On the ground, the IDF said this morning that “high-intensity fighting” continues in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis, but the Wall Street Journal reports that as much as 80% of Hamas’s vast warren of tunnels under Gaza remains intact. That is after weeks of Israeli efforts to destroy them, U.S. and Israeli officials said, hampering Israel’s central war aims. It is another indication, perhaps, that the war is not going so well as the Netanyahu government would like the world to believe.
U.S. and Israeli officials have had difficulty precisely assessing the level of destruction of the tunnels—in part because they can’t say for certain how many miles of tunnels exist, the WSJ reports. The officials from both countries estimate 20% to 40% of the tunnels have been damaged or rendered inoperable, U.S. officials said, much of that in northern Gaza.
In addition, Israel’s primary war aims—killing or capturing top Hamas leaders, and rescuing the roughly 100 remaining hostages—are, at times at odds, officials said. “The question is: Is there a real way to get the hostages out alive?” asked a senior Israeli military official. “Otherwise we would have been much more forceful in our approach.”
