New footage of Yahya Sinwar during battle, with Jon Elmer

You are watching and listening to the electronic inifat. I am John Elmer. This is the resistance report ceasefire edition such as it is uh ceasefire day 21. I am reporting this on the 30th of October. I'm going to touch on a few topics today uh including footage that surfaced um through the Israeli military of Yaha Sininoir on the front lines in Rafa in the days before he was killed and a couple brief updates on the West Bank and Lebanon as well. But as usual, let's start in Gaza. Um overnight on Tuesday the Israeli military carried out a wave of strikes again ceasefire uh on Israeli terms killing more than 100 people half of them children. Um and that operation was according to Israeli uh media was through the American uh mediators the monitoring mechanism um uh of central command. So that is a um a bad omen about the the trajectory of this ceasefire. That is the second major violation of the ceasefire that Israel has executed. But as Norah said in the news report, there's been 125 others besides um the massive wave of strikes that we saw uh overnight on Tuesday. You're looking at a map here uh BBC Verify. Not sure if they're uh watchers of the uh EI live stream, but uh a couple days after my report last week on the yellow line and where the placements of um that are, which we're looking at a map here that you can see, uh more than half of Gaza is uh covered by this yellow line where Israel is able to operate freely, a free fire zone on the eastern side of the yellow line. Um, and what BBC Verify did, that's their investigations unit, um, they looked at, um, open- source material and satellite footage and the material that the Israeli military showed that I showed on the program last week. If you didn't catch that segment last week, you can find resistance reports um, since the beginning of the war on our YouTube channel um, in the playlist section. Um but we covered uh the placement of these uh um markers along this uh so-called yellow line that appears to be a central feature of the ceasefire such as it is. Um and so I wanted to have people understand um the basic outlines of it. And the BBC very handy uh applied their BBC verify investigations unit to um to try to understand where these blocks are. And if we look at the next map, you can see um there this is in the north. This is just south of Baha. Um and you can see where the yellow mark was delineated uh on the map. Um, like I pointed out last week, it's very difficult to understand uh where the lines were. The maps that were presented by the Israelis and uh Trump um were extremely vague after two years of genocide where Israel has broken down the territory into hundreds of blocks um to tell people in a grid where where to leave while they're ethnically cleansing. Then when the ceasefire comes, they set up this deadly line where they shoot to kill. More than half of the people that have been killed in the ceasefire have been uh killed around the yellow line. Um the map was extremely uh extremely vague. And the keys to this uh to understand is that the Israeli military is continuing its operations on the eastern side of this yellow line. They're attempting to achieve through ceasefire what they failed to achieve during the war. They're dismantling uh the tunnel apparatus. They're destroying homes. Um they're basically carrying out operation Gideon's chariots. Um which was expressly by the IDF said was against infrastructure and not against fighters. Um because they couldn't defeat the fighters. So they moved on to the infrastructure. And that's what's happening on this other side of the line. Then Israel uses the pretext um of any kind of um attacks on their forces which they claim without any evidence um have happened and the resistance has distanced themselves from those attacks. But Israel uses that pretext to um to carry out its attacks uh in Gaza despite what's supposed to be a ceasefire and it's supposed to be a ceasefire guaranteed by Trump. So the fact that the Isra u that the Israeli military is going through the civil military coordination center um run by central command is a um it's a bad omen for the trajectory uh of this ceasefire. We can look at the next map because the uh we also have this in the south um we have this in the Kunis area. That previous map was showing more than 500 meters um distance between where the yellow line was supposed to be, where it was agreed upon in Charalshake um to where it is now. Here we're seeing it in the Conunice area, 300 meters in front of what is supposed to be the line. And Israel continues its military operations um in that territory um consistently uh day by day. And their intention is to do that um uh going forward. And they spoke about that directly this week um because tunnels are the key strategic uh infrastructure that Israel is trying to destroy. um and numbers this week um surfaced. Although it's obvious important to note that the Israelis have no idea how many tunnels there are, but from their estimates, their defense minister said there's at least 60% of the tunnels left. And Goria, who's the general um infamously known for the general's plan in northern Gaza, he put the number at more than 80%. But again, they don't have any idea. And that has been part of the um the way this battle has been fought. It's been clear from day one that they don't know where all the tunnels are. But the defense minister said that the most important strategic objective is destroying tunnels. Um and so this yellow line and where it is is both deadly for Palestinians um but also indicates where Israel is continuing their military operations. Um and just the through the coordination Reuters was on Air Force One on Wednesday um after the attacks overnight in Gaza and Donald Trump said that he as he understood it that uh the resistance took out an Israeli soldier. The resistance denied that. But he said so the Israelis should hit back and they have hit back when it happens. They should hit back. Nothing is going to jeopardize the ceasefire. Trump said, "You have to understand that Hamas is a very small part of peace in the Middle East and they have to behave. If Hamas are good and they are happy and they are not good and if they are not good, they are going to be terminated. Their lives will be terminated." We've heard this kind of language from Trump. He flip-flops uh back and forth on this uh issue. Um but he says, "No one knows what happened to the Israeli soldier, but they say it was sniper fire and it's retribution for that." And I think they have the right to do that. So the principal guarantor of this deal is on side with Israel attacking uh inside the uh yellow line and still calling it a ceasefire. He's still calling it a ceasefire. Um so these are uh early trends that we're seeing here in this period of ceasefire. If we take a look at the next map also um this week uh Al Visman from the forensic architecture um group published this map just after I had tried uh with several other maps to show you the ridge lines the the topography of uh how Israel is ghettoizing the um the Gaza Strip and how the yellow line is simply moving um advancing one line, one ridge line there. You can see in the north um the yellow dots all along that ridge line are the ridge line that are to the west of the ridge line that Israel originally ghettoized Palestine with by putting settlements all along that ridge line. Um the settlements were military placements. um civilians came in later um and this essentially act as a human shield for the Israeli forces in the Gaza envelope and uh Al Visman uh wrote that uh that wrote that pretty straightforward. He said in 1948 Palestinians were kettled into an enclave by a line of settlements on on the top of the third sandstone ridge which are the white dots that you see there on the map. That's the Gaza envelope overlooking the armistice line um which is the white line on that map. And along the western slopes of that ridge, the architecture of occupation has simply shifted one ridge westward. We can see that zoomed in on these next two slides uh to get a better look. Here you can see from Wadi Gaza um to the north and you can see um Al-Mar Hill uh Tal Montar um ridge there. That is where the Israeli military is setting up numerous bases. Um we can see even more zoomed on this next map shows yeah you can see it up close there. Um, and the topography is key for this because it gives the Israelis overwatch um over Gaza and it also is the um farmland in Gaza. So, it's cutting off the sustainability, the self- sustainability of Gaza um by moving um that farmland into Israeli uh the Israeli destruction zone where they're uh attempting to destroy tunnels and carrying on essentially Israel's carrying on the war as it was um just uh on the other side of that yellow line. If we look at the next map, we can see where the Israelis have set up bases. This is from Al Jazera uh from their investigations unit and their fact-checking agency SANAD. They're using satellite imagery here um to show along that ridge line that you just saw on the previous map where they are setting up more than 40 active military positions along uh those lines. There's nine of them in nine bases in North Gaza. There's six in Gaza City. Um there's one in the middle camps area, 11 in Kununis, and 13 in Rafa, which you can see Rafa is mostly entirely inside the Israeli controlled area of the yellow line. So we can see the way that those two things are working together. Um now moving on to the prisoner uh captives handover. This is the Cassam Brigade shadow unit um carrying out um the recovery of remains of Israeli soldiers in Gaza. And everyone in the negotiations in Charmeal Shake, including the MSAD chief, the uh Egyptian intelligence Kushner, Jared Kushner, um and Trump all all have acknowledged how difficult it is to find bodies and how long this process would take. Trump famously, infamously, uh, called the Gaza Strip a demolition site, which he knows from his, uh, real estate days. And Jared Kushner on 60 Minutes a couple weeks back, he is the he visited Gaza with Steve Wickoff. Um, and he said Kushner said that it looked like a a nuclear bomb had gone off in Gaza. Um, and so these are the same people that are uh providing the pretext for Israeli strikes. um are saying that it's going to be extremely difficult. There's 10,000 Palestinians stuck uh under the rubble. Um that the world does not seem to be uh paying the same attention to as it does to the Israeli captives. The Israeli captives that were almost uh all killed by Israel themselves and buried in buildings just like the 10,000 Palestinians. Um, and just for understanding about this, because one of the justifications for the strike on Tuesday night was that Israel got only partial remains of one of their soldiers. Um, but just to put that into context, um, just for comparison, only six of the two first 200 bodies uh, Palestinian bodies handed over by Israel, only five of the six uh, or so, sorry, only six were identified by Israel out of the 200. and five of those six were misidentified. Um, so only one uh ID of a body and the bodies were so mangled as Norah's reported in the news report and we can't even show you the footage of it because it's so horrific, bound, tortured, executed, burned um they ministry, the health ministry in Gaza um shows has gatherings where they show the slides of uh the people killed hoping that people in Gaza can recognize their bodies. But the people who leave these tents um after these showings just say there's nothing. You can't tell anything by uh what is left of those bodies. So that gives you an idea of how Israel's operating. And they expect Palestinians on the other side to uh operate in a completely uh different way. And just another uh point to underline, civil defense this week had a burial in the Gaza uh in Gaza City of 42 unidentified martyrs who had been um found in the rubble u through the ceasefire process. So um this is an enormously difficult process and primarily for Palestinians who 10,000 of their family members are still stuck under the rubble. people were buried um in makeshift graves because there was no time or security to have proper burials. And all of that process is happening in Gaza right now. And Israel's choosing that difficulty to strike Palestinians. Um we can see that on the next slide here uh as part of this the significance of these tunnel operations. These are massive uh tunnels. This part of the tunnel had been collapsed. We're looking at a massive hole uh buried. Um Kasam used the few heavy um excavators that are in Gaza to dig out this tunnel um where they believe that their fighters and Israeli captives were in Hammed Town in north of Conun. You can see on the next slide as well um the way that the uh the fighters uh of the shadow unit are going in here. You can see one man with an oxygen tank um to go in or multiple of them with oxygen tanks um to go into the extremely dangerous process of going into these tunnels in order to get back not their family members uh but Israeli soldiers uh under the agreement that uh that Casam and all the resistance agreed to and are fulfilling on their side. But according to security sources that told uh army radio this week that the way that the prime minister's three principal ways of sanctioning Palestinians uh for the delay in getting back uh Israeli captives is reducing the scope of humanitarian aid. So essentially using the blockade and tightening the blockade and the yellow line will uh also facilitate that. um the expanding of the area under Israeli control in Gaza. That means expanding the yellow line and and squeezing the territory even more. And the third one is air strikes uh on the territory. So these are the ways that Israel is openly saying that they will violate the ceasefire um if things are not done to um to their whims really because there's no interaction uh between the resistance and the Israelis about the process of handing over these bodies. uh Israel just strikes whenever it uh feels like. You can see one more slide um showing these uh units. Um the just one more thing before this slide um is uh the um Hamas spokesman Hazam Kasam said is a right of our people to bring the necessary equipment to bring in the necessary equipment to retrieve the bodies of around 10,000 martyrs beneath the rubble. The Israeli claim that Hamas knows the locations of the bodies um are false, especially because the landmarks in the Gaza Strip have changed due to the aggression. Meaning people in Gaza can't can't figure out where they are because there's no landmarks. And this is something that Israel acknowledged. They called it devastated terrain warfare. They had a problem with this too from the fighting side because their own troops were shooting at each other because there was no way to mark and to delineate where one unit and it was operating and where the boundary was for another unit because everything is flattened. Um so there's no indications and that's something that the Kasam uh brigades pointed out the Hamas spokesman uh pointed out uh that. So um that is just following this uh process. There are now after today's handover this afternoon um there will be 11 um bodies of of Israelis uh still in Gaza after today. [snorts] Um on the next slide you can see this drone story. Um the Isra the Israelis are flying drones over Gaza and that is a violation of the ceasefire. the um the resistance clause in the ceasefire was that there would be no overflights um for the daylight hours while the captives were being found and Israel is violating that and now the US is piling on that. Here this is a story from the New York Times last week that says uh US flies drones over Gaza to monitor ceasefire. Officials say the surveillance missions are part of the US-led international effort to ensure the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas hold. So it the US is flying MQ9 Reaper drones over Gaza watching Israel violate the ceasefire. Um and these missions um surveillance missions are operating in support of the new civil military coordination center in southern Israel. The Sentcom has 200 US soldiers monitoring the ceasefire. So they're monitoring Israel's ceasefire violations and saying nothing of it. In fact, they're uh approving them. So we now have the US um and the uh Israelis working together um on violating the ceasefire uh in Gaza. So just some of those developments uh from Gaza. Let's turn now to uh Yaha Sinoir. Footage was released this week um by the Israeli state broadcaster leaked from the IDF showing Yaha Sinir. You can see him there. He's cloaked. He's with his commanders. Um, and he's in a house that had previously been occupied by the Israelis. He's on the front lines here in Rafa. This is in October of 2024. This is 3 months after the Israeli military said that they had defeated the Rafa brigade. And here we have Yah Sinir uh the leader of Hamas who when he was released from prison said that he would go now and rejoin uh his place in the Cassam brigades with the fighters uh of the Cassam brigades and that's what we see. Israel tried to tell people um and the western media paredited it that Senoir was in a tunnel sur uh with human shields uh captives as human shields and we know that all of the captives that have been released from Gaza. Um nobody talked about Sinoir being with them. The only stories of Sinoir are him asking uh if he can get people anything in perfect Hebrew um from the original release in November 2023. That's what people said. Um nobody there's no evidence of him sitting surrounded by captives. It's absolutely absurd. And this footage puts lie to that. And this footage, it appears to be part of the same set of videos that Al Jazzer um got access to from Casam for um the documentary um what is hidden is greater that was shown on October um that on the October 7th operation. Um let's look at the next slide because you can see the still of uh Senoir there. You can see him there. He's got his um his weapon on his waist. He's got a cloak over his head which you've seen them uh Kasam use to great effect to hide from drones. Uh you know multi-billion dollar drone industry uh vexed by Palestinians using uh camouflage covers. Um and so this is just uh what Sinoir always said that he wanted to be he wanted to return to the front lines with uh the Cassam brigades after he was released in the 2011 prisoner exchange. Um, and this footage shows that he did do that. In the next slide, you can see he is here on the front line. This is from the Al Jazzer dock. He's on the front line here with Mahmud Hamdan, who is the battalion, Cassandra Brigay's battalion chief in Tel Sultan. He's going over the battle plans and the maps. Um, and on the next uh slide, you can see him right on the front lines. He's looking out over a base. That's an is that's a Palestinian school that has been turned into an Israeli base. You can see Sinoir here with his tactical vest and uh observing um from a command position uh this Israeli position. So he's literally on the front lines. And just a reminder, Israel killed Yahwir by mistake. They killed him because they believed in the ethnically cleansed area of Rafa. They saw uh human movement [snorts] and the way the Israelis responded to h to human movement was to kill them. They had no idea they were fighters let alone uh Yaha Sinoir and Mahmud Hamdan um two senior commanders who were overseeing the battle in Rafa. So interesting footage there of Yaha Sinir that we uh saw this week through the state broadcaster. Um again just uh more footage showing him on the front lines of the conflict. Um just a couple quick updates. Uh one from the West Bank. Um the Janine Brigade has been uh executing multiple operations on a weekly basis uh around Janine. Of course Janine is now in day 280 uh of the siege of the camp of Janine. The Janine refugee camp has been depopulated. Um but the resistance hasn't stopped. If we look at this next slide, you can see there was um the one before that one number 21. You can see um the battle uh here with the uh tunnel. You can see at the top there, this is footage from Yamam. This is a border police special forces unit of the Israelis. And in the top left there, you see a cave cuz the fighters in Janine are have moved out of the city because the camp is under siege. Um and they're fighting under out of the caves. uh in the hills around Janine just exactly as Isadin al-Kasam did in 1935 before the Arab revolt u fighting um the colonial occupiers then in those exact same hills north of Janine um as we're seeing here this is in Kafarud um this was the other day a manyhour gun battle between um Islamic jihad um Sarah al- Kud's Janine brigade um against uh these Israeli uh special forces. The battle lasted for several hours. The Israelis called in drone strikes um to attack the fighters that were based out of that cave. Um and um yeah, as I said, there have been multiple Janine Brigades operations uh over the course of this week. If we look at the next one, we have a poster from uh from Tubas, an operation in Tubas in the north of the West Bank. Um but uh Saral Kuds released some uh some numbers from their operations uh in the West Bank. Um there has been more than 1,081 Palestinians killed in the West Bank since October 7th. Um 8,000 more than 8,000 injured and more than 22,000 arrested. Um there's still more than 9,000 uh in prison. Some of those 22,000 have been released. Um but uh for the resistance part, there has been 80 soldiers and settlers killed, 688 injured in almost 4,000 qualitative resistance operations in the past 2 years. 200 and uh 2,238 shooting operations,300 IED attacks and 19 downed Israeli drones in the West Bank and the Israelis are again carrying out air strikes in uh in the West Bank in the north of the West Bank in the Janine area. Um, so moving there from the West Bank to Lebanon briefly because I think Lebanon is a harbinger uh of the kind of ceasefire that Israel wants for um the Gaza Strip. Uh the Alma Research Center um put out this graph um the other day and they're a research center that are focused on uh the IDF security challenges along the volatile northern border. So, they're an armslength military staffed uh uh research institute that tracks these um attacks uh and happenings along the northern border with Lebanon. Um and since uh as of October 26, so almost a year since the ceasefire, um there's been more than 613 Israeli strikes in Lebanon. You can see we're looking at a map here that shows the distribution of those strikes. Um, and the uh half of them are beyond uh are north of the Latani River. The south of the Lutani River area was the focus of Israel's operations, but they're using the pretext of the ceasefire to vastly expand their operations. Um, 47% of the strikes were south of the Latani River, 37% of the strikes are north of the Latani River. Um, they include 13% in the Becca Valley and also strikes in Beirut. Um, and the alma senator says that the general objective of these strikes is to reduce ham Hezbollah's operatives freedom of action and movement and to damage weapons and infrastructure including uh infrastructure that is used to rebuild in South Lebanon. They've killed the Israelis have killed more than 340 Hezbollah fighters just in the one year. It's basically killing one a day. Um and that is how Israel uh that's the honor of an Israeli ceasefire. Um that is uh the way they operate in a ceasefire duplicitous um cowardly attacks trying to achieve um in a ceasefire what they failed to achieve on the battlefield and we are starting to see that in Gaza as well. So that is the resistance report ceasefire edition such as it is for day 755 of Israel's genocide.