Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, speaking to IDF forces in Rafah on Thursday, said that their operation there was about making sure "the faucet to Hamas is closed" from being able to rearm.
He said, "many tunnels have already been destroyed and many more will be destroyed soon," which would finally end the terror group's major cross-border capability to resupply itself with weapons.
Next, he said that "the operation will continue with additional forces which will invade ... this operation will continue and intensify."
Future and capabilities
"Hamas is an organization with no future. It has no capability to manufacture weapons, no supply, no munitions," saying that the IDF is taking it apart as a military organization.
Despite Gallant's claims, IDF sources were still unclear about how many Hamas cross-border tunnels there were into Egypt, and it was also unclear how long it would take for the IDF to locate and destroy them all.
Further, despite IDF's progress in Rafah, Hamas has managed to fire more rockets and mortars on Israeli forces and southern Israel since the invasion of Rafah started than it had for most of the last month.
The IDF is hoping that these are the last gasps of Hamas's rocket and mortar capabilities, which had been kept hidden in Rafah, but some of the fire has also come from Jabalia in northern Gaza.