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Israel Credits "Gloves Off" Targeting for Latest Cease-Fire in Gaza
(Defense News) Barbara Opall-Rome - After 11 collapsed cease-fires in 50 days of war, Israel had to employ "extraordinary escalation," an IDF General Staff officer said, to force Hamas to accept the latest Egyptian-brokered truce that promises to end the Gaza war. He said Israel may never know what compelled Hamas to accept an Aug. 26 truce whose terms were "virtually identical" to those offered in the first days of the war. Operationally, he surmised it was a string of "spectacular airstrikes" leveling at least three luxury towers that followed "high-value" killings of senior Hamas leaders that triggered the turning point. Following the Aug. 23 destruction of a Gaza City high-rise that housed a Hamas command center, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: "I call on the inhabitants of Gaza to evacuate immediately from every site from which Hamas is carrying out terrorist activity. Every one of these places is a target for us."