The release of an Israeli hostage in Gaza, soldier Ori Megidish, during the night of Sunday, October 29, and revealed on Monday, offered the Israeli authorities a precious opportunity to legitimize their ground operation in the enclave, without underlining the contradiction. The political leaders of the war cabinet were quick to claim this as proof that the army's deployment in the north of the enclave, still limited, did not compromise the objective of freeing the 238 hostages still held by Palestinian factions.

Israeli officials were using this to gain time, even though their ambition appeared irreconcilable, in the long term, with their second promise: that of purely and simply destroying the military and political branches of Hamas in Gaza. This objective was euphemistically expressed on Monday by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who merely stated that Hamas would be "crushed."

Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi and Head of Internal Intelligence Ronen Bar personally monitored the release of Megidish in the operation's command room. The soldier, who was being held alone, belonged to the non-combat units responsible for guarding the perimeter wall around the enclave at the Nahal Oz base, which Hamas breached on October 7.

On Monday, the Israeli army announced that it had further expanded the active ground forces that have been deployed since October 20 north of Gaza City, between the beach and the village of Beit Hanoun, which had been largely ruined by bombardment. They did this with the support of air strikes of an intensity unmatched in three weeks. Other IDF troops were said to have penetrated further south: A tank was filmed by Palestinians on the Salah Al-Din road, which runs through the interior. The army also claimed that Hamas anti-tank missile launchers had been hit by a ground unit at Al-Azhar University on Nasser Street in southern Gaza City.

Details of the numbers, movements and objectives of Israeli troops have been kept intentionally vague. They are not taking control of entire neighborhoods close to the separation wall, as they did in 2014, but are operating slowly and selectively in the northern half of Gazan territory, where the Israeli authorities claim that around 150,000 people remained on Friday. This is an unverifiable and possibly underestimated number, which has since decreased.

These forces attempt to capture Palestinian fighters in order to extract information from them. They locate tunnel entrances and concentrations of Hamas fighters and put pressure on the movement's leaders by demonstrating their military power. For its part, Hamas published on Monday the first proof of life of other hostages in a week: a video of three women captured on October 7, who sharply challenged Netanyahu to have them released immediately.

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