Air force chief says IDF ready to face Hezbollah in north, Hamas nearly defeated in Gaza
Tomer Bar notes fatigue given length of fighting, but says Israel has the patience and spirit to battle Hezbollah; IDF head: Allowing evacuees to return home safely our main goal
The head of Israel’s air force said Thursday that the Hamas terror group was close to being defeated and that the military was prepared to shift fighting to the north despite the lengthy war.
“We are in the midst of the longest war in our history since the War of Independence,” Maj. Gen. Tomer Bar said at a graduation ceremony for new air force pilots. “We have been fighting for almost nine months without respite, tirelessly.”
“Hamas in Gaza will be defeated soon,” he said.
The comment was the latest from Israeli officials indicating that the war in Gaza sparked by the October 7 attack was nearing a place where Hamas could no longer muster a cogent fighting force, while also tempering expectations for the total elimination of the terror group.
Israeli officials have said that the army has defeated all but four Hamas battalions in the Gaza Strip, including two in the southern city of Rafah, and two more in central Gaza. Several of the group’s top leaders, including Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar and armed wing head Mohammed Deif nonetheless remain at large.
Earlier this week, IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi said that Hamas would soon be defeated — “not in the sense that there are no more terrorists… but in the sense that it does not know how to function as a fighting framework.”
Halevi said Hamas’s Rafah Brigade was close to being defeated after the IDF had significantly weakened the group’s factions in the north and center of Gaza over nine months of war.
Speaking to the graduates Thursday, Halevi said “bringing the hostages home and getting the evacuees back to their homes in the North and the South safely,” were the main objectives of the war.
“We are committed to remain determined and persevere, and we must do everything to prevent any threats to our lives here,” he said.
“We’ve lost many soldiers and officers who fought bravely. The price is dear, but the goal is unparalleled: Dismantle Hamas, kill its terrorists, destroy its infrastructure, and not allow its continued rule,” Bar said.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said the aims and goals are recovering the hostages and eliminating Hamas.
Despite the long war, Bar said at the ceremony that Israel was prepared to take the fight to the Hezbollah terror group if need be.
“We are ready to face Hezbollah in the north,” he said. “We have the means for this, we have the capabilities, we certainly have the patience and fighting spirit.
Israel and Hezbollah have inched closer to all-out war in recent weeks as near-daily cross-border attacks have ramped up.
On Thursday, Hezbollah launched a barrage of some 40 rockets at northern Israel in response to recent Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon, including the killing of one of its operatives earlier in the day.
An unnamed senior US official told Politico Thursday that the risk of war is higher than it has been for weeks. The officials said that a major attack by either side, which could spark a war, could happen with “little notice.”
US and Israeli officials have pinned hopes on an easing of the fighting in Gaza allowing Hezbollah to cut off its attacks, which are ostensibly designed to support Hamas as it fights Israel.
War in Gaza erupted on October 7 with Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel’s South in which terrorists murdered some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 hostages.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 37,500 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 15,000 combatants in battle and some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 attack.
