1 Month Recap: War Against Hamas
One month ago, on the morning of Saturday, October 7, the world of every Israeli turned upside down.
Thousands of terrorists invaded southern Israel using trucks, motorcycles, motorized paragliders and boats. Simultaneously, constant barrages of rockets were fired from Gaza toward Israel. Over 1400 Israelis were massacred in a span of 24 hours, and over 240 were abducted into Gaza. The terrorists committed unspeakable atrocities in towns, communities, IDF bases and the Nova Music Festival.
Soon after, we retook control over our towns, communities and bases, and began the efforts of clearing the areas from terrorists. Tens of thousands of civilians had to be evacuated from their homes and relocated to state-funded living solutions throughout the country. Over 300,000 reservists were called for duty and arrived from all over the country and the world to defend Israel’s southern, central and northern borders.
Israel continued to suffer rocket fire by both the Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist organizations. As Hamas fired rockets from Gaza, Hezbollah added to the fire from southern Lebanon. Tens of thousands of civilians from northern towns were also instructed to leave their homes.
For weeks the IDF called for Gazans to evacuate south of Wadi Gaza as we targeted terrorist facilities and Hamas’ chain of command in northern Gaza. Calls were made, texts were sent, videos were published on social media by the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit in Arabic, English and Hebrew explaining where Gazans should evacuate, when and why.
As the month of October came to an end, and after repeated attempts to call for Gazans to evacuate, our forces entered Gaza with two objectives - eliminate Hamas, and rescue the Israeli hostages held in Gaza.
While Hamas was forcefully preventing Gazans from evacuating, our forces risked their lives to clear a route south for them to continue evacuating.
IDF forces continue to operate within Gaza every day, eliminating Hamas’ chain of command, and clearing Gaza of Hamas entirely. We will continue fighting until we restore security to the State of Israel.