‘Nakba 2.0’ Emerges as Hamas’ Name for Its Current Crisis, as the Scale of Its Disaster Comes Into Focus in Gaza
From underground tunnels, Hamas’s terrorists are reported to be crying out for help as Israeli troops fight their way through the subterranean maze that has long served as the enemy hideout.
“The Palestinians are describing these as Nakba photos,” says Arab affairs analyst Zvika Yehezkeli from Israel’s Channel 13 about video footage showing Gazan civilians fleeing active combat zones under white flags of truce.
Translated into English as “catastrophe,” Nakba is the Arabic word of choice Palestinian Arabs use to portray the collective trauma they endured as a consequence of Israel’s victory in 1948. The fact that Gazans are using this term to describe their current crisis reflects a recognition of the dawning disaster now engulfing Hamas.
Mr. Yehezkeli knows whereof he speaks. Not only is he a close follower of the Arab press, but his web of contacts among senior Palestinian Arab leaders from all factions — including Hamas – is extensive. His Arabic is so good that he was able to go undercover as a Jordanian jihadi to film a television expose of Muslim Brotherhood networks in Europe and the US.
“As IDF forces probe ever deeper into Gaza City, you’ll hear ever louder calls from Hamas for a ceasefire,” Mr. Yehezkeli predicts in an interview on Channel. “Even now every senior Hamas official doing interviews on Arab media is begging for a humanitarian pause in the fighting … the people of Gaza now realize there’s a new boss in town and it’s Israel.”
Events on the ground have borne out the truth of that assessment. Over the past 24 hours, Israeli troops have captured several key Hamas defensive positions.
After a bitter 10-hour firefight, units of the Nahal Infantry Brigade captured Post 17 , the primary Hamas fortification in the Jabalia Refugee Camp of northern Gaza. Specialist combat engineers have begun the task of sealing or clearing the underground warren of tunnels stretching for miles under the sandy surface.
Israeli troops fighting their way through the upper tier of tunnel systems are now hearing cries of desperation in Arabic from the levels below. “There’s not enough air and we’re choking,” these Hamas terrorists are reported to be yelling, “but we’re trapped and can’t get out.”
Over the past few days, Israeli troops have destroyed over 130 tunnel entrances. In that process, they’ve uncovered a mother-lode of actionable intelligence that adds to their understanding of the Hamas troop dispositions that await them.
An Israeli combined-arms task force of infantry, tanks, and combat engineers is fighting its way through a heavily fortified neighborhood on the outskirts of Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Over 50 Hamas terrorists have so far been killed in this battle, among them an anti-tank missile unit commander, Ibrahim abu-Machiv.
Israeli TV journalist Ilana Dayan was embedded with the IDF’s 401st Armored Brigade as it attacked along the coast of Gaza. The brigade commander, Colonel Benny Aharon, described the battle his troops were fighting in a way that was reminiscent of the Pacific Theater of World War II. A no-quarter war marked by instances of, on the part of Hamas, perfidy.
The United States Naval War College defines perfidy as a war crime of battlefield deception designed to invite the confidence of soldiers with the intent to betray that confidence. Colonel Aharon described the perfidious act he witnessed as a “humanitarian ambush when a woman with children emerged from a building just as Hamas terrorists opened fire from across the street.”
