Please consider a gift to the Israel Emergency Campaign. Funds are desperately needed for trauma relief, respite for 40,000 children who live within 25 miles of Gaza; aid for 20,000 of Israel’s most vulnerable – the aged, new immigrants and people with disabilities and assistance for the 10 hardest hit communities.

You can give on-line at https://donate.juf.org/IsraelEmergency or send to Israel Emergency Campaign  30 S. Wells Street, Chicago, IL 60606

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Wednesday, July 30, 2014

This morning, an elite unit operating in Gaza and entering a house that served as an entry point to an attack tunnel was ambushed by Hamas terrorists. Three soldiers were killed in the ambush and 27 were injured. The total number of IDF casualties in the operation so far is 56.

Today there was a four hour humanitarian cease-fire declared by Israel for the benefit of the civilian population in Gaza. During that cease-fire, Hamas launched 26 rockets at Israel and over a hundred since midnight. After the cease-fire ended, aerial operations resumed. According to Palestinian sources, 17 Palestinian civilians were killed and 160 were injured when a bomb exploded in a fruit and vegetable market in the neighborhood of Shej’ayia. Hamas is blaming the Israeli Air Force and following that event, Hamas promised to retaliate “until the earth shook”.

Slightly before 10 pm the sirens went off in Ashkelon and Iron Dome intercepted three rockets over that city.

After 10 pm Israel time there was another barrage of rockets on central cities in Israel, with sirens going off in Rishon LeZion, Ashkelon, Rehovot and Nes Ziona. One rocket fell in an open field in the Tel Aviv area. Another was intercepted over Ashkelon. Two more rockets were intercepted in the south. No damage was reported.

The IDF now forecasts that the tunnels (one more of which was discovered today) will take a few more days to destroy. In the last 24 hours alone, the IDF destroyed four tunnels. The question is – do we know about ALL the tunnels? And the answer is that right now, we have discovered 32 and there probably are some more. Nobody can tell for sure, but Hamas terrorists are giving a lot of information in interrogation by the IDF and divulging more locations. Destroying the tunnels is an engineering endeavor in itself, as the IDF needs to first of all clear the tunnel of booby traps and Hamas members hiding inside, then go through the tunnel and place the right amount of explosive charges along the length of it, then denote it in a controlled manner, segment after segment. The amount of concrete in those tunnels is staggering and is due to two considerations: one is that they served as shelters for Hamas during Israeli air raids, and the second is that some of these tunnels are under a great amount of earth and need to be reinforced to avoid collapse. Now the problem is destroying them, but with every subsequent tunnel the IDF gains more experience in doing that.

In the meantime, the IDF continues to kill dozens of Hamas terrorists every day, inflicting serious damage on their personnel as well as on other targets in Gaza including launchers and weapons production facilities.

Ofer Bavly
Director General, Israel Office
Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago