Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was filled with praise for the troops on Tuesday in a written statement with which he thanked both the IDF and the Shin Bet for completing their missions in Gaza.
“This was a complex operation that made heroes of soldiers under difficult combat conditions,” Netanyahu wrote.
“As I said at the beginning of the offensive, there is no 100 percent guarantee for success, but we did all we could to achieve our goal.”
Netanyahu said the neutralization of all the terror tunnels identified by the IDF had been completed.
“I want to praise the Chief of Staff, OC Southern Commander, the soldiers and Shin Bet members, all of them full of combat spirit that brought about most impressive results.
“The operation damaged the strategic array into which Hamas invested a massive effort for years,” the statement continued.
“The ability that Hamas prepared in digging these tunnels enabled it to kidnap and murder many civilians and IDF soldiers by a simultaneous attack from the many tunnels penetrating our territory.”
The next step, said IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz, is to help the region get back on its feet.
“Now we must help rehabilitate Gaza,” IDF Chief of State Benny Gantz said, according to a report on Israel’s Channel 10 television news. “We are doing everything we can to send them food.”
“There is a combination of military necessity on the one hand, and the broad effort to refrain from harming, and helping as much as possible (on the other.)
“We are entering a difficult period of aid and rehabilitation; we will help, not out of any strategic considerations, but from humanitarian ones,” Gantz explained.
