Resistance fighters cut off in Rafah tunnels, with Jon Elmer

You are watching and listening to the electronic inifatada. I am John Elmer. This is the resistance report for day 790 of Israel's genocidal war in Gaza. And it is day 56 of the ceasefire, such as it is. I am reporting this on December 4th. We're now in the 3rd December of this war. I say as such with the ceasefire, of course, because if you all listen to Norah's report off the top, ceasefire is uh in name only. The IDF uh has been bragging about the number of air strikes. The other day they bragged about 300 um 250 air strikes in less than three weeks in the Gaza Strip. Um and that is just in that period of time. So there's been hundreds more as well. Um the Gaza Media Office and the United Nations um reliefs works agency. Uh their numbers for the ceasefire which began October 11th are 356 Palestinians killed, 9 wounded. That number goes up by the hour uh in more than 600 military violations of the ceasefire that happened daily. These ceasefire violations that are counted are not it do not include the failure to fulfill uh the humanitarian terms that were agreed upon including key components of it like fuel which is in um only a fraction of has gotten in. fuel is of course the key to um Palestinian sovereignty inside Gaza to be able to do reconstruction on their own to be able to fix their own society um and not wait for uh the US's uh board of peace or or whatever to uh find people to uh participate in the rebuilding. The Palestinians will rebuild on their own. Um and that's why the uh fuel is being held back uh as part of Israel's genocidal campaign. Also, we know it's the winter. We see the footage coming out of Gaza of the rain. Shelter units that were promised uh that were agreed upon um have not been delivered and all kinds of machinery. We know the heavy machinery to um to find people that are buried in the rubble that there has been some of that machinery brought into Gaza, but it's been brought in to find Israelis, not Palestinians. And of course, spare parts. You'll hear uh constantly coming out of Gaza, the shortage of spare parts that Israel has um uh prevented from getting in. Those none of those last things that I've said count as ceasefire violations in the 600 uh tally that's being uh used. The 600 violations are military marshall violations. Um yeah, and like I said, more than uh 350 killed and nearly a thousand wounded. Um let's take a look at the first map here because I got a map uh that uh a fresh map here um and a different look at Gaza. This is Gaza as seen um by the refugee camps. Gaza is 80% uh refugees descendants from uh the Nagba in 1948 and the years the three years after where Palestinians were warehoused and then ultimately uh put into the Gaza Strip where the Gaza Strip became uh the warehouse and they have originally the border of the settlements uh or the border of the Gaza Strip were the settlements and that is the Gaza envelope. Uh, Israel used militarized civilian settlements um as the border. Um, after the first inifada, the Israelis began to fence off Gaza in um the border, the boundary, we we'll call it the boundary because it's obviously not a border um was fenced off beginning in the first inifat in the late 1980s. And that culminates in the second inifat. Uh the second inifat, the wall around Gaza is um is concrete wall uh high concrete walls. And then um once the settlers were driven out of Gaza along with the soldiers, um Israel began to set about um its high tech uh iron wall that was so spectacularly breached and dismantled um on October the 7th. It was a a wall that was supposed to block underground tunnels. Um it was supposed to be the most high-tech border fence in the world. Um and the Cassam brigades dismantled that in minutes. But I just wanted to give you a different look. Um in the maps here you can see in the north there uh the Jabalia refugee camp, Al-Shhati camp, the beach camp. Um and then in the center you have the middle camps area and in the south Kunis and Rafa are the camps. and Rafa is spread out and Rafa is what we are going to focus on today. If we look at the next map, you can see this is these are these maps that came out. We know these maps have been crude. I reported on these maps right away when Trump posted the map of where the line of Israeli control will be. And this is a map from Alazera that is drawn based on Trump's map. And these are very simple maps. They're crude maps. Um, and the uh the key is that these lines match uh they go through neighborhoods. They go through people's communities. They go through their homes. Um they are in the way of where they travel. Um, and so to have such a vague map I think really highlights these maps are really uh a microcosm of the entire Trump plan where vagueness is what characterizes the entire endeavor. Um, and that is what we're going to focus on today because I want to talk about the fighters that are trapped on the other side of of that yellow line in southern Gaza. You could see in Rafa, it's a massive area in southern uh Gaza in Conunus and Rafa area that is being uh that falls on the eastern side of the line and the fighters have remained there. The original Trump administration plan granted amnesty to the Casam fighters to all fighters who are on that side of the line. Um and that was part of the agreement that was um negotiated and agreed upon by the resistance. the understanding that that would happen um in early November. uh Washington at this point Washington is uh vernacular uh to replace Jared Kushner and uh Steve Witco who are basically um in charge of this entire process themselves um and based it mostly as they bragged about uh on on a long 60 minutes interview that the entire ceasefire was essentially organized through cell phone calls to um to key leaders in the region that would act this plan. Um, but the the plan from early November from Washington was to find a quick solution to the standoff between the Hamas fighters on the eastern side of the line in Rafa. Kushner and Wickoff even made an express visit to Israel in November um in order to to tell Israel to allow the fighters to cross. will remember that uh gestures of good faith between Kushner Witkoff uh and the Palestinian resistance had been much um the resistance handed over for nothing uh one of the American uh Israeli soldiers that was held captive um as a measure of good faith that was supposed to uh start the negotiation. So they're already uh Kushner and Wickoff in debt to the resistance. Um and so they actually flew over to Israel with the express purpose of meeting with Netanyahu to sort this situation out. Um, Witoff spoke in November at a business conference in Miami where he talked about 200 fighters trapped in Rafa and he said that they're um he he did he started talking about surrender only in uh November and that shows how little he understands about the conflict that he is um the lead negotiator on. Kasam was not going to surrender. they were negotiated for safe passage back to Palestinian controlled area in the Gaza Strip. Hamas put out a statement to that saying the brutal crime the occupation is committing by pursuing, killing and arresting the fighters trapped in the tunnels of Rafa is a blatant violation of the ceasefire agreement and clear proof of the ongoing attempts to undermine and destroy this agreement. Hamas presented specific ideas, mechanisms um sorry, Hamas presented specific mechanisms to address the matter while maintaining full communication with the mediators and with the American administration as the key guarantor of the ceasefire. We hold the occupation fully responsible for the lives of our fighters and we call on the mediators to intervene urgently and pressure the occupation to allow our men to return to their homes. They represent a unique example of sacrifice, heroism, and patience. And they are a symbol of the dignity and freedom of the Palestinian people. And we have seen recently over the past month the ICRC um traveling on the eastern side of the yellow line with Kasam fighters in order to find Israeli captives. That same mechanism could be used to bring the fighters in Rafa back across the line. There was some talk that that would happen with the uh handover of uh Hadar Golden who is a um Israeli soldier who was captured in the 2014 war. The negotiations for that again Hamas fulfilled Kasam fulfilled its end of the negotiations and handed over that soldier from 2014 and still no uh deal on the u the captives. Uh but as this next map shows the there's much more precise uh maps uh to be found. Um although you're going to see in this report coming up that there's a number of maps that are being used um by uh all parties in here that are all not the same maps. Um and this is the uh the bottom of this map that you're looking at here. We're looking at a much more detailed map, one that's based on the actual area where the yellow uh blocks had been placed. And this is from uh Benion Macales. He is an IDF adjacent mapper and open- source mapper. [snorts] Um and there's currently right now two brigades, the Nahal brigade and the Golani brigade that are in that area of eastern Rafa um looking for the fighters. And the IDF has said over the past 40 days, troops from the Nahal and Golani brigades together with Yahalom tunnel, the Yahalom are tunnel troops. Uh the Yahalom troops under the command of the Gaza division have been operating in a concentrated effort in eastern Rafa with the aim of dismantling the underground tunnel routes that remain in the area and the elimination of the fighters that are within them. In the past week, more than 40 fighters were eliminated in the areas of the tunnel control. and Israel just shows um blurry drone video of them shooting at barely perceptible humans. So, we don't have a solid understanding um of who is being killed and if they're the fighters in question here. Um but yesterday uh if we look at the next map, we can see a zoom in on the Rafa area which gives us a much closer look at the bottom there. The map is in Hebrew. at the in the bottom corner there, you see that's the Karam Shalom uh crossing. Um a little bit up that uh borderline between Egypt, that's the Rafa crossing that is supposed to open in both directions um at the end of phase one uh of the deal, which is very close to happening. Um and that area in eastern Rafa is where we are talking about. Yesterday, after a month of being attacked in ceasefire violations, yesterday fighters um attacked the Israeli force that had come to uh the building that they were hiding out in. The tunnel had that the tunnel had access to. Um the Israeli Defense Forces allowed publication of this matter yesterday, although they didn't show drone footage, which they have. um that five of their soldiers were wounded, one seriously by um Yasine 105 fire and a gorilla action device that was affixed to the Nom troop carrier. Um the IDF report talks about the fighters exiting from the ruins in Rafa to defend them to exit from the ruins in Rafa. End quote. Um they're defending themselves uh against this raid. And the the Israelis say subsequently a third militant who was not identified by our forces managed to approach and attach a gorilla action device to the NMER. Um the IDF was searching the building where the two attackers emerge from nearby uh from a nearby underground cave. And we've seen that the fighters are um in tunnels. They're also in um in caves effectively inside the de the demolished buildings that Rafa is. So uh a pretty significant operation that happened uh in Rafa yesterday. Um and all of this points to something that we have covered for the whole 2-year war on the resistance report here. And that is that the fighters fight in territorial battalions. They don't leave their fighting positions and run to other fighting positions. They're not running all over Gaza harassing Israeli soldiers. They fight in their positions. um which we've heard um a number of times on video um one particularly from Sudin poet Muhammad Abdal Barry um where he talks about the battle of Ahoud where and he says we will remain on the mountain of archers and behind us the voice of the prophet shaking us do not leave do not leave this poem refers to the battle of Ahood um in the Quran where the archers left their positions and it cost the Muslims the battle. So these fighters are literally staying in their uh on their Mount Uhoud to uh carry out this battle and when the uh lines were randomly cut there for the yellow line, they ended up on the other side of that line. And we've seen this territorial defense all over Gaza. It's why um when the IDF invaded uh Zetun six, seven, eight times there was fighters there to meet them every time or in Darabala where there was no invasion until the last days of the war. Still the first moment the Israelis moved in they're hit by those territorial units. So we know these fighters are in Rafa holding their positions. Um, if we look at the next uh map, you can see what uh or the next uh slide, you can see what Rafa looks like. It's a very difficult environment uh to uh be a resistance fighter in. All of the buildings are destroyed. It's a shoot tokill zone. It's been a free fire zone um since the summer of 2024, so a year and a half now. But these fighters are still operating in uh in Rafa. And this is the Rafa model that you're looking at. This photo here uh for people that can't see it, we're looking at the moonscape uh uh that used to be the society of Rafa that has been completely uh erased. Like the mayor uh Dr. Ahmed al Sufi said stated that um the public squares uh everywhere uh in Rafa has been completely annihilated calling it a disaster area completely destroyed more than 90% of the homes in the Rafa government govern which amounts to over 20,000 buildings containing 50,000 housing units. They destroyed all the wells. They destroyed um the power plant, the water filtration plants. All of this is what is called the Rafa model. Um and Israel has been using this model um with the attempt to uh create um another state. There was a Wall Street Journal article uh in late November talking about how the US wanted to create a green zone in Rafa where uh it would be separate from the resistance, separate from the Palestinian governance um that would be created in um in the eastern area of Rafa, which is a silent uh implicit uh understanding that Hamas is not going to is not going anywhere, that disarmament is not happening. [snorts] Um, but the idea of building on the eastern side is opposed by Israeli by the Israeli cabinet who doesn't want rebuilding to happen that close to the border again. But you can see in this picture by the New York Times um and I bring this picture from the New York Times because um in spite of it being the New York Times because it just shows that everybody knows that Rafa has been destroyed. it. Even the most uh pro-Israel newspapers um admit that and show that. And in Israel, it's bragged about. Um we could take a look at the next slide because what Israel has been doing in this area is setting up military positions. More than 40 military bases have been set up across um Gaza on the eastern side of the yellow line. Half of those um you can see the dots there. half of them are in uh southern Kunis and Rafa area. So they have two um brigades dedicated to finding these fighters. They have 13 sites in Rafa and another 11 in communist and they can't find these dozens of fighters that are um that are still in uh Rafa. And we'll remember the Rafa Brigade. We were told the Rafa Brigade was defeated. The IDF said they were defeated in the summer of 2024. A few months later, we saw footage of Yaha Sinoir on the front lines commanding operations in Tellesultan with the Tellesan battalion commander Mahmud Hamdan. Um clearly showing that the the Rafa the Rafa brigade had not been defeated. Uh after that we saw a whole series of actions from the Rafa brigade called operation avenging Sinoir after Sinir was killed in October of um that year. Uh immediately the Rafa brigade came up with a whole series of operations. same when the ceasefire was breached by Israel uh in in March. Uh in April immediately um the Rafa brigade carried out operations. Um and the IDF visited at that time even though they had said they had defeated the Rafa brigade on two other occasions. Um Chief of Staff Al Zamir returned to the Gaza Strip and told uh fighters um Israeli soldiers in Gaza that you return to fight in the Gaza Strip. I expect you to defeat the Rafa brigade and lead to victory where you are fighting. They obviously did not defeat the Rafa brigade at that time either. Um if we look at the next slide, you can see there Israelis are actually using this territory right now in the ceasefire to do what they could not do during the war, which was try to find tunnel routes. And you can see here, this is a picture from the Israeli military. It's a handout picture of augur machines searching for tunnels by literally poking holes in the ground um to to find tunnel roots that they had been bragging about during the war that they had demolished. But we know now watching this um that there's no way this kind of contraption could have been set up in uh in contested territory where the resistance was fighting. Um so um yeah, Zamir said that the other day that uh there is no chief of staff deal concerning the trap fighters um what he did say uh in to the Israeli security cabinet last Thursday. He said it's either surrender or we eliminate them. If they surrender, we'll take them in their underwear to city tan for interrogation. So veiled rape threats there at Israel's torture prison. Um but the fighters aren't going to surrender to the Israelis. Anyone who's been following this war um knows that that's the case. But let's look at the context of this. If we look at the next slide, you can see this um this is the civil military coordination center in Kiryat Gat. This is in southern Israel. We're looking at an image right now um of rows of desks of Israeli s of American and Israeli soldiers uh 200 soldiers from central command from the United States sitting at desks. Right now in this photo you can see dozens of them all on computer screens with two uh massive uh screens being projected on the wall. On the left side it says the number of significant acts in other words ceasefire violations. You can see that on um I snipped this out of the background of the Alazer report um but it's very interesting. You can see no significant acts within 24 hours. So they're finding here at the civil military coordination center that there are no significant ceasefire breaches in the past 48 hours. And as we know there has not been a 48 hour period since the ceasefire began that Israel has not violated the ceasefire. So, it gives you a good idea of uh what they count as ceasefire violations in this center. On the right hand side, we can see a massive map and again a map that's not very specific. It looks different than the maps um of that were the more specific ones I showed earlier in this segment. Um, and you can see below them live drone footage from uh, Israeli, but also from American MQ9 Reaper drones that we know are now flying over Gaza. Um, getting good quality uh, uh, drone film footage being broadcast live streamed directly into this command center. So when we hear about these ceasefire violations and we look at what we're seeing on this map right now, you can see the role um that the Americans are playing in uh in this process. Um there's yeah, like I said, 200 SENCOM soldiers. There's also soldiers from uh other nations. There's uh a few soldiers from Canada, from European nations. Um, so this is a very telling picture that I just snagged out of a larger report from Alazer just because it showed what was on the wall. Um, and you can spend a lot of time uh understanding uh what what level of understanding of the ceasefire violations that the Americans have. We can see the next slide as well. um these American soldiers looking at another map that looks even uh slightly different than the two maps that we showed before, but we're looking at a map that's on the wall behind a number of soldiers that are working um on the ceasefire monitoring. Um recently, Army Radio commented on this when they did a tour of the facility as well. When they did their tour, the Israeli military sensor censored everything that was on the wall. So you didn't see any of this background detail that I think is really telling. Um so um the Army radio report said uh that Israel is facing a significant test these days and is required to reshape the security reality in the Gaza Strip. The policy and also set precedents. The enemy must be assessed not only to be the final results of its actions. Even a shooting incident without casualties must be responded to as if a soldier was killed. In other words, massacre the civilian population like we saw yesterday in the tent massacres that followed the resistance operation um in Rafa, the burning of tents in Kunis. Um Army Radio says the American command is definitely involved. The IDF gave advanced notice of the intention to strike but did not wait for a green light or approval for the attack, nor did it update on the targets of the strike or who they intended to eliminate. Here again, every event sets a precedent for the future and shapes the reality ahead. So from the Israeli point of view, they're not really telling the command center what their operations are. They're just letting the operation center watch. And the operation center seems to have no problem with that. There's one more here. Um number 10, if we can go and see that. There you can see soldiers um gathered around high higher resolution than anything we've seen from the Israelis um of drone footage that is being monitored uh 247 in this facility in southern Israel. This is um described as a warehouse in southern Israel. It's not on a military base, but a number of Israeli military commentators um bristle at this uh idea that the Americans are um set up within their territory as an act against their sovereignty and they worry what it's going to look like when uh another president that's not Trump uh is is in charge of this situation. So just to get let people have a good understanding of what the Americans are seeing on the ground um about this situation. If we go to the next slide, you can see Kasam has responded to this. Um they put out this poster the other day that said, "Surrender is not in our dictionary. In vain we they try to uproot us. We will sprout from blood. We are the roots and our branches reach to the sky," it says. And you can see there with the olive tree with the Palestinian flag, you can see the AK-47 on the bottom. Um the fighters are not going to surrender. Um the uh the GSA brigades issued a statement that said the enemy should know that in our lexicon or in our dictionary there is surrendering or handing oneself over to the occupier has no meaning. This is from a larger uh statement by Casam. This is the only uh wholesome statement that they have delivered about this is from early November. They say the occupation bears full responsibility for the clashes with our fighters in Rafa who are defending themselves inside an area under its control. The enemy must know that the principle of surrender and handing over oneself to the enemy does not exist in the lexicon of the Alcasam brigades. Um, we place before the mediators their responsibilities and they must find a solution to ensure the continuation of the ceasefire to prevent the enemy from using flimsy pretexts to violate it and to exploit that to target the innocent civilians of Gaza, which is what Israel is doing. It's what they did yesterday after the attack on their soldiers. They carried out massacres in tent camps uh in Conunice um that Norah reported on in the newscast. If you haven't checked that out, if you didn't catch that, you should check it out uh when it's posted as a solo video. And one more from Kasam here. Um their fighters here um saying that the conviction of our rifles can never be defeated. We're looking at uh three hands of fighters um on top of each other dirtied from the tunnels. There's a tunnel in the background. Presumably that's a Quran. Although we've seen the fighters reading all kinds of nationalist uh literature um and literature by their leaders, but we're going to assume that that's a Quran that they're uh have their hands on. Underneath it is their AK and on the ground in the rubble there it says Rafa. Um, so that's a statement uh from uh from the Kasam brigades uh about this and the spokesperson for uh Hamas Hazam Kasam who's in Gaza said those fortified in ra in Rafa are marks of glory and signs of pride for everyone who belongs to this nation. Um, and one last slide here. The uh second to last handover of Israeli captives is happening right now. Here we're looking at a photo of Sariah Aluds and Casam and the ICRC, the International Committee of the Red Cross, uh, doing the handover. Um, there is now only one remaining uh, captives body in Gaza. And you can see here, and we've seen this in the last few handovers, um that Saral Kuds holds these um held these bodies, not Casam, which is something that um we knew all along that uh other groups were holding uh many of these bodies um particularly of the non-soldiers. Um and the statement said from Saral Kuds and the Cassabri yesterday that within the framework of the Alex Aafra prisoner exchange SAL Kuds and the martyr Isad al Kasam brigades will hand over the body of one of the occupations prisoners which has been found in the north of the Gaza Strip today at 5:00 p.m. That is the uh 27th of 28 uh to be handed over. So the difficult task of finding uh all of the Israeli captives is virtually complete. The 20 living soldiers were handed back and most of these uh 28 have been soldiers or security forces. So that is the resistance report for day 790 of Israel's genocidal war in Gaza. Heat. Hey, Heat. [music]