I could bring you a daily accounting of the war in Gaza – where the IDF fought, how many bombs were dropped and how many terrorists eliminated. Instead, in this diary entry, I’ve chosen to bring you an overview so that when you hear about this IDF operation or that battle in Gaza, you’ll understand the big picture and be able to put it into context.

But what is important to understand and rejoice over is that the engineering department of the Southern Command has in recent months upgraded and improved beyond recognition the rate and capabilities of discovering and destroying the underground terrorist bases of Hamas in the Gaza Strip. With the help of drilling robots developed ad hoc for the forces by Israeli experts from industry and academia, and with the help of trucks and engineering tools borrowed from civilian bodies, the IDF at this time manages to destroy an average kilometer of tunnel with a thousand mines or 12 tons of explosives within 10 hours, what in earlier battles required days.

After nine months of war, data published this evening (Tuesday) by the IDF estimates that 14 thousand terrorist operatives have been eliminated or arrested since October 7 out of about 30 thousand Hamas terrorists, and several thousand more from the Islamic Jihad and other organizations.

“Hamas is running out of armaments and armed men,” the IDF said today. In addition, most of the Hamas battalions were severely damaged in ground maneuvers and repeated raids against their regrouping into strongholds amid the displaced Gazans. According to the army’s data, among those killed are six terrorists at the rank of brigade commanders, more than 20 terrorists at the rank of battalion commanders, and about 150 terrorists at the rank of company commanders.

Writing in Ynet, Yoav Zeyton paints a comprehensive picture of the situation. Four Hamas battalions remain which are capable of operating on a relatively high level. And Hamas still has ground to air missiles capable of reaching Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

But three battalions out of four operating in Rafah have been greatly weakened by the IDF ground operations going on against them for the last two months, hampering their ability to act in a battalion framework.

The IDF is now focusing its efforts on the divisional operation in Rafah in the Tel-e-Sultan battalion, the last of the four. “In Rafah, we initially found streets laced with IEDs, and then we recognized that the entire area was booby trapped,” the IDF said. “There are less than 30,000 Gazans [out of 235,000 at beginning of the war N.R.] left in Rafah.”

According to the IDF, military operations against Hamas have resulted in a dramatic deepening of damage to Hamas’s capabilities: for example, according to the army’s data, out of 1,235 terrorists in Hamas’s strong front battalion in the Shejaia neighborhood on the eve of the war, only 435 terrorists remained after the ground maneuver in November and December, and a similar decrease in 60% to 80% was also recorded in the scope of the weapons of that battalion.

Against these “remnants” the raid of the 98th Division with the 7th Brigades and the paratroopers went out last month. In this raid, seven tunnels near the border fence were also destroyed.

“Those who count kilometers of tunnels don’t understand the story or the event – these are Hamas weapons factories and comfortable offices for commanders and passages between villages and warehouses – everything underground,” the IDF explained. “We have our work cut out for us against a terrorist army that has had twenty years to dig itself in. But there are significant signs of breakdown among Hamas operatives because the conditions underground are so difficult – humid, airless and hot. And to be stuck there underground for nine months… The story of the tunnels is a pit without a bottom.”

The army also said: “Hamas has returned to producing anti-aircraft missiles, including explosive drones, and re-establishing itself in the displaced persons’ shelters, which we attack frequently with the methods we have developed, with precise raids and marauding firing squads. The level of Hamas rocket launches has dropped to what we saw in 2007, with some terrorists exposing themselves hastily in open areas to mount attacks. In a short time we are able to eliminate them. The other day, terrorists tried to shoot at our forces in the Netzer corridor from a school with displaced persons, but they were beaten and stopped by Gazan civilians sheltering there.

“There are displaced persons’ shelters where Hamas has opened military production halls and classrooms which they have turned into interrogation and torture rooms for Gazans. We attacked some of these shelters repeatedly in the last month, and in one of these attacks in Nuseirat we eliminated 40 terrorists, half of whom were planning a major attack on IDF forces in the Gaza Strip. In these shelters there are many more Hamas development centers that we continue to hunt down and eliminate.”

In the meantime, more details are being revealed about the attempted assassination of Muhammad Deif on Saturday, about which there is a little more optimism in the IDF. The attack was carried out with heavy hail bombs at exactly 10:29 AM against a secure house measuring approximately 150 square meters. “The goals of the war can be met… It’s not ‘the day after’ but Gaza that existed before will not be there – neither militarily nor governmentally. There are alternatives that are being considered.”

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