While all eyes are on the IDF’s planned invasion of Gaza City, with dire warnings coming from so many countries that do not want the embattled Jewish state to defend itself, but instead, to agree to the latest proposal for a ceasefire by Hamas, the IDF has been quietly continuing its campaign of picking off senior Hamas leaders in Gaza one by one.
The latest to be eliminated is Mohammed al-Aswad, the head of Hamas’ security apparatus in the Gaza Strip. More on what his elimination will mean for Hamas, and for Israel, can be found here: “‘A significant source of knowledge’: IDF kills Hamas’s head of General Security Apparatus in Gaza,” Jerusalem Post, August 27, 2025:
The Israeli Air Force last Friday struck and killed Mahmoud al-Aswad, who served as Hamas’s General Security Apparatus leader in the Gaza Strip, the military announced the following Wednesday.
Aswad operated as the terrorist organization’s general security leader for Western Gaza, with the military describing him as a “significant source of knowledge” for Hamas.
Al-Aswad knew where all the weapons were hidden, where the intact tunnels were located, where the shafts leading to those tunnels were to be found, where hostages were being kept. He also knew the numbers of Hamas combatants, and their degree of preparation to attack, or withstand assaults by, the IDF in various parts of the Strip. This was information Aswad carried in his head; it would have been too dangerous to have it written down to be found by the IDF should he be killed. That’s why he was such a high-value target.
The IDF is now attacking the outskirts of Gaza City, softening up the city for attack, and also creating conditions that will lead more civilians to leave the city before that major assault is launched.
Jabalya is 2.5 miles outside; it is where more Hamas combatants have just been killed. At the same time, the IDF’s Givati Brigade has struck a terror cell and attacked a weapons storage facility just on the edge of Gaza City. These “softening up” attacks will now be ratcheted up, but the assault deep into the city will be put off until at least a few hundred thousand of the million people now in Gaza City have fled south, to what will be safe zones, as directed by the IDF.
It is not only on the outskirts of Gaza City that the IDF has been operating in preparation for a full-scale assault. It continues its operations in the south of Strip, wiping out large numbers of Hamas troops who threatened to advance on them in Khan Yunis. The IDF has just taken over the last exchange bank still operating in Ramallah. The Jerusalem Post reported on that surprise raid here: “IDF busts last bank handling foreign currency in West Bank,” by Yonah Jeremy Bob, Jerusalem Post, August
With that bank closed, how will the terrorist groups, whether Fatah or Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, pay their members’ salaries?
Additionally, the night before Wednesday’s operation [on August 27] saw the establishment of the IDF’s 607th Engineering Battalion, which the military stated was “established following the lessons learned following October 7,” and that they “began operating for the first time in the Gaza Strip under the command of the Givati Brigade Combat Team.”
This 607th ‘Engineering Battalion has no doubt been tasked with locating, and destroying, more of the hundreds of miles of tunnels that Hamas had built under Gaza; even now, several hundred miles of what the Israelis call “the Gaza metro” are intact; the IDF now estimates that of the 450 miles of tunnels, 75% of that number remain to be destroyed.
All of this activity — in Khan Yunis, in Ramallah, in Jabalya — continues round the clock, while the troops have started their takeover of Gaza City by launching airstrikes in the north and east of the city, in an attempt to force residents to move to safety, out of Gaza City and into the southwestern part of the Strip where the IDF has created a safe zone. It is in that safe zone that the IDF plans to relocate nearly one million Gazans while its operation to destroy what remains of Hamas in Gaza City — the last place where Hamas has a significant presence — gains momentum.
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