF continued to dismantle Hamas's Gaza brigades," Adraee wrote. "Of the seven senior brigade commanders, four have so far been liquidated, leaving only three senior commanders within the chain of command."

The three commanders included Ezz al-Din al-Haddad, a commander in Hamas's al-Qassam Brigades, and two battalion commanders, Imad Aslim and Jabr Hasan Aziz.

#عاجل جيش الدفاع يواصل تفكيك لواء غزة في حماس. ومن أصل سبعة قادة اللواء الكبار تم حتى الآن تصفية أربعة ولم يتبقَ سوى ثلاثة قادة كبار ضمن سلسلة القيادة هم قائد اللواء وقائديْ كتيبتين.

🔻عز الدين حداد
🔻عماد اسليم
🔻جبر حسن عزيز

من خلال الصور التي تم العثور عليها خلال إحدى عمليات… pic.twitter.com/xvXg8aFcZv

— افيخاي ادرعي (@AvichayAdraee) December 21, 2023

The IDF spokesperson further warned the Hamas terrorists that if the remaining leaders do not surrender to Israeli forces, "we will work to arrange another meeting that will bring them together soon."

The IDF's 99th Division completed its operations in Gaza City's southern area and has begun expanding its area of activity to the central Strip, the Israeli military announced on Thursday afternoon.

As part of the 99th Division's operations, hundreds of terrorists were killed, and weaponry hidden inside children's dolls was seized by Israeli forces.

The Division is made up of commando, paratrooper, and artillery reserve forces, the IDF said.