Tunnel warfare in Gaza, with Jon Elmer

You are watching and listening to the electronic inifat. I am John Elmer. This is the resistance report for day 68 of this war. I am reporting on June the 5th. Um, as always, let's uh start with the map so people can get uh we can get our bearings here. 82% of the Gaza Strip is now uh a no-go zone uh free fire zone essentially. um displaced populations um uh are in the orange there and the purple is uh Israeli military control. As we know that term has since the beginning of the war been uh a term uh of art, not of science for the Israelis. They always say they control territory uh and the evidence uh has been shown over and over again uh that that's not true which is why you're seeing repeated operations uh in the same areas like we are seeing operations right now in Conunus uh one year after the Israelis leftun saying that they had defeated the communis brigade um and that the war was over inun now returning um and they're doing the same in the north as we will see coming up. This map is from the Office of the Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs. And this map is the Israeli military map. They showed this map at their press briefing uh yesterday. Um that shows where each individual uh unit is operating. So uh you're looking at the south there in the blue, that's Rafa. This is the the battle plan at this stage. they're calling the Rafa model which is essentially uh ethnically cleanse and then completely destroy. Um that is the Rafa model. Um you talked about the aid distribution points. Those are in that area. The dotted line uh that you see there is the Morag corridor between Kunis and Rafa which I have reported on and one of the aid distribution sites is on that corridor. Uh the other two are in the west in Tellesultan up uh towards the brown area uh of that map. The uh Hebrew is just describing which unit is there in the south in Rafa. It's the Gaza division that's in charge. Um the 36th and 98th divisions are moving into Conunus from the south and from the east. And the 98th division uh was in Conunus last year fighting in Cunis. It's also the division that ran around um in late 2024. Uh they the unit that attacked Shifa Hospital. Um they carried out the third invasion of the Jabalia camp um committing crimes all through that area. Now it looks like when you look at this map like there's five divisions of the Israeli military fighting. But the key to what's going on at this point, 600 days into the war, is that these divisions are not fully stocked. They are not uh they don't have the troop numbers that they had at the beginning of the war. The reserveists are not reporting at the rate that they did at the beginning of the war. There's exhaustion in the military. And so these divisions are partial divisions. They're um they're uh collect a collection of uh brigades. Um and and normally there would be five in a division, four or five in a division. And right now there's barely one in most. Um there's a series of battalions in each one. Uh but the fourth strength is a fraction of what it was uh earlier in the war. So when they talk about these things and show a map like this that shows five divisions moving um it's important to note that this is uh part of their public um part of their psychological operations. But what's interesting about this map compared to the previous map is this map actually shows what territory the Israeli military holds. And it's again a fraction of that 80% that the maps previously showed. They've driven out the population from these areas, but they don't control them. And the areas that they do control are, as you can see in the blue there, um surrounding Gaza, those are the buffer zones. The bite into the middle of the map there is the Nitserim corridor, which they had already raised and flattened in the previous uh iterations of this war, and previous battles. You can see in the north that that um that that is the same case. They're pushing in on Beth Lahia in the northwest there. Um but they don't control Beth Lahia. And on the other side of the map in the um northeast is Bethanon. And they have not operated in Bethanoon. And this map clearly shows that. So, I brought you this map just as an interesting uh it's it's somewhat honest from the Israeli military that they don't actually control these areas that they've been telling in the media that they do and driving the populations out um consistently over these uh past few weeks with um their attacks on shelters and their maps uh pointing to that. So, if we look at this next map, um you can see again, so it's a big difference between what they uh they mark as an area um that's a no-go zone versus what they actually control. So, the battle in Conunus has just begun. Um and refugee camps are a big area to take and there have significant resistance forces. There's six battalions in the Casam brigades in Kunis. There's four in Rafa that have not been defeated. Um and so uh that is the situation that we are looking at the Israeli um straightforward this week when they were talking about this area um to the east of Kunis Huzzah. Um according to Army radio, the IDF confirmed that in the past two weeks an operation to destroy to destroy the Khaza neighborhood in eastern Kunis has been completed. Um the the 605th battalion carried it out and the commander uh told his troops in a letter to his subordinates that within a few days we managed to subdue the stronghold. Khazah no longer exists. Um so they are cleansing and destroying the areas that they are moving into. The goal, as I described last week, is openly now not fighting the Cassam brigades, not trying to kill militants per se. It is to take territory to expand the buffer zone and destroy everything inside that territory, which is what is the model of of Rafa. Um, and so just to set it up, the theme of this show is going to be uh tunnel operations. I'm going to show you how uh the tunnels have operated at this point, 600 days into the war. The IDF said last week that there was 900 plus kilometers of tunnels and they even admit themselves that only 25% of that network has been impacted by Israeli military operations. Um but we know that that number is inflated because according to the only people that have been in the tunnels, the Cassam brigades, Saral Kuds and the captives, the captives uh emerged from the tunnels uh when they were released and described the tunnels as a spiderweb. So um when you see these videos of the Israeli military blowing up 600 meters of a tunnel, um that's just an arm of a tunnel of the spiderweb. So that doesn't put the tunnel out of order. And that's why we we see the resistance still able to carry out these operations even in the buffer zones after all this time. So the first tunnel operation that we're going to look at here is in Conunice. We're going to focus on Conunus at the beginning and move our way north. Um so operation um slide number five is the multi-stage ambush um that was described by Casam as part of the stones of David uh ambush. over he see here on the screen the route that the Israeli military took. You could see these five buildings here that are shown. Three of them are rigged um and one of them has uh one of them has uh uh preset explosives in them. And you can see the commanders here using drone footage um to predict the route uh that the uh that the Israeli military will take after the initial strike. We've seen this also throughout the war. this multi-stage um these multi-stage operations where the resistance is predicting. So we see here a backup camera being used. The soldiers are entering to this building that um they Casam calls it a wolf's howl where we saw in previous operations where they'll fire out to to bring the Israelis into that building. Um, here we see fighters working with a thermabaric warhead built by Casam and they're going to move in and ambush the reinforcements and you can see the level of surveillance that the tunnel provides. Um, and so once they get those soldiers in there, they detonate this tunnel which they have done. Um, and here they're showing uh air strikes, Israeli air strikes on the buildings that have been targeted, which is um an effort to destroy the fighters that they Israelis presume are in those buildings. Um, but they're not. They're underground. And that last shot was a soldier running away. Um so a detailed operation carried out in conunis and the tunnels are each part of it because the uh intelligence um reconnaissance and surveillance um before the operations. But as we can see on this next slide which was the um the the from the video. You can see here that the commanders using Casam drone footage or drones captured from the Israelis um to get the overhead view. They predict the route. They know the route that the Israelis military will take into the battle space. Um, but then they're predicting here, and this is the success of the operation is predicting which buildings the Israelis will retreat to after the initial strike. Um, and so they pick those three buildings side by side that they assume the Israeli military will will flee into um based on intelligence, reconnaissance, and surveillance. and then they detonate those buildings where the Israeli soldiers um move to and that is the success of the operation. This next slide was also from the video and you can just see their tunnel access gives them the ability to be within spitting distance of this Israeli military base and be tracking all of their movements uh in order to execute this operation in Ununice. and maybe tomorrow can throw up on the um on the ticker the twi my Twitter account because these are censored videos. There's more to this video that we don't show um because we follow strict uh uh we strictly follow the YouTube community guidelines to keep this show uh on the air. So you can check the full operations out. But this the core of the operation that you're seeing and the ability of the fighters to move into this area that the Israelis believe is cleansed of humans and there's a zero tolerance for humans in this area. It's a free fire zone. Um so there's not there's no intermingling with civilians who have remained in this area. Um that's not what's going on. all this these accusations of human shields. Everyone who knows this and has been following this show throughout the war knows they're ridiculous because there's no civilians in the areas that these battles are taking place in. Um and Kasam just by moving becomes a target. If the Israeli military sees movement, they target that movement. Um, so, uh, a significant multi-staged ambush in Conunice carried out under the banner of David Stones, which is what Casam is calling this series of operations uh, since the war resumed. And now, if we look at number eight, you can see Saral Kuds in Kunis. Again, these fighters have been preparing a year for this battle because they don't move around Gaza. They stay in their territorial defense. You're looking at uh Saral Kuds here planting a pressure plate for their IED. They have a massive barrel bomb which is filled up with uh unexloded Israeli bombs. They harvest those bombs, put them into a massive barrel, bury the barrel, and now here they're attaching the pressure plate to it. the in this case it's a um a D9 armored bulldozer by Caterpillar in Poria, Illinois that drives over and triggers the pressure plate. We're going to see it here from two different angles. Um but the setup uh of the pressure plate is such that only heavy vehicles will trigger it. Um no local vehicle will trigger it. It has to be an armored vehicle to press down hard enough on it and you can see a direct hit on the D9 bulldozer. This is the second angle, the second camera uh of the same operations. You can see again around destroyed green houses, which is uh the area that the Israelis are working here in Conunus. You can see they are not inside right now. They're still out in the buffer zone. Um, you can see the medevac here evacuating the soldier. And here in the upper left, you can see the D9 destroyed being dragged home by a Nom troop carrier. So access and egress from this operation is from a tunnel as well. Um, and I just wanted to point out a couple things that you might not have seen in the initial running of this video. Remember the next slide will show you um that Sar Kuds here is using a stake. Uh you can see the iron stake in his hand here that he's using uh as a shovel. And if we look at the next slide, you can see uh he's literally blacksmith an iron stake uh into a shovel. You know, the the accusations that the the fighters uh are stealing aid are so ridiculous that these fighters are building their own shovels so as to not use a shovel that could be used, say, by civil defense in rescuing, as I'm sure everybody that watches this show saw this week, rescuing babies from flattened buildings in areas that are not no-go zones. The massacres are happening in areas that are not no-go zones. The no-go zones are where the fighting takes place. The massacres against civilians take place outside of those areas. And I think everybody saw the the horrific footage of the baby this week uh along with Israel's uh hundreds of air strikes that they carried out this week. Interestingly, they're not anymore saying how many air strikes a day they are carrying out. They counted us each day. They told how many in their field reports and we got uh reports up to 160 150 each day every day for a long stretch of time since March. Um getting them up to 3,500 air strikes. This week they've just said dozens and dozens. So um they're starting to fudge their numbers. They're also fudging their uh wounded numbers which we've seen throughout the war at times. Um but those are happening again uh downplaying their casualties. um at this point because the war is not popular in Israel and calling up these reserves uh to send them into Gaza to die uh to continue the genocide uh is something that they want to keep information uh under wraps on that. So that is an operation in Conunus. You can see his homemade blacksmith uh they're literally blacksmithing their own shovels. So I just wanted to point that one out. The next one is a mortar operation and there was a significant number of these mortar operations. We could show a whole bunch of these but um yeah uh the mortar teams are constantly at work and this is a sural kuds operation Islamic jihad but the joint operations room participated in these operations all week. Um so we saw um Sarah we saw the Cassam brigades but we also saw the PFLP Abu Ali Mustapa brigades carrying out um artillery uh operations. We saw the Alamoodi brigades from the Alaxa martyrs brigades carrying out uh operations. The DFLP um national resistance brigades carried out operations and we've seen that all throughout the war. The joint operations uh function as essentially an auxiliary force and they are in charge of um standoff fire, artillery, mortars, rocket artillery um and they have been part of that in uh communist significantly this week. Um, there was a number of mortar operations that measured in the dozens this week in Cunis because the Israeli military is not inside Kunis yet. They're being targeted on the outskirts and the Israeli military is moving slowly and Netanyahu even admitted that this week. They're moving slower than at any point during the war because they're casualty averse right now. Um, and so they are uh carrying out massacres, but their soldiers aren't too interested in face-to-face fighting with the resistance who are waiting in their positions um for the battle. So, we will see coming up, I think, in the weeks ahead. Um, we will see a number of resistance operations videos. Just this week alone, there was 20 operations in Kunis. um a number of Yasine strikes versus tanks, yes strikes versus troops, um IEDs versus excavators and tanks. All of the things that we have come to known to know from the resistance. Um so that is in the south. This battle is in the south. We'll move now to the north. Uh we'll take a look at map number 12. Yeah, same thing. overlapping uh no go zones that are that don't match that IDF map about area that they control. This is not area they control. This is area that they are ethnically cleansing uh on the edge of and they use that word they use the word cleanse and Rafa is the model of cleansing. So we know what that looks like in the north. These operations have been focused um northwest in Bet Lia um and also in the Jabalia camp for the fourth invasion of the Jabalia camp is just beginning. They're just inching in and they have not touched uh Beth Hanoon who gave them a serious bloody nose at the end of the just before the ceasefire when the general's plan as it was called to uh to cleanse all of North Gaza failed uh because the resistance didn't even let the Israelis uh carry out that operation in Bethanoon, which is a farming village um let alone all throughout Jabalia, Jabalia camp um and Gaza City where the most fighters, the most uh battalions are. Um so this is uh the map we're going to look at Shijaya operations here. Number 13 is the evac notice again. So they clear all this area. They call it a no-go zone. They push everyone into these smaller and smaller areas and then the resistance moves into the red areas and that is where the battle takes place. So the warning here that you're looking at is for the east. It is for Jabalia uh and Gaza city neighborhoods of Shajaya um Tufar and Dur and Zetun which are east of uh Gaza City. Again we haven't seen uh troops pushing into those areas yet. They're moving very slowly. Uh but we saw a sniper operation in Shaya number 14. Um again the snipers access via tunnel uh both access and egress for this Al Ghoul sniper operation that is also part of the uh stones of David series of ambushes. We have to edit this. We have edited out the soldiers here and of course we're going to edit out the soldiers dropping um which they do and the Israelis admitted seriously wounded soldier in this operation uh in this David Stone operation. Um, we can see after this uh also that the uh excavator that was in the way uh saw what happened here and hightails it out of the area which is something we see the soldiers doing but it's interesting to see the uh because the Al Ghoul is an anti-material rifle. It would make an absolute mess of that excavator. So it's probably the right idea by the military, but fleeing these sniper operations are something that we've watched all throughout uh this war. So another operation in Shijaya. Next is number 15. There was two television IEDs set up against this um this force working. Again, we see CTT CCTV camera footage all over these areas. The Israeli military is very quick to say that there's cameras everywhere and tunnels everywhere, which they are doing. Um, the television IED is one of the three core explosive devices that Cassam builds. We know the Shaw, the EFP is used against tanks. Um, you can see soldiers uh that we have blurred out again in there to meet uh YouTube guidelines. Um, and Casam also makes the Radia, which is an area uh explosive. And of course, hand grenades. That was the first thing that the Casam Brigades built was their own hand grenades. So, they're accessing this via tunnel. And then they're watching from a third uh from a third place uh on the screens, which keeps their uh you can see the soldiers blurred out there um to meet YouTube guidelines. And the next slide um is uh a real detailed operation that we're going to take a little bit to uh so these are M15 uh American anti-tank mines that have been given to the Israelis in large numbers. Um we can see an operation here that is going to target an Israeli force that's stationed in this house. And this is beforehand. This is the tunnel. Sariah's showing us the tunnel. Um they don't often do this, but uh they're showing us the way that they accessed this building, and you can see the way the tunnels are used. Um they're buried below the ground. You don't just uh uh they're buried. The tunnels are buried. You have to dig them out. Um and here they're rigging up with IEDs this house where you can see somebody has just fled this house. Um and uh the Israeli military is using this place as a base. And so the resistance targets it again predicting which houses along the route. Uh here's uh again section that's been edited out with the soldiers and I blurred these soldiers. Um but this is the detonation of that operation and again it's from below ground where the fighters are safe uh detonating the building. This is in Shajaya. again. Um, Sarah said that they uh had confirmed casualties and that they had watched the medevac on this operation in Shijaya. Um, this operation took place last week. Every video that I'm showing you this week is the same as ever. All the videos were published in the week since you last saw me. Um, and so this operation falls within that. Um, you can see the setup around the building. You can see the tank and um the D9 bulldozer around probably around back like we saw in the previous video. There's more armored vehicles um that just aren't in this camera shot. And I'm going to break down each of these segments for you because the detail in this is remarkable. If we look at number 17, so you can see the way the tunnel is built in this operation. They give us the the the shot of it. The tunnel is key to this because um they're accessing the area in an ethnically cleansed zone. If they're out on the street, they are targeted instantly and killed. Um which is how you know that these videos that the Israelis are publishing of drone strikes on civilians walking in the middle of the road are civilian massacres. They say they're fighters, but they're not fighters. We've never seen fighters walking down the middle of the road. And here you see it uh in stark reality under this tunnel. The next slide you can see the use of the uh this is a return to sender operation. They're using these M15 mines that the Americans gave to the Israelis and the Israelis used to blow up the houses. Um they've were captured by Sarah and used in this operation. In the next uh part of it that uh we clipped here is they're hiding the IED inside the pot because at this point in the war, the Israelis are very aware of the ways the houses are booby trapped. Um they send uh cameras in as we've seen. They send dogs in. So these are the disguising of this operation in a pot. Um the next one is the way it's used in the wall, tucking it into the wall here of someone's house. uh in behind. They showed in the video how it was on both sides of the wall. Then they'll cover that up. Uh and the uh real interesting note is this next one here where the wiring he's even put the wiring to match the houses wiring uh so as to not um be seen by the Israelis or the dogs or the cameras on the cameras on the dogs and cameras on the drones in this operation. So sign significant ambush in uh Shajaya. There was a number of uh other operations in Shijaya this week. On Tuesday um the Israeli military reported an incident where a fighter emerged from a tunnel into an alley in Shijaya. The alleys of Shajaya have vexed the Israelis for generations. Um the fighter um hit shot two soldiers basically from point blank range and escaped back down through the alley back down into the tunnel and he survived returned to his base safely. Um the incident according to the IDF occurred in an area where the IDF had been operating for a relatively long time. Therefore, they believed that there was nobody in this area, but the tunnels allow them to access the Casam fighters to access um the area that the Israelis believe they're safe in and hit them. At the time of this operation, the Israelis said there was an Air Force uh combat helicopter. So, this this unit has Apache helicopter support and still couldn't find um the resistance fighter who killed a at least one soldier. They're admitting to um and wounded two others. There was also an operation that the Israeli military reported on that we haven't got a field report yet from Casam, but we will certainly in the coming days that the uh army radio is reporting that Casam used a drone dropped explosive on a special forces unit that comprised of two Yahalom tunnel unit soldiers. These are the special forces that go down into the tunnels and one Shinbet officer were wounded in that. And also there was an operation in the Jabalia camp that carried out a multi-hour battle that was based around IEDs detonated um along the road that the Israelis take um and three uh Gavadi brigade soldiers were killed in that operation and two were seriously wounded. According to the army investigation cited in according to the IDF investigation cited in army radio, this particular scene uh along this road had an estimated 20 explosive devices spread out along the route. And the IDF estimates that these were activated from a tunnel and they made a big uh big uh deal of it this week in their communications talking about how these houses all have tunnels. um and that is the major threat to their forces and why they are moving slowly. So that is the northern uh Gaza Strip report. I just wanted to quickly bring people up to date with Yemen uh because uh over the past two weeks there has been 19 ballistic missile attacks on Israel and six drone attacks with the Yafa drone uh in the past two weeks according to the Yemeni armed forces and Abdul Malik al Houthi. Um and one of the statements from the missile attack uh by the many armed forces said the many armed forces are following the developments of the battle in Gaza and stand in reverence and respect for the sacrifices of its free and steadfast sons. They extend the military salute to the Alcasam brigades and Sariah aluds and to all the heroic mujahedin in all the factions who defend the nation when everyone else has abandoned them. May the eyes of the cowards never sleep. Free dear independent Yemen is with you and we will not let you down even when the whole world does. It is with you. we Yemen is with you until the aggression against you stops and the siege is lifted. Um in another uh ballistic missile attack two days ago um the many armed forces pointed out that the uh missile strike prevented American military cargo planes from landing. Um they're landing at Navatim uh air base in the south and also presumably landing uh some parts uh at Bengurian airport. But we can see in this next slide the uh C17 heavy lift that was on its way to Gaza just uh turn tail, I guess you call that. when you do a complete 180 and head back where you came from, instead of dropping off uh military parts uh and components and weapons uh to Israel, it flew back uh to its base. I think in this case um the base was in Italy. Oh, Ramstan in Germany. Um and they this was there was multiple of these and I reported last week and Norah reported as well um on the 800 airlifts u of heavy weapons heavy airlift planes bringing weapons to uh Israel 90,000 tons the Ministry of Defense bragged about. So that's one of these planes. So the air blockade is working in the sense that these planes are not landing. Um, and you can see in this next slide, uh, from, this is from, uh, M Oink, who put this one together, and you can see them all scrambling here in circles, not wanting to land at the air base that they're supposed to be landing in the south of Israel to unload these weapons. Um, so a successful uh, blockade uh, by the Yammeni armed forces is part of their aerial blockade of Israel. And um just as a last point number 33, this is the Casam Brigades saluting uh the Yemenes for this. Um you can see the Jambia Yemeni dagger in through the tarmac of Bengurian airport. You can see caution tape on this Kasam poster uh that says closed by order of Yemen, meaning the airport. You can see the uh control tower in the background. And this is from an Abu Oda, the spokesperson for the Kasam Brigades. He sent this message out in May. Glory to Yemen, the twin brother of Palestine. May God guide your aim, bless your struggle, and accept your sacrifices, Abu Oda said. He said, "You are from us and we are from you." So, solidarity between Yemen uh and the resistance in Gaza that we have been tracking on the resistance report for many months now. Um and that is the resistance report for day 68 of this war. [Music]