Lt. Col. Conricus: Surprise Tactics Await Hamas as IDF Enters Shifa Hospital Tunnels
IDF int’l spokesman speaks about the dismantling of tunnel infrastructure, much of which was paid for with US tax dollars, Palestinian journalists covering the massacre in Israeli communities, and the impact of the pause on Israeli troops.
The Media Line’s Felice Friedson spoke with Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus as the war enters a new phase, addressing the latest pause which allows four to five hours for Palestinians to leave areas of conflict and head south. Conricus tells The Media Line that this has been going on for several days already. He details the complexity of destroying tunnel shafts and rocket launchers located in civilian residences, schools, and even a compound belonging to the Boy Scouts.
TML: Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus is the International Spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces. Thank you for joining me, at The Media Line!
Lt. Col. Conricus: Thank you, Felice, for having me!
TML: There are reports today that there are Israeli forces that are closing in on the Hamas headquarters at Shifa hospital, and that the IDF and Shin Bet chiefs are embedded with the troops. Can you explain the unusual aspects that make this extremely sensitive and very telling?
Lt. Col. Conricus: Yeah, let’s say that our troops are closer to Shifa today than they were yesterday, and tomorrow they will be even closer still. I will not say when and how, but they are definitely closer. We know that Hamas over many years has turned Hamas above ground, and most importantly Shifa below ground into a military stronghold in violation of humanitarian law and the laws of armed conflict endangering the patients and medical staff at the hospital and endangering the special protective status of the Shifa hospital.
What we are doing is going after Hamas in all its locations. Today, we struck and dismantled a place called Compound 17 in Jabalya [refugee camp], which was a battalion-sized stronghold. That has been dismantled now by the IDF.
And we continue to move methodically according to plan, without rushing, without causing undo casualties as a part of our fighting and advancing to wherever the enemy is. Shifa is one of those locations, but also other locations around northern Gaza.
At the end of the day, Gaza City and its surroundings are really the hub and the center of gravity of Hamas, and that is why we started to operate there, and we will continue to operate until we dismantle Hamas and its military capabilities.
TML: There are great difficulties in terms of the hospitals with many patients that are connected to oxygen tanks. How are you going to deal with a situation of that huge capacity?
Lt. Col. Conricus: For operational reasons, I’m not going to go into the details of what exactly we are going to do. I will only lay down a few principles. We are fighting against Hamas, not against the population.
We have actively been evacuating Palestinians from the battlefield for two-and-a-half weeks. Even during the last five days, we’ve done humanitarian pauses; brief windows of four or five hours where Palestinian civilians have had the opportunity to move from the battlespace—from Jabalya and Gaza [City] and Sha’ati and many other areas in northern Gaza—to vacate south to relative safety where they will be provided with food and water and medical supplies. So, that is ongoing.
And we continue to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants, and we will have to address the situation in Shifa according to what’s on the ground. I agree that is very complex, and that it will be a very challenging situation. But at the end of the day, there is a very important military aim. There is a military necessity. That is an area where Hamas focuses. That is where they feel protected. That is where they have many of their resources. And as such, it’s a place of importance.
And I’m not going to commit to saying what we’re going to do and when. I can only say that it is a very important military enemy asset, and we will address it as such.
TML: Can you take a moment to discuss the complexity of the tunnels and what you currently have found? These tunnels are sometimes connected to schools; headquartered where you have residence, [and] manufacturing plants. Can you describe a little bit about what the IDF, the Israel Defense Forces has been able to locate?
Lt. Col. Conricus: Yeah, we’ve uncovered more than 130 tunnels; some of them interconnected and some of them separate in northern Gaza and we have dismantled them mostly by simply blowing them up, but we are also gathering a lot of intelligence about the layout, their locations, their depth, design, and many other characteristics.
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The Hamas tunnel project is a tremendous engineering feat. There is a city underneath a city. There are tunnels that go very, very deep, dozens of meters below sea level, so it could be hundreds of feet below ground level. There are very large cavities underground. Tunnels that are large enough to have dozens and hundreds of people.
And then there are smaller tactical tunnels which Hamas fighters, combatants use to engage with our troops after emerging from a tunnel firing RPGs and then disengaging quickly, making it difficult for us to deal with them, but we are finding good tactical solutions.
But you are right, this is no doubt the most challenging part of the battlefield is what Hamas has built underground. By the way, all the concrete that Hamas has used to build the support infrastructure for those tunnels has entered through Israel in the form of international aid paid for by US taxpayers, European taxpayers, and UN and Japanese money. That is how they have been able to build this military complex underground which is really the backbone of their infrastructure.
TML: Well, you bring up a very important point. Something that I think you have been dealing with for many, many years, and unfortunately still battling. Defense Minister [Yoav] Gallant has stated today that there are new tactics that are being used to help get through to these tunnels. Is there anything you can share apropos what he had said today?
Lt. Col. Conricus: Yeah, so the development of new weapons is something that of course goes on all the time, but in war, I think that some processes are sped up and research and development efforts are done shorter. They are done with great responsibility and caution, but they are done faster.
And what we are seeing is early deployment in the field of new means that hopefully will surprise the enemy. We know that the enemy will want us to fight down in the tunnels where he can maximize his advantages and nullify our advantages.
We, of course, are not going to oblige by that and we want to dictate combat on our terms, and we are using various technological means. Some of them they are aware of, and some of them I think that they are not yet aware of, and they’ll find them very challenging for various reasons. I can’t say more.
I can only say that the entire defense establishment, the Ministry of Defense, defense industries, the IDF, [and] the R&D in the IDF are really hard at work at this. Hopefully, it will save lives and make the combat swifter with less casualties, and that will also be good for Gazan civilians by the way, because they’ll be able to beat Hamas faster with less Israeli casualties. That means that the war will be over faster.
TML: Pundits seem to feel that this speech that Hassan Nasrallah gave in not wanting to engage in a full-blown where is where he is heading. Can you kind of enlighten us on what you think he is saying here? Because all we are seeing is lots of rockets flying into Israel.
Lt. Col. Conricus: Hizbullah is definitely escalating the situation until a certain threshold. Hassan Nasrallah is a very shrewd and experienced politician and terrorist. We have to be extremely cautious when we try to assess his real intentions. He was going on for about an hour and a half in his speech with very few bottom lines, but we continue to be vigilant along the border. We understand that Hizbullah has significantly more firepower and manpower than what Hamas has.
They have excellent training. They have been prioritized by the Iranians to receive weapons, money, training, and funding over the years, so we know that we are facing a serious enemy, one that should never ever be taken lightly, but an enemy that if they decide to launch a war against us, they will regret it dearly and so will the state of Lebanon.
TML: Lieutenant Conricus, and I think that this is an important question. 9,500 rockets. That’s a lot of rockets flying over Israel—still flying. Explain to me that after all these weeks why is it that Hamas still has that capacity.
Lt. Col. Conricus: Yeah, 9,500 rockets approximately. By the way, there are 239 hostages, but the rockets are flying. Israelis are forced to run for shelter and rockets are intercepted by the Iron Dome. You know, whenever our forces advance and explore the ground, we expose additional rocket launchers.
And it seems that there’s rocket launchers everywhere in Gaza. We exposed it in a compound belonging to Boy Scouts. We’ve seen it in residential houses. We’ve seen it close to UN buildings, in schools, courtyards, mosques. All over Gaza, there are these launch pits which are basically connected to the tunnel system so there’s nothing above ground that is visible. It’s basically just a small hole in the ground which doesn’t need to be of a big diameter so it’s difficult to distinguish from the air.
And what you have is that the rocket launchers are fed with rockets from underground [which are] remotely controlled and they can continue to fire rockets as long as they have rockets left, and they don’t seem to be running out of rockets, air in the tunnels, and electricity and fuel. They will be able to continue to fire rockets [this way].
But what we are doing with the advancing forces, is that we are pushing [ahead and] discovering where they are firing rockets from and then dismantling those rocket launchers that they have been using up until that stage.
TML: You’ve brought up the hostages. There’s negotiations that are going on. It’s a possibility that maybe some more hostages might be released in exchange for a pause. As a military man, and you’re told that you have four hours to pause, how dangerous is that for your troops?
Lt. Col. Conricus: It is dangerous, but it is something that we are more than willing to prepare for and execute. To release our hostages is of paramount importance. We are totally committed to seeing this done. Two hundred and thirty-nine Israelis and foreign nationals: women and children, a 10-month-old baby, [the] elderly, Holocaust survivors, and of course men and soldiers as well. All of them are being held illegally in and under Gaza, and what needs to be done and done swiftly is to apply pressure on all the different stakeholders that can influence Hamas and to get the hostages out.
If there is such a deal, then I think that the Israeli government will order the IDF to stand down temporarily for a cease-fire so that they can be extracted safely. But until that happens, no such thing is on the table, and it is combat and maneuver according to plan.
TML: On October 7, photographs and video recorded the slaughter of Jews inside the Israel border by the kibbutzim in real time. It appears now that some of those reporters were reporting for major international news outlets. One photographer, in particular, has displayed a photo of him being kissed by none other than [Yahya] Sinwar, the head of Hamas himself. So, what is Israel’s response to this?
Lt. Col. Conricus: We’ve asked for clarifications [from] the Government Press Office and others. We at the IDF have asked first and foremost for clarifications. What is this? Please tell us AP, Reuters, New York Times, and CNN what’s going on. Who are the people that you employ? What kind of ties do they have to Hamas? And how confident are you that you are upholding journalistic standards by using these so-called stringers or producers or Palestinian journalists?
I, myself, can say based on my experience is that I have many questions based on the journalistic prowess of Palestinian journalists, maybe not because they are bad people. I am not making that accusation, but they are under tremendous pressure and scrutiny by Hamas, and they cannot publish anything that is remotely challenging to Hamas’ narrative, because they have their families there. They themselves live in Gaza, and if they do [challenge the narrative], they face the consequences, and I know of many journalists who have been handled by Hamas and intimidated.
And the problem with this is when The New York Times reports the number of casualties from Gaza or shows footage that a New York Times reporter allegedly collected on the scene of dead Palestinians trying to evacuate, then you are not supposed to question it, because it is an established international institution. But when you look into the details and understand that the man who most likely collected that has friendly ties with Yahya Sinwar and has a questionable loyalty towards journalistic ethics, then I think that many things that are reported by these networks is compromised and should be scrutinized accordingly.
TML: Before I let you go, at the end of the war, will Israelis be able to sleep at night in the North and the South?
Lt. Col. Conricus: I think that victory can only be determined by the fact that when the situation arrives when Israeli children will be playing and laughing in their backyards in the kibbutzim and in the communities like [Kibbutz] Be’eri that you visited, and other Israeli communities close to Gaza. Once they’ll be able to do that without thinking about Nukhba terrorists coming in and killing and abducting and raping and burning, then that will be victory.
Up until that stage, it is only a process until achieving victory. We are committed to doing that. We understand that we have no other choice. That in order for civilians to live safely within our internationally recognized border in our ancestral homeland, we need to eradicate Hamas. We need to make sure that there are no military capabilities in Gaza, and it needs to be done swiftly so that more than 250,000 internally displaced Israelis can return back home safely and do so safely knowing that they are safe in their homes.
TML: Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, I appreciate the time. I hope to have you back soon at The Media Line!
Lt. Col. Conricus: Definitely! Thank you again, Felice, for having me!
