Israel-Hamas War: What happened on day 219?

The Biden administration has offered to supply Israel with important intelligence information to avoid an extensive IDF operation in Rafah, The Washington Post reported on Saturday, citing four officials. 

According to the Post, the information offered by the US includes details regarding the whereabouts of Hamas leaders and the terror group's tunnels. 

US President Joe Biden said at a fundraiser in Seattle on Saturday that "there could have been a ceasefire as early as tomorrow if Hamas had agreed to release the hostages, women, elderly and wounded."  

The IDF's Nahal Brigade located weapons, destroyed terrorist infrastructure, and eliminated terrorists in the Zeitun area in the Gaza Strip, the IDF announced on Saturday. 

As part of the operation, Nahal soldiers destroyed terrorist infrastructure and found several weapons, including Kalashnikovs, combat vests, and grenades. 

Additionally, the soldiers identified a number of terrorists that posed a threat. An air force aircraft worked in cooperation with the brigade to eliminate the terrorists. The IDF also killed a terrorist belonging to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad who participated in the October 7 massacre. 

Alongside the military's continued operations in the Strip, the IDF's Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) also announced the establishment of an additional field hospital run by the International Medical Corps in the Gaza Strip.

Following extensive alarms in the Upper Galilee, a UAV that crossed from Lebanese territory fell in the area of Beit Hillel, Israeli media reported on Saturday. 

This is a developing story. 

The IDF announced the death of Staff-Sergeant Ariel Tsym, 20-years-old, from Modi'in on Saturday. Tsym was a combat soldier in the 931st Battalion in the Nahal Brigade and was killed in battle in the northern Gaza Strip. 

His family was notified. 

Tsym was posthumously promoted from the rank of Staff-Sergeant to the rank of Sergeant. 

Fallen IDF soldier Ariel Tsym. (credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON'S UNIT)

Egypt, Qatar, and other Arab countries rejected Israel's proposal to control the civil administration in the Gaza Strip the day after the war, the Saudi-affiliated Al-Arabiya network reported on Saturday. 

Earlier, the United Arab Emirates also announced its refusal of the plan. The Emirate's foreign minister criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying, "Netanyahu has no legal authority to invite us to participate in the civil administration of the Gaza Strip."

Additionally, a senior Egyptian source said that Cairo informed all parties concerned that Israel bears responsibility for the deterioration of humanitarian conditions in the Gaza Strip.

Earlier this week, US President Joe Biden referred to governance in Gaza the day after the war, stating, "We are working with Arab countries that are ready to take over the rehabilitation of the Gaza Strip the day after the war and promote the establishment of a Palestinian state according to the vision of the two countries."

Israeli fighter jets attacked a military structure belonging to Hezbollah in the Hamra area in southern Lebanon, the IDF announced on Saturday. 

On Friday, Israel's air defense successfully intercepted two UAVs in Lebanese territory. 

Additional alerts were activated in northern Israel on Saturday when two UAVs crossed from Lebanon and fell in the area of Beit Hillel in northern Israel. No injuries were reported. 

The IDF ordered evacuations of both Jabalia in northern Gaza and portions of Rafah in southern Gaza. Five soldiers were killed in fighting over the weekend.

The IDF said that 100,000-150,000 Palestinian civilians would need to be evacuated from Jabalia for a large renewed operation there, which the IDF notified had started, though at press time, there were still few details.

The IDF evacuates civilians before massive operation

This was the first time since January, when the IDF declared full operational control of northern Gaza that it has effectively acknowledged such a substantial loss of control that it must evacuate between a third and a half of all remaining civilians there in order to undertake another massive operation.

In mid-March, the IDF undertook a significant operation against around 1,000 Hamas fighters at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City for about a week, but it was a targeted operation that did not require evacuating substantial numbers of civilians.

This latest evacuation in Jabalia goes far beyond the periodic small-scale “clean-up” operations that the IDF predicted it would need to undertake for up to nine months from January to put down a second attempted Hamas insurgency.

Smoke rises as displaced Palestinians take shelter at Al Shifa hospital, amid the ongoing conflict between Hamas and Israel, in Gaza City, November 8, 2023. (credit: REUTERS/DOAA ROUQA)

According to the IDF, Hamas is restoring command and control capabilities, and only a larger operation, including evacuating large numbers of Palestinian civilians, would be sufficient to prevent its potential return to power in the near future.

Further, the IDF publicly acknowledged that the months of delay by the government since January in selecting a new entity or hybrid of countries and entities to manage Gaza in place of Hamas has squandered many of the IDF’s operational achievements.

Moreover, the military said that if the government does not choose a replacement for Hamas, a wider number of IDF war achievements could be endangered, and the most likely outcome would be Hamas’s continued attempts to make a comeback.

This is despite Hamas’s loss of 15,000 dead terrorists, a similar number of wounded ones, and a couple of thousand more arrested.

Although the IDF did not comment on the volume of Hamas forces, it appears that the organization’s total number of fighters must have been closer to 40,000 or more on October 7, and not the 30,000 number often discussed.

Alternatively, Hamas has recruited thousands of new operatives during the course of the war.

At this point, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, war cabinet ministers Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, and most of the IDF high command have been pushing for months for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to go forward with US plans to have a reformed Palestinian Authority take over Gaza along with assistance from Washington, NATO and various Arab allies, like Egypt, the UAE and others, but Netanyahu is stridently opposed to PA involvement in Gaza.

Besides Jabalia, the IDF widened its evacuation orders in Rafah from impacting around 100,000 Palestinian civilians to around 300,000 in eastern Rafah.

This is still a fraction of the over one million Palestinian civilians there, but it is a significant escalation over initial IDF moves to only take over parts of the Philadelphi Corridor with Egypt as well as small portions of eastern Rafah.

Given opposition from the US and Egypt, it is unclear how far the IDF operation in Rafah will go.

On Friday, Yediot Ahronot’s Nadav Eyal reported from three sources that half of Hamas’s 4,000-8,000 fighters in Rafah had left the area to avoid being attacked by the IDF.

Three top defense sources have denied Eyal’s report to The Jerusalem Post, including multiple sources with no political affiliation.

News that half of Hamas forces have left Rafah would potentially serve US interests and the views of Gantz and Eisenkot, who want to focus on a hostage deal with Hamas without a full-blown Rafah operation.

A spokesman for the two war cabinet ministers gave a general denial that they had leaked the information, though there were indications that at least one of the sources for the Yediot story could have been a war cabinet member.

There was no way for the Post to independently resolve which narrative regarding Hamas in Rafah was true, though it was also possible that Israeli intelligence on fluid, hidden movements of the terrorist group through tunnels is imperfect, and there may be no clear answer.

Five fallen IDF soldiers 

The IDF announced that five soldiers were killed in a number of different incidents.

Four 19-year-old soldiers having the rank of sergeant were killed in combat in the Zeitoun neighborhood near Gaza City in the northern part of the enclave on Friday. Their names are Itay Levni, Yosef Dasa, Armias Mekurio, and Daniel Levy. All four were soldiers in the 931st Battalion of the IDF’s Nahal Brigade.

An additional three soldiers were injured in the same neighborhood, according to Maariv.

Levni was from Ramat Hasharon, Desa was from Kiryat Bialik, Mekurio was from Beersheba, and Levy was from Kiryat Motzkin.

According to the report, at around 8:30 a.m. on Friday, the 931st Battalion was busy scanning buildings in the area of the neighborhood. An explosive device was likely triggered during the operation, and there were at least two explosions.

Forces of the medical corps immediately rushed to treat the casualties of the attack when the evacuation and rescue mission was carried out under fire. The injured were transferred to Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba.

On Saturday night, the IDF announced the death of 20-year-old Staff-Sgt. Ariel Tsym from Modi’in. Tsym was a combat soldier in the 931st Battalion’s Nahal Brigade and was killed in battle in the northern Gaza Strip.

In a smaller, more classic “clean-up”-style series of operations in Zeitun in northern Gaza, the brigade located weapons, destroyed terrorist infrastructure, and eliminated a relatively small number of terrorists.

As part of the operation, Nahal soldiers seized weapons, including Kalashnikovs, combat vests, and grenades.

Additionally, the soldiers identified a small number of terrorists that posed a threat. An air force aircraft worked in cooperation with the brigade to kill them. The IDF also killed a terrorist belonging to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad who participated in the October 7 massacre.

Alongside the military’s continued operations in the Strip, the IDF’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) also announced the establishment of an additional field hospital run by the International Medical Corps in Gaza.

The hospital joins seven other field hospitals established in Gaza since the beginning of the Gaza war.

Boosting humanitarian aid in Gaza

Established in the Deir al-Balah area in central Gaza, the hospital began operating in recent days and is part of the IDF and COGAT’s initiative to bolster humanitarian aid to the civilian population of Gaza. The hospital’s location is significant, as it can provide humanitarian aid to Gaza residents evacuated from the eastern Rafah area.

As part of the humanitarian efforts to ensure the temporary evacuation of civilians from eastern Rafah, some existing field hospitals were transferred to the expanded Humanitarian Area in Al-Mawasi in coordination with the international community, the IDF said. The field hospital has received an increasing number of tents, food, water, and medicine.

The hospital enables the entry of medical workers and medical equipment, including medicine, beds, food, water, tents, first aid equipment, ventilators, and other materials to construct the field hospital via the Kerem Shalom crossing.

The field hospital will be operated by 150 international medical aid workers, and dozens of beds will be prepared for emergency and routine medical treatments, the military said.

According to a KAN report, 200,000 liters of fuel were transferred to Gaza through the Kerem Shalom Crossing on Saturday. The fuel would be used for essential purposes, such as hospitals, humanitarian areas, logistical centers, and aid distribution.

The military also announced that around 10 IDF soldiers had been attacked by hundreds of hornets in southern Gaza.

The Sheba Medical Center reported that ten soldiers had arrived at the hospital for treatment. Several of them were transferred to the standard wards for further treatment.

“Some of the fighters were stung by hundreds of bees and others by less,” according to Dr. Avi Ironi, director of the Sheba Emergency Medical Center.

“Some of them developed an allergic reaction to the large amount of stings they were exposed to. Intensive care, anesthesia, toxicological treatment, ophthalmologists, and everyone else are involved here,” he said.

“There are reports of cases that have gotten worse, so we intend to monitor them and see they are not getting any worse and that there is no systemic damage. [The soldiers] will remain under observation to see that their condition stabilizes,” Ironi said.

“I have never seen a similar case of hundreds of bees attacking one person. At the moment, there is no danger to anyone’s life, and they are in the safest place possible.”

Soldiers had been attacked by wild dogs in the early stages of the invasion, leading to a mass cull of dogs in Gaza to prevent the spread of disease and prevent the dogs from crossing into Israel and exposing Israeli dogs to rabies or other diseases.

Following sirens in the Upper Galilee on Saturday night, it was identified that five launches were fired from Lebanon and landed in open areas, Israeli media reported.

No damage or casualties were reported from the launches.

Following sirens on Saturday night in the southern city of Ashkelon, one rocket was reported to have fallen in the city along with the fall of a rocket interceptor, Israeli media said on Saturday night, citing the municipality of Ashkelon.

The rocket hit an apartment and caused heavy damage. Three people have been reported as lightly wounded and have been sent to the Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon for treatment. 

This is a developing story.