Israeli officials said that Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, is not hiding in Rafah, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has prioritized IDF operations there.
According to what the Times of Israel newspaper reported yesterday, Friday, citing Israeli officials, the latest information regarding the whereabouts of Yahya Al-Sinwar indicates that he is in tunnels around Khan Yunis.
The Israeli newspaper indicated that Netanyahu has raised the potential Israeli military operation in Rafah to the top of his public agenda, with the belief that targeting the Hamas leadership remains a major goal of the Israeli war as well.
According to the newspaper, the two officials who spoke to The Times of Israel were unable to determine Sinwar’s current location with certainty, but they cited recent intelligence assessments that placed the Hamas leader in tunnels in the Khan Yunis area, about 8 kilometers north of the city of Rafah.
A third Israeli official confirmed that Sinwar, whose elimination Israel made a key element in destroying Hamas, is still in Gaza.
Netanyahu pledged months ago to launch a major attack in Rafah, arguing that the operation was necessary to defeat Hamas, which maintains four of its six remaining brigades in the city.
But one of the officials, who spoke to The Times of Israel, said that many Hamas fighters in Rafah had fled northward as Israeli threats of invasion escalated in recent weeks.
While Israel says that 18 of the 24 Hamas battalions have been dismantled, the movement’s fighters were able to regroup and return to the areas previously cleared by the Israeli army, according to the Israeli newspaper.
In the absence of a diplomatic strategy to complement military operations, many of the IDF’s achievements on the ground were short-lived, the Israeli official told The Times of Israel.
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