News Update on Operation Protective Edge
1. Palestinian sources have reported that the man in charge of money transfers for Hamas in Gaza Mohammed al-Ghoul, who also moonlighted as the Hamas Justice Minister, was killed Sunday afternoon by an IDF rocket that hit his car. The surgical strike in northern Gaza has been confirmed by the IDF, following Palestinian reports.
2. IAF airstrikes Sunday night destroyed an office building in Rafah that housed an office of Hamas’s Interior Ministry, according to AP. The seven-story Zourab building was levelled and the strikes caused severe damage to nearby shops, homes and cars. Another strike hit a nearby shopping centre with dozens of shops, sparking a fire that gutted the two-story building.
3. Yesterday the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee authorized the government’s request to call up another 10,000 reservists. In addition, the committee extended the “special situation on the home front” until September 2 and called for the Finance Ministry to finalize by that date the amount of compensation for damages, direct and indirect, that residents of the south will receive.
4. In an interview with Yahoo News in Cairo, Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal said that Hamas does not try to target civilians. “We do not target civilians, and we try most of the time to aim at military targets and Israeli bases. But we admit that we have a problem. We do not have sophisticated weapons. We do not have the weapons available to our enemy … so aiming is difficult. We do promise you, though, that we will try in the future and we will warn people … We have given warnings to Israeli civilians. We promise that if we get more precise weapons, we will only target military targets.”
5. If no long-term arrangement is reached “within a few days” in Cairo, “on Israel’s terms,” reported Channel 10, then the army will move “to the next stage… a renewed ground offensive.” This could take the form of incursions “in one or more areas… designed to harm Hamas” with the troops then “coming back out.”
6. Haaretz’s Amos Harel noted that despite the killing of top Hamas commanders, and shortages of long-range missiles with no way to replenish them, Gaza is still in the fight for the long haul, with enough short range rockets and mortars to continue to make life hellish for southern residents in an ongoing war of attrition.
7. An Israeli air strike destroyed a 13-story residential tower block in the center of Gaza City on Saturday and initial reports said 17 people were wounded, the Israeli army and Gaza health officials said.
The multi-story building housed an enormous Hamas command centre, IDF sources said, and added that only combatants were inside at the time of the air strike.
Click to watch video – Gaza Bishop: Hamas used Church to fire rockets