Israel retreats from Netzarim corridor as prisoners go free in Gaza, with Jon Elmer

so this is the resistance report for day 482 since October 7th ceasefire day 12 it is January 30th and I'm going to cover um The Prisoner exchange that took place in Gaza City on the 25th of January um this is the second exchange of the first phase uh of the prisoner exchange which is part of 33 um releases of Israeli captives um for 2,000 roughly 2,000 Palestinian uh detainees and security prisoners broken down about 1200 from Gaza 735 1,200 from Gaza who were uh detained after October 7th not charged with any crimes taken to the brutal torture camps at city tont and elsewhere uh in the uh Israeli South um they will be released um and this was the uh exchange for four prisoners of War uh women soldiers from the IDF from the Israeli military that were captured at nul A's base military base um on the 7th of October and uh I just before we get to the video I want to just give you some context of this this release happened in Palestine Square um this is in the AL ramal neighborhood downtown Gaza City the commercial um Hub of downtown Gaza City and on December 20th 2023 the Israeli military claimed operational control over this and in a statement they said IDF troops have secured control over hamas's Elite quarter in the center of Gaza City including the area of Palestine Square from where the Hamas administrative and Military leadership operated the complex includes a large network of tunnels that connects underground hideouts bureaus residential uh Apartments belonging to Hamas senior leadership and the complex both above and below ground was a center of power for Hamas that we have destroyed in recent weeks the 4 first brigade and 162nd Division along with forces from shaldag sheet 13 this is flotilla 13 their special forces units and the yahalom tunnel units have been operating in the area where Palestine square is located the forces carried out combined and coordinated offensives in Palestine square and took operational control over the area over the last few days the area was completely secured and dismantled so that's Palestine Square that's uh the Israelis uh claiming defeat um of Palestine Square on December 20th 2023 um that's critical because if we can go to video number one you're going to see that area right now and clearly see um that this is an area uh not under operational control and not destroyed so this is the the video that Kasam released I have edited out the prisoners of War we're not going to show the prisoners um the female prisoners but there you can see uh saluting the police so the police are on the for on the ground the government is intact um Hamas police is intact gaza's police is intact this is the cassam brigades and Sarah Al kuds both intact you're seeing obviously a well organized situation with hundreds if not thousands of Fighters um holding the area uh and this is the Handover of the four like I said I edited out the four women soldiers they were uh hyping up the crowd up on stage age um they were given gift baskets uh for their uh for their time souvenir baskets um they looked like they were well taken care of and they testified that they were well taken care of um this is the official uh hand over here that we're watching um and like I said I cut the part out with the with the soldiers uh we uh aren't going to show the prisoners of War but it was a very uh key part of this uh because of the way um that they looked and celebrated and uh spoke of their time uh in in captivity and thanked um and thanked in Arabic for um they thanked their guards in Arabic for taking care of them for protecting them against bombing um they spoke about how they learned Arabic with their guard's children the women said they were never left alone with men and the four of them were always together throughout this entire time uh wellfed they said they were taught to share their food before e eating and other uh Palestinian uh societal Norms um they were treated very well and again thanked for protecting the bombings what we're looking at here is hundreds if not thousands of Kasam and Sarah Fighters the fighters were not defeated we saw the Gaza police they didn't defeat the government um and we saw thousands of cheering civilians um and women um and children who were at this event in itself um so number two is the uh exchange of the paperwork this is very formal process this is the release of four we're going to see the release of 33 in Phase 1 um and this exchange was for 200 uh Palestinian prisoners with life sentences or long sentences divided up as 21 life sentences and 79 long sentences the oldest prisoner released was 69 years old and the youngest was 15 and they broke down as 81 Hamas and Kasam 23 kuds and Islamic Jihad 13 alaxa Martyrs brigades and fata um 130 were sent to the West Bank 70 were exiled outside of the country to Tunisia Algeria and turkey primarily um and as I said this is second this is the second exchange today as we're just as we're on air the third exchange is happening uh for an additional Soldier a civilian um and an elderly civilian that's in the humanitarian part of this exchange these people could have all been exchanged in October uh sorry in November during the prisoner Exchange in November 2023 uh Israel refused to give uh Kasam a couple extra days to find these uh uh captives that they weren't holding which is what you're seeing here um and why it took this time to for them to be in the second uh release if we look at number three there was this was quite a propaganda effort um by Kasam that was very very directly aimed at the Israelis most people don't notice these kind of um little details that we've got here on the stage we're looking at the stage um but the Israelis noticed and they were very upset with uh the the symbols of Defeat of their military after 16 months of this war after the embarrassment the humiliation um the dismantling of their military um on October 7th and the uh sense of Pride they had in their military we're looking at the banners here the banners say alaxa flood is a revolution against Zionist Injustice Gaza is the graveyard for criminal zionists that's what it says above uh the stage there it says victory of the oppress versus Nazi Zionism and it says Palestinian Freedom Fighters will be Victorious now underneath there you see uh in Hebrew it says Zionism will be defeated over the logos of the key military and intelligence units that have fought in the Gaza Strip um so you can see that being directly um a message to the Israelis and then underneath at the far bottom you can see the faces and that's the faces of the military leadership the IDF uh the units that the um Kasam brigades have on there are military intelligence the Aman unit that's the the uh unit that failed on October 7th and the Homeland command which also failed on October 7th the 162nd Division is with the other logo you see there um that's the division that fought in Gaza for the entire War um also the Gaza division Crest is there uh the IDF Gaza division was dismantled on October 7th um as well as the armored Core and for people who have been watching uh the resistance report segments for 15 months it's the armored Core uh that's taken the beating from uh the resistance so very direct very pointed uh each one of those logos are significant um choices they're not just uh picked from uh the Wiki page or whatever these are very pointedly uh directed at the is Israeli audience the military and political figures are many of the people that you would know Netanyahu the chief of staff hery alevi uh Southern command Chief yaron finlan um hery halevi has resigned because of uh the failure of October 7th he will leave his position in March um yon finlan also the southern command chief he has also resigned if we look at the next uh slide you'll see the uh the Kasam Fighters uh with their boots on the heads of the defeated leaders and on you could see the red over it um the red over each of the faces of the um of the leadership says failed uh you failed in your mission which is what this video shows uh what all these details show um and if we look at the next one this one was a particular uh shot in the gut for the Israelis uh the weapons being held there are tavore uh Bullpup rifles used by Israeli Special Forces um units um which Kasam captured on October the 7th and on each side of the stage there was Fighters holding those captured Israeli weapons these are weapons made by the Israel weapons industry um so people everyone in Israel knows this rifle Channel 12 uh was very upset about this said Hamas cleverly planned the hand over showing off tavore rifles as War booty and including fighters from Elites units at the scene of that were reminiscent uh of the October defeat for the Israelis um the the tavore weapon I showed you this before because in the 2014 raid on nah A's base the tunnel operation where Palestinian Fighters came up from a tunnel across the border and attacked the base uh one of the soldiers at that base had his uh his Tavor bullpup rifle literally pulled from his hands during that operation and that rifle went back to Gaza and was used in multiple places um we're going to talk more about the AL jazer documentary later in the program and also next uh show but um is Aden alh Hadad who's the top uh Kasam Commander he he had one of the Tavor beside him in the interview on Al jazer so these are very uh potent weapons that are uh potently symbolic weapons um of the capture and defeat um so there's two there's one more of those shot from the other side of the screen uh number seven yeah um it was difficult to get both of the shots in because the the women are on the stage in the middle and we're going to not show them uh as said um so uh that is The Prisoner exchange that is exchange two um of the exchange exchange three is happening right now while we're on air um and then each Saturday over the next uh four weeks there will be additional releases staged um um this was the one only one that will be on a Thursday um the other ones will be um are planed to be on Saturday uh for each of the next weeks and then the final week um the final week will be for released um and so that is uh into March when that will have happened so that is the prisoner exchange I want to take a look because the prisoner exchange um opened up the narim corridor and I've been reporting on the narim corridor since November of 2023 when Israel took it um we have changed the shape and size of it to adapt to the Israeli position the narim corridor is an Israeli military position that goes back to the 1967 War when Israel took control of the Gaza Strip the goal was to make a plan called the five fingers plan uh where Gaza would be cut up into strips to more easily facilitate the control of the indigenous population in 1972 um Israel put a settlement there which is how Israel operates you make a military base in a key position to divide up the territory and then you move civilian populations into that base and that's how you get the justification the legitimacy of the base so it's a military base with a civilian presence that was from 1972 until 2005 um and as a product of the second inata the narim corridor was dismantled in defeat in 2005 after the second inata the second inata in Gaza the second inata begins uh at alaxa in Jerusalem um but it immediately spreads throughout Palestine and in Gaza it first flared up at immediately flared up at The nsar Rim Corridor and people uh may remember the uh very symbolic um death of Muhammad aldura um a Palestinian child who was killed in his father's arms that was at the nerim junction uh on its way into narim Corridor in the second inata the narim corridor was often cut off by resistance operations things had to be airlifted into the nerim corridor it was a key checkpoint um as well so this what we're seeing is um the ma the most on the screen right now is the most that the corridor got in size over the course of this war s kilometers wide Israel boasted that this was the Strategic victory that it had from the war um because they obviously we all knew that they were not defeating uh Kasam they were not um going to have an absolute Victory and so what Netanyahu did was he moved to these corridors saying these corridors were the victory because these corridors would allow Israel to move in and jump off in the middle of the Gaza Strip and attack Gaza City to the north as you see and to the South into the middle camps um which uh allows Israel to carry out essentially policing actions um which is what they intended to do with the failure to defeat Kasam so the fact that the prisoner exchange led to the removal of the narim corridor is significant if we look at at map B tomorrow we can see uh how the map this is how we started with the narim corridor this was the original size then Israel as it was clear it was not going to get total Victory expanded uh the size of the corridor um and Israeli television was also very upset about this the taking down of the narim corridor on Channel 14 um they talked about the soldiers uh who left the narim corridor IDF soldiers left narim Corridor um in tear from narim feeling that everything they did for months in Gaza is going down the drain um so a significant defeat uh in the narim corridor if we look at the next image we can see um the way that the Israelis announced this after The Prisoner exchange that took place on Saturday on Sunday the Israelis announced that the uh al- Rasheed Coastal Road would be open that's what we're looking at here everybody in Gaza was waiting for this map because this release as you can see 27 January this was the Israeli military acknowledging um that people could return home at 7 am on foot along the Al Al rashed Coastal Road and at 900 a.m. by car along salahadin Road uh where they would get inspection so salahadin Road runs through the the red territory and the coastal road goes up this is a a very significant um victory um and a very significant defeat of the uh Israeli military a significant Victory because um this is the corridor that people were pushed out of Gaza City in the beginning all through the north Gaza City and North were pushed down through the coastal road so this was the return the Gaza media office yesterday announced that 500,000 people already had returned back to the North and the north is devastated of course % of houses are damaged or destroyed um there's there was amazing footage um um of people returning home in celebration but there's also devastating footage of people realizing that they can't even find where their homes were everything is so destroyed that you there's no landmarks people can't figure out even where their houses were because so much is destroyed but we saw on the show um on Tuesday that we did with uh with Ali uh showed people cleaning up painting um doing what they can and greeting them on the other side so if we look at map 7c here you can see the uh this is from the ceasefire proposal so on foot up the corridor people can walk freely up and down the corridor the uh yellow area marked is the part of the narim corridor that the Israeli military is under control of but the and that is the the road you see cutting through there um is the saladine road that is the major highway uh that goes north to south in Gaza and there are private security companies doing the checks of the cars on the road two US companies and an Egyptian partner the contractors are North Carolina based ug Solutions and safe reach Solutions of Wyoming they will be authorized to search vehicles and confiscate any weapons or military material but the vehicles and whoever is inside them including Hamas Personnel will be allowed to pass um this is a significant victory for Hamas in the negotiations because the fact that this is not an Israeli military checkpoint is something that the Palestinians refuse to give into through 15 months of genocide and destruction and this is the day um these three days have been the days um that those came to fruition because if there was a military checkpoint on those PO on those points it would be a spot where Israel would arrest more people take them to detention Israel calls them the drains uh disgustingly along with a lot of their disgusting vernacular but those are checkpoints are the reason why people don't want to go back home because they don't want to end up uh getting captured there under the Washington Post uh it says Travelers quote going are going to go through the checkpoint and we are not going to stop them they just can't carry anything deemed unsafe said ug Solutions official The Washington Post said under the terms of the deal required iring non-israeli inspections the contractors have no offensive mandate no military Mission and no ability to detain combatants so significant Victory there if we look at um 7D is that 7D or let's look at look at some of the photos of people returning through the corridor that was defeated it's remarkable pictures we showed some of them on Tuesday um number eight here um it was just a remarkable moment the amount of um just brutal cruelty that people went through after being pushed out of the north to go home seeing this footage um on Monday morning um Sunday Sunday night in our time Monday morning local time was just remarkable this started happening before 7 a.m. and people were walking on foot and you can see from that footage that people aren't really carrying things they just have what more or less what was on their the clothes on their back and some have backpacks um just remarkable Victory the defeat of the narim corridor I've been reporting on this for uh since November so this is a momentous occasion to um to Mark the defeat of the narim corridor