Military expert Major General Muhammad Al-Sammadi described the Al-Qassam Brigades’ complex operation in the center of the city of Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip, as one of the largest resistance operations during the war, and indicates a dramatic shift from defensive operations to offensive raiding operations.
Al-Sammadi explained – in his analysis of the military developments in the Gaza Strip – that the operation represents a slap and a strategic failure for the Israelis, in exchange for an operational and strategic success for the resistance factions.
According to the military expert, the Qassam operation demonstrates “high professional capabilities and high quality because it is within a very dangerous operational environment,” describing the matter as “something legendary that amazes military experts.”
Al-Sammadi’s comment comes after the Al-Qassam Brigades – the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) – announced that its fighters attacked, on Monday, an Israeli force of 25 soldiers in the Shaboura camp in central Rafah, killing and wounding all of its members.
Al-Qassam said that its fighters attacked this Israeli force while it was holed up in a building in the Al-Nujaili area in the Shaboura camp, noting that the fighters detonated a minefield in two Israeli troop carriers when a force arrived to rescue the soldiers holed up in the building.
Al-Qassam revealed that the clash is still continuing and fires are burning in the targeted building until the early hours of this evening.
Al-Sammadi expressed his conviction that the Qassam operation in Rafah may involve other factions, given that it is a complex and controlled operation, and indicates that the resistance leadership is cohesive and effective. “Planning is centralized, but implementation is decentralized.”
Attacking a force of 25 soldiers, according to Al-Sammadi, requires planning, monitoring, gathering intelligence information, and joint action, pointing out the use of most types of weapons in the operation, such as anti-tank missiles, fortifications, machine guns, hand grenades, explosive devices, and detonating a minefield.
The operation indicates the resistance’s ability to organize its combat work, the effectiveness of some tunnel networks for use, in addition to the resistance’s tactical flexibility and its ability to adapt and adjust by exploiting its strengths versus the occupation army’s weaknesses, according to Al-Sammadi.
He stressed that the operation comes 252 days after the occupation army entered Rafah and 465 days after the beginning of the Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip in late October 2023.
The nature of the operation was inferred from the fact that it came after the occupation destroyed most of the houses in Rafah and flattened them using winged aircraft, drones and helicopters, in parallel with intense artillery shelling.
The military expert concluded, “The occupation army is waging a futile war, and now needs a ceasefire in Gaza more than the resistance, due to exhaustion and material human losses, as it sinks into the mire of attrition.”
In late August, then-Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant (later dismissed) claimed that the Israeli army had “eliminated the Rafah Brigade” affiliated with Al-Qassam, after a ground operation that began in the border city with Egypt on May 6, 2024.
