Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that he was confident that the main phase of the war against the Islamist Hamas in the Gaza Strip would be concluded soon.
“We are moving toward the end of the phase of dismantling Hamas’s terror army,” he said in Jerusalem at a reception for cadets at the National Defense Academy. “We will continue to fight their remnants.”
Netanyahu had earlier visited the Gaza Division, currently stationed in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah, where he had seen “very significant progress,” he said.
Israel has been bombarding Gaza for months and launched a ground offensive following Hamas’s massive attack on southern Israel on October 7. At least 37,765 Palestinians have been killed and another 86,429 wounded in Gaza since then, according to the coastal strip’s health authority.
The offensive in Rafah on the border with Egypt is aimed at dismantling the last major Hamas fighting units, Netanyahu said. However, the Islamist militia remains militarily active in the form of smaller units.
The Israeli Prime Minister’s words indicate that the army’s major ground offensive in the Gaza Strip could soon come to an end.
Netanyahu and senior military officials have frequently stressed that Israeli forces would remain in strategic locations in the closed coastal area even after the heavy fighting phase. This would primarily include the so-called Philadelphi Corridor, a 14-kilometer (9-mile) narrow strip that runs along the border with Egypt near Rafah on the Gaza side.
Earlier on Monday, about 20 rockets were fired into Israeli territory from the Gaza Strip, with Israeli artillery responding, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reported.
Some rockets were intercepted, while others landed in open countryside, it said. Air raid sirens sounded at locations near the border, ordering residents to take cover. The IDF said it had fired artillery at the launch sites.
According to Israeli media, the attacks were the worst in a long time.
Thousands of rockets were fired at Israeli targets as far away as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in the first months of the war. The attacks have since decreased in frequency.
