00:00 Joining me now is France 24 journalist Wassim Nasser.
00:04 Wassim, you have been keeping close watch on the operations of both the Israelis and
00:11 Hamas militants.
00:12 But I want to ask you just how advanced is the Israeli military at the moment in Gaza?
00:19 How much have they managed to achieve?
00:20 Well, actually, we're going to look at the map and we see the evolution on the ground
00:23 of the military, Israeli military on the ground in northern Gaza.
00:27 So all the areas we see in red are the areas that today are controlled by the Israeli military.
00:33 And we see the evolution in the last, during this weekend and yesterday, next to the Indonesian
00:38 hospital that you mentioned, the Rantisi hospital too, and in the middle of the northern part
00:44 of Gaza, next to the parliament and to the military police offices.
00:50 According to Israeli military sources, they said that more than 250 Hamas targets were
00:56 hit just yesterday, meaning including operatives, rocket launchers and Hamas infrastructure.
01:04 What we can see on this map is it is evolving in a normal way.
01:08 It's not too fast.
01:09 It's not too slow, according to the situation and according to the dense civilian areas
01:15 that fighting is occurring inside.
01:18 So what are the military tactics being used by both sides?
01:21 We're going to see footage from both sides, actually.
01:23 We're going to begin with the Israeli forces in Jabalia that you just mentioned, knowing
01:28 that Jabalia was not totally evacuated.
01:31 Many civilians, thousands are still living in Jabalia.
01:34 And here we see foot soldiers, Israeli foot soldiers, evolving around the Jabalia, what
01:39 is known as the Jabalia camp, because when you say camp, it's not tents, it's buildings,
01:43 actually, because those camps exist since like more than 50 years.
01:47 And here we see they are evolving from one building to another.
01:50 The use of tanks is still being made, but it gets less and less efficient when you go
01:56 into streets.
01:57 And we're going to look at the footage from Ashati camp.
02:00 Ashati camp is also called a camp, but it's buildings, as you know.
02:06 And it's another footage.
02:07 So actually, it was the last dot or the last spot that was left, here it is, by the Israeli
02:13 forces before encircling Gaza City from the seaside.
02:18 And here you see that the fighting is much more intense, much more difficult.
02:22 Tanks evolve much in a harder way.
02:24 And it is -- there's a big risk for infantry, for foot soldiers to go into those buildings
02:30 that could be booby-trapped, where Hamas operatives are still operating from one floor to another.
02:36 And one important thing that we saw in the last hours is -- and here is Hamas footage
02:41 -- we saw that three Hamas operatives attacked the positions of the Israeli army in the Rantisi
02:46 hospital.
02:48 And here you go.
02:49 And they were qualified by Hamas itself as stashahdis, as suicide bombers.
02:55 But the thing is that Hamas dropped this modus operandi since 2008.
03:00 So it would be a first since 15 years where they go back to this mode of operation, knowing
03:04 that the last -- this kind of attack happened in May 2008.
03:09 It was the Islamic Jihad against the Horez passage in -- from Gaza towards Israel.
03:14 So it is very important to see if they are going back to this modus operandi, if they
03:19 were actually suicide bombers, if they were people who put bombs and stayed, or people
03:23 who fought till the end.
03:25 As we used to say a few years back, fidayeen, the days of the PLO or other factions.
03:32 We have another footage of Hamas, too, where we see how they confront military vehicles
03:37 in the streets.
03:38 So here you see a couple of shooters with copies of RPG-7 tandem, meaning they have
03:44 two explosive heads, one head to open the way to another, which could hit inside of
03:53 the tanks.
03:54 So you see from the floors, as we said, from upside, from the corners of the streets.
03:59 And here the dilemma for the Israeli military is, when you make tanks evolve alone, you
04:04 have this kind of outcome.
04:06 So here we see a Hamas operative putting the same kind of explosive on the tank and activating
04:11 it manually, meaning this way he is sure that it's going to make casualties and it's going
04:17 to cause big harm to the tank.
04:20 We'll see another footage where the same explosive were put in an inappropriate way.
04:26 And you'll see it.
04:28 So here you have another Hamas operative.
04:30 Those were the first days of the ground operation of the Israelis.
04:35 And he'll put the same kind of explosive, but look at it.
04:38 So the blast will go on the sides, meaning the tank wasn't harmed at all.
04:43 Now we're clearly having a war of images as well.
04:47 So how much can we trust what either side is broadcasting or sharing with the public?
04:52 It's a very interesting point.
04:54 And we'll see, we should understand too, that each hit, each rocket hitting a tank doesn't
04:59 mean that the tank or the vehicle is being destroyed.
05:02 And we'll see some footage.
05:05 So it's, what we see on the left is explosions next to a Merkava 4 tank.
05:11 What we see on the right is a Merkava tank protected by a system, a trophy, called trophy
05:16 made by Rafael.
05:17 It's a military industry in Israel.
05:19 And actually it provokes small explosions to prevent RPGs or to prevent more ATGMs,
05:26 more advanced weaponry to hit the tank.
05:29 But this kind of protection makes it hard for infantry to be around the tank, because
05:34 when it's activated it could kill its own soldiers.
05:37 So we go back to what I described as the dilemma for the Israeli military.
05:42 But the thing is that the footage shown by Hamas doesn't go all the way to see the tank
05:46 destroyed.
05:47 It could be understandable, because they cannot stay to make the footage, because they could
05:52 be shot at by other Israeli vehicles.
05:55 But still, as we speak, we don't have proof of how many tanks, how many vehicles were
05:59 damaged by Hamas.
06:00 And another way, when you look at Israeli footage, for example, of capturing Hamas rockets
06:06 that we see here.
06:08 So what we see here is a Hamas rocket captured by the Israeli military.
06:11 But actually it's not a rocket which was made to be launched.
06:16 Those are models of rockets that used to be paraded, as we see, by Hamas operatives in
06:22 former military parades inside Gaza.
06:25 But the Israeli does not say, the rocket, was it made to be shot, or was it just for
06:29 a parade?
06:30 So here we are at the fog of war, and there's no journalists on the ground, so we have to
06:34 look at this with very much scrutiny.
06:36 And that's where verification is absolutely crucial.
06:39 Thank you very much, Wassim Nazir.
