Israel-Hamas War: What happened on Day 125?

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Thursday pledged to act immediately on any further information presented by Israel related to any "infiltration of Hamas" in the world body.

 The United States is aware of reports that two US citizens have been detained in Gaza and is seeking additional information, a State Department spokesperson said on Thursday.

Hamas's leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, lost contact with fellow terror leaders "weeks ago," KAN News reported on Thursday, and was not involved in Hamas's response to the hostage deal and ceasefire proposal.

Israeli forces are "peeling back" Hamas infrastructure in Khan Yunis, more than two months after entering the Gaza Strip's main southern city, and believe the Palestinian faction's Gaza chief is hiding there, a senior military officer said on Thursday.

Progress in Khan Yunis has prompted Israel to describe Rafah, further to the south and abutting Gaza's border with Egypt, as next in line for a ground sweep by troops and tanks.

The majority of Gaza's 2.3 million people are now sheltering in the area since being displaced from elsewhere in four months of fighting, afraid they are next in the line of fire.

The situation in Rafah watched by Cairo

The situation in Rafah - after Khan Yunis, the biggest southern city - is also being watched by Cairo, which has ruled out allowing any refugee influx across the fence into its Sinai peninsula.

A senior Israeli military officer said Khan Yunis operations to destroy Hamas and retrieve any hostages who might be held there would continue "whether it will take two hours, or two days, or two weeks or two months - or even more."

Israeli soldiers operate in the Gaza Strip, February 8, 2024 (credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON'S UNIT)

Israeli troops have killed 2,000 gunmen, wounded 4,000, and captured "hundreds" more, the officer told Reuters on condition of anonymity. That had largely demolished Hamas' Khan Yunis Brigade, whose pre-war strength was five battalions, he said.

This could not be independently verified. Hamas has seldom published its deployments or losses.

"The Khan Yunis Brigade was the most powerful that Hamas had, with a very dominant commander," the officer said. "We are peeling it back, layer by layer."

Attacks by Palestinian gunmen were increasingly scattershot, suggesting a loss of command and control, the officer said. Hamas says its ambushes continue to inflict Israeli casualties.

Khan Yunis is the hometown of Hamas' Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar, mastermind of the Oct. 7 killing and kidnapping spree in southern Israel that sparked the war.

'No doubt' that Yahya Sinwar is in Khan Yunis

"I assess beyond a doubt that he is in Khan Yunis - along with some of the remaining Hamas leadership," the officer said.

The military has published images of what is said were Hamas tunnels uncovered in Khan Yunis, with white-tiled living spaces and barred cells assumed to have held hostages.

The officer side-stepped a question on whether the tunnels were extensive enough to allow senior Hamas figures to slip out of Khan Yunis and evade Israel's dragnet. "You can move quite a few kilometers (underground)," he said without elaborating.

The military says 228 soldiers have been killed and 1,314 wounded in Gaza Strip ground operations that began on Oct 20, figures that did not specify casualties from Khan Yunis.

One scenario that is not being publicly discussed, but which former top Israeli officials are aware of, is the possibility that at some point Israel may request a global alliance to finish destroying Hamas’s tunnel in Gaza, the Jerusalem Post has learned.

The reason for such a scenario, though ideally, Israel would prefer to destroy all of the tunnels itself, is simply that it may run out of time to do so before a point at which it can no longer operate standing forces deep within Gazan cities and towns.

Getting a global alliance to sign on to the idea of finishing the job, top sources say, could delegate achieving the goal beyond the point at which Israel can work on the issue itself, and potentially justify targeted Israeli returns into Gaza to handle the issue if such a global alliance failed to follow through.

A scenario that is under the wraps

Such a scenario is not being publicly discussed because delegating an Israeli security issue to a global third party could be politically unpopular, and in any event, the government is currently avoiding discussing any concrete plans related to how Gaza will be managed once the IDF withdraws.

Two weeks ago, The Wall Street Journal reported that only 20-40% of all of Hamas’s tunnel network had been destroyed or neutralized in the three months of the Gaza invasion.

On December 3, the Post reported that while the IDF had taken control of 80% or more of northern Gaza by mid-November, it still may only have destroyed 20% or less of northern tunnels to date, without even having done much against southern Gaza tunnels.

On December 21, the Post reported that IDF sources had said that it would take “years” to destroy the entire tunnel network.

Later and despite an entire additional month of fighting, including taking over most of Khan Yunis, multiple additional defense officials confirmed this estimate was unchanged – as recently as January 29.

Only hours after reports of Hezbollah officials being assassinated likely from the air, the IDF on Thursday issued a speech by Air Force Chief Maj.-Gen. Tomer Bar in which he said that Hezbollah continues to lose its forces.

Bar said that the air force currently has dozens of aircraft in southern Lebanon airspace - a possible not-so-thinly veiled hint of an airstrike on the Hezbollah officials. 

Moreover, he said that in a matter of minutes, the air force could jump the number of aircraft from dozens to hundreds if the operational need arose, such as in the event of a larger conflict with the Lebanese terror group.

Clouds of smoke were seen in southern Lebanon on Thursday in what local media reported as an airstrike targeting a vehicle in the region of Nabatieh.

Lebanese and Palestinian reports claimed the attack was carried out by an Israeli drone. At least three casualties were reported in the strike.

דיווח בלבנון על תקיפת כטב"ם לעבר רכב בעיר נבטיה בדרום לבנון, צפונית לליטני@OmerShahar123 pic.twitter.com/HcIFdXMK6D

— כאן חדשות (@kann_news) February 8, 2024

Hezbollah military commander Abbas al Dabs, known by his nickname Hajj Abdullah, was killed in the strike, Sky News Arabia reported.

Clouds of smoke were seen in southern Lebanon on Thursday in what local media reported as an airstrike targeting a vehicle in the region of Nabatieh.

Lebanese and Palestinian reports claimed the attack was carried out by an Israeli drone,

דיווח בלבנון על תקיפת כטב"ם לעבר רכב בעיר נבטיה בדרום לבנון, צפונית לליטני@OmerShahar123 pic.twitter.com/HcIFdXMK6D

— כאן חדשות (@kann_news) February 8, 2024

Clouds of smoke were seen in southern Lebanon on Thursday in what local media reported as an airstrike targeting a vehicle in the region of Nabatieh.

Lebanese and Palestinian reports claimed the attack was carried out by an Israeli drone,

This is a developing story.

The IDF must expand its pool of servicemembers to include ultra-Orthodox and Arab Israeli citizens, war cabinet Minister Benny Gantz said on Thursday afternoon.

Gantz added that, "in the long term," a service bill must be gradually implemented so that the Arab and haredi sector could "enter the circle of service," vowing to work for a "broad agreement."