Two Yahalom combat engineering soldiers killed in explosion in Rafah over weekend
Activity of the 16th Brigade in the Shejaiya Area, 3 May, 2025. Photo: IDF
Amid concern in Israel that hostage-ceasefire negotiations have stalled, perhaps permanently, the IDF announced Saturday evening that it was sending out tens of thousands of call-up orders to reservists ahead of a significant escalation and expansion of military operations in the Gaza Strip.
The first call-up orders will start going out to reservists on Sunday, and the fighting will likely expand in stages. According to a report from Channel 12, the political leadership prefers to move in stages to leave room for possible development in the negotiations.
A security source told the news channel that even the intensification of fighting is intended to bring Hamas to the negotiating table in order to free more hostages.
“This is a broad move to defeat Hamas, where we do not for a moment forget the hostages, and where everything is done in coordination with the hostages headquarters headed by Nitzan Alon,” the source explained.
IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir recently said, ”The two missions [defeating Hamas and freeing the hostages] are intertwined, and we will increase our activity until we complete both.”
The security cabinet is expected to meet on Sunday to vote on the expansion of military operations in Gaza, which were already approved by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The military believes that the gradually increasing military pressure in the Strip has been working to degrade Hamas’ abilities, even as it has not yet agreed to any of Israel’s terms in the negotiations.
However, despite the apparent success of the IDF’s maneuvers in Gaza since the end of the ceasefire, Hamas still has significant capabilities to inflict harm on the soldiers. This was seen in the killing of two soldiers over the weekend in a booby-trapped building in Rafah.
While the incident is still being investigated by the military, apparently, Golani Brigade soldiers entered the building where the explosion happened and located a tunnel shaft. Later in the day, Yahalom combat engineering soldiers began scanning the site in order to begin the process of demolition when there was a sudden explosion, killing Captain Noam Ravid and Staff Sergeant Yaly Seror, and wounding a third Yahalom soldier.
While the IDF is sending out tens of thousands of call-ups, the military affirmed that it plans on incrementally increasing pressure on Hamas, and that not all of the reservists will be sent to Gaza.
The IDF also assesses that Hamas is preserving its best fighters in Gaza City ahead of a renewal of a large-scale assault aimed at toppling Hamas and removing it from power. Currently, the military has said the terrorists it encounters are few and operating mostly as a decentralized guerrilla fighting force.
According to reports in Hebrew media, the IDF is also planning to change the way humanitarian aid in the Strip will be distributed when the government makes the decision to allow more aid into the enclave.
The new plan would see the aid distributed by international organizations directly to Gaza civilians in an area controlled by the Israeli military. This would prevent aid from benefiting Hamas. The aid will also reportedly be distributed in family-sized boxes, with sufficient supplies to last several days.
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