The Gaza War Day 468; The War in the North



Thursday

Yom Chamishee

16 Tevet 5785

January 16 2025

UPDATE 9:00 AM ISRAEL TIME

The View from Ashdod and on the Ground in Gaza

So, as you all know, there is a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas which means that we had a quiet night here in Ashdod, right?

Wrong.

The ceasefire does not go into effect until 12:15 pm on Sunday–more than 3 days from now. Last night, the IAF carried out an extensive bombing attacks on numerous places in Gaza including Gaza City, Jabaliya, and the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood.

Which means that we heard the roar of planes and the booms from those bombs all night.

About the Hostage/Ceasefire Agreement

The media is awash in fake news about virtually every facet of the supposed agreement.

We say “supposed” because it has yet to be approved by the Cabinet and subsequently the Government–both of which are expected to approve it today. On the enemy side, there is no word about where the terror groups aside from Hamas–such as Islamic Jihad, the PFLP, the Gazan PLO–stand on the agreement though it is “assumed” they will go along with Hamas.

And neither we nor Hamas has signed the agreement. Some reports suggest that Hamas is continuing to try to make changes to the complex arrangement.

As for the details, almost every detail is unknown.

Take for example, which hostages are going to be released first? Will it be 5 Israeli soldiers as reported on one media outlet in Israel this morning? Or 3 female hostages as reported on another? Or some of the American-Israeli hostages as suggested by President Biden?

And who is alive and who is dead? Take again for example, President Biden’s crowing yesterday that the 7 American-Israeli hostages will be released. Those hostages are Omer Neutra, Edan Alexander, Sagui Dekel-Chen, Itay Chen, Keith Siegel, Gad Haggai and Judi Haggai. And while the families of these hostages issued a statement last night saying “We are deeply grateful that there is finally an agreement between Israel and Hamas to bring our loved ones home”, at least 4 of these brought home (Neutra, Chen, the Haggais) are dead.

It is important to note that Israel still has not received a list of hostages from Hamas and has no idea who is living and who is dead.

What we seem to know is that the hostage releases will go like this:

Day 1 of the ceasefire, 3 hostages (living or dead) will be released.

Day 7 of the ceasefire, 4 hostages (living or dead) will be released.

Day 14 of the ceasefire, 3 hostages (living or dead) will be released.

Day 21 of the ceasefire, 3 hostages (living or dead) will be released.

Day 28 of the ceasefire, 3 hostages (living or dead) will be released.

Day 35 of the ceasefire, 3 hostages (living or dead) will be released.

During the last week of the ceasefire (days 35-42) 14 hostages will be released.

Another gray area concerns the Philadelphi and Netzarim Corridors. Insofar as the Philadelphi Corridor is concerned, the Egyptians say that we are already pulling out and will completely abandon the Corridor during the course of the first ceasefire. However, Israel says that while there will be a drawdown of forces, the IDF will remain there until some time in the 3rd phase of the negotiations (and who knows if and when that will be).

One “non-gray” area concerns “humanitarian aid”. Israel has agreed to double from 300 to 600 the number of humanitarian trucks coming into Gaza. As we noted in a previous report, Hamas is now using the humanitarian aid to recruit new terrorists (if you join us we’ll give your family more food, etc). Even worse, Hamas is also using the humanitarian aid to smuggle in items such as cameras which are being used by the terrorists throughout northern Gaza to locate IDF soldiers and then remotely detonate IEDs at their location.

In the coming days, we will have more to say about the “agreement.”

By the way, we have an answer to the question we posed yesterday about what will happen when the terrorists fire a missile into southern Israel during the ceasefire.

This morning, there have already been two incoming missile alarms at Nir Am (00:39 and 08:02). Within minutes, the IDF declared that–despite what local residents said–the alarms were “false alarms”. The IDF has since issued another statement saying that one missile was fired at 08:02 and that it fell “in an open space.”

This is what we can expect during the ceasefire. Missile alarms will be declared “false” and/or the missiles will fall “in an open space.”

In the Neighborhood

The Houthis in Yemen and the Iranian proxy terrorists in Iraq both announced this morning that they will halt their attacks on Israel.

And so it goes in Israel this morning . . . so far . . .

We will return during the day if the situation warrants.

This entry was posted in News. Bookmark the permalink.

Comments are closed.