Resistance sends messages to Israel, Gaza during fifth prisoner swap, with Jon Elmer

it's the 13th of February day 496 since October the 7th the 26th day of the ceasefire and today we're going to be looking at the fifth prisoner exchange of phase one of the ceasefire and this prisoner Exchange took place in Dar Bala uh where Abu Bakr was just talking about and it's the seventh separate location that Kasam has done these handovers from from the south in conun to the north uh to the north of the Valia Camp uh on the border with B lahia which is where um the third exchange was so we're seeing this organization across Gaza and I think that's uh something to note uh before we watch this so there's going to be some audio here for the first few seconds of slide number one tomorrow so I just wanted to give you a little clip of uh of the uh of the soundtrack that of this video again high production value um significant uh a lot of significant details in this video and you could see this is the shadow unit getting their directive um and like ter aom from Al jazer said while reporting this on Saturday morning the car emerges out of nowhere where these are not long convoys of cars again I've removed the prisoners from here following the third Geneva Convention I don't think that we should be showing them uh on either side uh so we're going to continue to not do that um but you can see this is in uh Daryl Bala you can see the commander talking and he says directly he addresses Israel directly he says please I address you continue implementing the second phase of the deal and try to get everyone out there are lot of prisoners with the alasan brigades and I want all the prisoners to return home continue implementing the second and third phases so that's what the commander is saying there and you can see him he is standing in front of martyr posters of the commanders from the Central Division Central Brigade of the Kasam brigades and that's Iman nol in particular he was killed early in the war um and Marwan Isa who was the deputy to Muhammad alde and really the operations Chief and he's from alar which is in the middle camps as well um so you're seeing the Handover again hundreds if not thousands of Fighters on the ground um in a completely separate location and we've been pointing this out all throughout the war that the uh the fighters operate in territorial units they're not running around Gaza and now we're seeing that being the case uh here again uh the demonstration that these prisoners are being held in different places throughout Gaza um they're being held by the shadow units um Cam's making a statement in these videos Israel is watching these videos in detail um and you can see that there's they're not the camera's not uh focusing in on things for very long I did notice I skipped the map tomorrow maybe we could throw the map up now just give people a sense um I was going to lead with this map but you can see uh Daryl in the Central Area there and the key um landmarks that's the narim corridor that divides the north from the south Gaza City zetune is Gaza City um just to the north there and you can see the main camps narat Camp which where um The Raid was to uh the massacre to rescue those three captives was the only um Rescue of captives throughout the entire War you can see the barage refugee camp Al magazi refugee camp and darl Bala uh which predates um is not a camp has camps in it but it is not it is itself part of historic Gaza as Abu Bakr was talking about um so just to give you a sense and south of K yunas is Rafa so we normally focus in on um and the main reason was something that Abu Bakr pointed out was that darlala did not um experience the to the total Destruction Invasion um that was um that to find the other places in Gaza and so we haven't focused uh that much on the middle camps but we will today because there's a couple interesting details in this um that I want to point out to uh to everybody so let's look at number two um because this is the thing so the shadow unit I gave a break a breakdown last show on the shadow unit this is Cam's uh unit in charge of the prisoners it was set up in 2006 after the capture of gillad Shalit under the command of Muhammad sinir Yahya sinar's brother who is a commander in con Yunis and is now one of the top commanders if potentially the top commander of Kasam we'll see how this all unfolds in the months ahead um but the shadow unit uh reports directly um reported directly to Muhammad alde who uh Kasam acknowledged was killed earlier in the war believed to have been killed in July um last summer in the war um but so we're seeing the shadow unit also the same way as the territorial units because now we're seeing Shadow unit in darlala um so that's an interesting uh detail to note um this exchange of prisoners was three captives Israeli captives for 183 Palestinians 73 of them had life or long sentences and of them were people captured in Gaza no charges against them not even a pretense of there being charges against them captured as bargaining chips and sent to torture camps in southern Israel like City tan which will be I'm sure there'll be books and reports written for decades on the torture uh that went on in those camps and so it's just brutal uh and people in Gaza celebrated so much for the people that came to that were returned to Gaza uh the celebrations with fireworks and gunfire fire actually set off Israel's Iron Dome uh so the Iron Dome fired uh missile interceptors into the air because the celebration in Gaza was so significant for the prisoners so um just a a couple notes on the shadow unit so the attempt this in the first phase uh of this exchange this is exchange five of um there will be eight ultimately um if all goes according to plan um and 290 prisoners that are serving life sentences will be released in this first phase and that's half of the Palestinian po uh prison population that has life sentences and the Palestinians are attempting to get the other half out in the next stage so that's when stage two negotiations were SPO Phase 2 negotiations were supposed to start early this week early last week and they did not um they are beginning to start um although they're Bo both separate right now there's talks in Egypt and talks in Doha that are happening so um we'll have to follow that story but if we look at number three this was an interesting shot of the tunnels um these prisoners these three prisoners that were released they spoke about being in the tunnels the whole time after the raid in narat and the raid in narat was the massacre of 275 Palestinians more than 700 were wounded um take uh on an Israeli raid uh into an apartment where uh Israeli were living above ground with a family and so after those raids which was predicted um the prisoners were taken underground and spent the rest of their time Underground but I pulled this from the video because it's a really interesting shot of the tunnel Network and you can see the way that it's built um you can see the size of it and it's just a good uh indication of it that Arch system uh is the trick to the engineering of the tunnel systems and that's where it gets it um durability from its resilience from um it has it's able to move a little bit to um so that it doesn't Buckle under the pressure of sand or air strikes or flooding um so it's an interesting shot and if we look at this next slide you can see the blast door um and so for the Israeli military they weren't really ever fighting in these tunnels because you can see just by this single picture from this one video from the The Prisoner exchange um that blast door uh is very difficult to get into it sealed and the tunnel can't be flooded the tunnel can't be raided um that has to be blown up by the Israelis to get to the other side of the door and if you look above the door you can see that was the area I showed a few times over the course of the war um Kasam booby trapping these tunnels and that's when they would they would put uh Radia and television um IEDs built by Kasam they would build them into the walls all around there and so when you see pictures like this you just really see um the fact that Israel was not down in these tunnels fighting we would have seen the footage we just saw the footage from Kasam showing the prisoners leaving the tunnel there's no reason why they wouldn't have footage of the fighting in the tunnel um but I I think we'll find in the coming years that uh Israel uh also lied about the extent to which they fought in the tunnels and I just wanted to bring you those uh couple shots from there that I think are super interesting about the engineering of the tunnels if we look at number five you got the stage again we have a completely different stage in darala than we had in the previous ones but this one is just as potent uh it says uh we are the flood um a reference to the alaxa flood operation uh and it says we are the day after um in reference to the day after plan of the Biden Administration of the Israelis of everybody talking about the day after for Gaza and not talking about gazin and this is Kasam saying that we are the day after um and they survived the war underneath uh they survived their War intact and achieved all of their goals of the war so far and Israel has not which is something that uh gioria isand who is the author of The General's plan admitted just the other day that uh that Israel's only achieved a quarter of one of their four goals and Kasam reached all four of them we can maybe discuss that in the discussion after but uh underneath the stage it says uh absolute victory in Hebrew and it's got the red triangle on it with sad Netanyahu uh being defeated of his absolute Victory with the red triangle and you can see the destroyed merkova tank there that was in jabalia that wasn't the one that I showed a couple weeks ago from B noon so they have multiple photos of tanks with their barrels blown off uh you know the the turret toss that I describe so another solid uh stage solid messaging and then number six in the crowd this was just a subtle thing but again the Israelis noticed it right away um because there's messaging to both there's messaging to the Israelis and we'll see coming up there's messaging to Palestinians as well so they noticed that this rifle which is an Israel weapons Industries negtive Special Forces light machine gun or a squad automatic weapon as the Americans would call it fires 800 rounds a minute um and on the ammunition drum underneath his index finger there that's the ammunition drum and it's got um markings on it of the Israeli soldier who was killed in the raid on the kopam IDF base on October 7th raided by Noba forces and took over that base um and they C captured his um his uh light machine gun and brought it home and before we saw this there we had never seen this footage before um and there's in Israel the soldier whose name is on that rifle he's uh one of the hero stories of uh October 7th they frame it as a hero story um that he uh when everybody else ran and hid in the the Israeli soldiers all ran and hid in their bomb shelters uh this one soldier stayed out and fired 675 uh rounds before he was overtaken by Noba forces uh in uh kopam base um and so they had hyped him up to be this big hero so when Kasam released or showed this photo this was just a quick like one second in that video you probably didn't even notice it um but the Israelis noticed it and they noticed that that was uh his his gun um the military sensor went right to work um to say that that that was just his ammunition drum they didn't have his rifle as well but uh we know that's not the case although we do know that Kasam has gotten that particular type of neev uh light uh machine gun in n in a number of um situations we saw one in banon we even saw the mujahadin brigades capture one of them and that's not that surprising there each Squad uh has two of these light machine guns in it so um you know it comprises 20% of uh an Israeli squad's weapons so it makes sense that these weapons were captured um and so interesting uh point that the Israelis definitely noticed right away and uh pointed out that that was his rifle so and then if we look at number seven we have um this is communicating with gazin uh on this uh Yasin Warhead it's also a good shot of a Yasin Warhead um we often see them as they're being deployed but there it is just sitting there and it says darar Al halik which essentially means watch yourself um and it's uh an illusion to an operation um and if we show that operation next here number eight um this was by the bur the B Battalion um number eight 308 is it up so the bra Battalion is one of four um in the central Brigade uh magazi Battalion narat Battalion darlala Battalion um and the barage Battalion yeah I do want to play Let's Play number eight so this is an operation that we I showed you this back back in November these Fighters are digging out uh a tactical tunnel uh in B in November the Israelis invaded B on the outskirts of the central camp and they were met by this tunnel operation that was a pretty epic series of tunnel uh those guys tunneled out uh and then hit these uh three vehicles in a row they hit two D9 bulldozers with one with a yasen 105 this is with an rpg7 that he gets him right in the back um with an rpg7 which is a devastating weapon and then we're going to see our third fighter here emerg from the tunnel um [Music] so he says DEA hak like watch yourself and that's what that was a sort of a one of those verses that we heard you know like analyze this was one of those analyze this theer um you know called the tow truck was famous too from people and that was you know it's it's a saying that's essentially says watch yourself watch out for yourself keep your head up um and they hit them and then that fighter in the previous video in the previous still is holding uh his weapon with a sticker on it that says the same thing so these subtle things they're communicating with the Israelis but they're also communicating with their local audience and with the with people in Gaza so that was just a one little note from uh the bar Battalion that was at uh the central Brigade uh prisoner Exchange number five so number six is due to happen uh on Saturday Saturday morning local time in Gaza um we'll talk more about it in the discussion because there's still some questions about whether it's going to happen because Israel is not fulfilling its obligations and Kasam has noted that um and Trump has said a bunch of things about how Trump and Netanyahu both have said a bunch of things about how all the H all the captives have to be handed over on Saturday and just really muddying the Waters of what is um a well organized and detailed agreement that both sides agreed to and were guaranteed by uh the us as well