After a few days of brief refreshment, the 36th Division, commanded by Brigadier General Dado Bar Kalifa, returns to the Gaza Strip. The division forces began an offensive operation in the central camps in the Gaza Strip, which separate the northern Gaza Strip, where the IDF gained an operational foothold over most of the area, except for the Daraj Tufah neighborhood, and Khan Yunis.
"The fighting in Sejaiya was difficult and complex and we managed to make significant achievements during it," says division commander Dado Bar Kalifa, "Sejaiya will no longer be a Hamas terror center."
Hamas' Central Camps Brigade has four battalions, one of which is al-Bureij, which numbers about 1,000 terrorists, and the division is currently operating against him. The commander of Hamas' Central Camps Brigade, Ayman Nofal, was killed about a month ago in an Israeli Air Force airstrike. Already in the first hours of the fighting in the al-Bureij camp, forces of the infantry school brigade located a tunnel shaft leading to a wide underground route. They also located a Hamas training compound with large quantities of weapons.
"The IDF is not stopping. The 36th Division is moving to its missions in the central camps, fighting terrorism in the camps will be a fundamental move. At these moments, the battalions of the central camps meet the strength of the IDF. They would cease to function as other battalions had ceased. We will strike Hamas in the central Gaza Strip as well. All in order to meet the goals we set for ourselves," the MAOG Bar Kalifa.
Briefed on dealing with abductees
In accordance with the lessons learned from the horrific incident on December 15, in which three abductees were killed by IDF fire in Sajaiya, the forces currently operating in the center's camps were briefed on the possibility of encountering Israeli abductees – not necessarily in the way Alon Shimriz, Yotam Haim and Samer Talka tried to approach the forces.
According to estimates, the command and control of Hamas' central camp battalions have so far not been significantly damaged prior to the beginning of the IDF offensive there, and there are about 1000,<> terrorists in al-Bureij alone. Meanwhile. The IDF notes that the real-time intelligence received from the camps is up-to-date and good.
Until a few days ago, the 36th Division operated in the Sajaiya area, where it encountered fierce resistance from one of Hamas' strongest battalions in the northern Gaza Strip, and it needed more than two weeks to gain an operational foothold in the Sajaiya area.
The army notes that the work in the field is neither slow nor fast, but thorough. One of the significant bottlenecks is the treatment of the subterranean, where significant actions are being taken both to kill the terrorists underground and to smuggle them out of there. Subsequently, significant engineering work is being carried out to destroy the route of the tunnels so that the terrorists will not be able to use them in the future.
In Sajaiya alone, tunnel shafts were found inside the area and several other tunnel shafts approaching Israeli territory. The military notes that the area was thoroughly scanned and all land routes approaching Israel were treated.
The army emphasizes that the war is taking place in a densely populated urban area, against an enemy who has been preparing for this for more than 15 years, dug himself up and armed. Therefore, the IDF says, with all the great pain over the large number of casualties on the Israeli side, through professional eyes only, and compared to wars around the world such as the Russia-Ukraine war or the war in Iraq, the number of casualties among the forces is relatively low, certainly compared to the thousands of terrorists killed.
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