⭕️ Israel now vows to hunt down and kill every besieged resistance fighter trapped in Rafah’s tunnels – The Cradle
⭕️ Israel now vows to hunt down and kill every besieged resistance fighter trapped in Rafah’s tunnels
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“Either they surrender, or we’ll kill them.”
Israeli forces now openly say their “main mission” in Rafah is to “destroy or capture the enemy,” referring to dozens of Palestinian resistance fighters trapped for months in tunnels on the Israeli controlled side of the so-called ‘Yellow Line.’
Col. Adi Gonen of the Golani Brigade told reporters the army is working “day and night” to locate the fighters in Rafah’s Al-Janina neighborhood, after combat engineers destroyed hundreds of meters of tunnels and warplanes hit more than 60 targets, including tunnel shafts and residential buildings, according to Israeli media.
Israeli sources admit they no longer know how many remain alive, early estimates of around 200 shrunk to 150, then 80, and now “several dozen,” whom they describe as starving and short on supplies after months underground.
In recent weeks, mediators, the US and regional channels, had discreetly explored an arrangement that would have allowed the besieged fighters to cross the Yellow Line unarmed into resistance held territory in exchange for the remains of Israeli officer Hadar Goldin, whose body Hamas located and returned in early November as part of the ceasefire framework.
But Palestinian and regional sources say Israel backed away from these Rafah understandings after recovering Goldin’s body, and Israeli officers now confirm that safe passage is off the table.
Instead of a negotiated exit, occupation forces are tightening the siege, demolishing tunnels, encircling Al-Janina, and using repeated air and artillery strikes to collapse the underground network and wear down those who remain.
Despite limited weapons and increasingly scarce food, the fighters have repeatedly evaded capture, occasionally surfacing at night to scavenge supplies before slipping back below ground, Israeli reports say.
On 22 November, the Israeli army claimed a Qassam fighter crossed the Yellow Line and opened fire on its troops, then used the incident to justify a wave of airstrikes that killed over 21 Palestinians, most of them civilians, in southern Gaza, according to local medical sources.
As commanders frame the tunnels as a final “standoff” to be resolved “either by surrender or death,” Israel is signaling that it intends to end this siege not through negotiation nor even real confrontation, but through brute force, relying on superior firepower to strike from a distance rather than face the underground fighters it has so far been unable to defeat.
READ FULL ARTICLE: This article originally appeared on The Cradle
