The local news commentators seem to think the IDF is actually closing in on Yihyah Sinwar, I hope they’re right. I keep wondering if all the tunnels from Gaza to Egypt are really closed. I know that there was once a very lucrative smuggling route via those tunnels, and Egypt doesn’t want the IDF to operate in Sinai along the “Philadelphia route” that parallels the border fence. The Egyptians have done some other things that I like recently. I’ve heard they told the Syrians not to allow Iranian, or Iranian backed forces to operate inside Syrian territory. Egypt is losing a lot of Suez canal revenue because of the Houthis in Yemen. They also dug a deeper barrier to tunnels along the Sinai fence (which doesn’t mean the smuggling route is actually completely closed, but it helps).
The IDF has almost finished off the Khan Yunis Hamas terrorist battalion. The slow search and destroy tactics are killing off terrorists at a rapid rate (over a hundred a day) with fewer and fewer Israelis lost in the process. There are still 3-4 battalions of terrorists intact in parts of the southern Gaza strip. Some of them are in Rafah, where the Egyptian gate is and where the ‘humanitarian’ aid trucks enter. I still think that it would be a good idea to have the IDF set up distribution points for that aid and take the task away from Hamas and UNRWA. It seems the IDF high command is not too interested in doing that. It would be good to get UNRWA out of the picture there. As things stand, when they distribute the cargo from the trucks Hamas gets whatever it wants first, and then also oversees where the remainder goes. I do not believe that to be a good arrangement.
Wetherhorn 