Chris Mitchell, the Middle East correspondent for the Christian Broadcasting Network, told “Washington Watch” he is monitoring a call-up of IDF Reserves that likely precedes a final push in Gaza to wipe out the last Hamas terrorists.
"In the Gaza Strip, they are calling up maybe as many as 60,000 reservists,” he said. “They should be coming online probably around September 1.”
That likely means the IDF push will be coming in the next couple of weeks, he reasoned.
On October 7 Israel will commemorate the two-year anniversary of the surprise Hamas attack, remembering the 1,200 Israelis killed and 250 others that were kidnapped and marched back to Gaza.
The top leaders of Hamas planned the attack, which they named “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood,” over two years and somehow kept it secret from the Mossad.
The hours-long attack itself caught the IDF off guard during a Jewish holiday, Simchat Torah, when many soldiers were on leave and the Israel
A military counter-attack from Israel came just hours later, and it has never stopped almost a year and 10 months later.
Now controlling about 70 percent of Gaza, the IDF claims it has killed an estimated 20,000 Hamas fighters while sustaining about 900 IDF soldiers killed and 8,600 wounded.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, announced in early August the IDF plans to push into Gaza City. That city is Gaza’s most populous urban area, located along the Mediterranean Sea in the north.
"We intend to, in order to assure our security, remove Hamas there, enable the population to be free in Gaza and to pass it to civilian governance that is not Hamas and not anyone advocating the destruction of Israel,” Netanyahu told Fox News.
“That’s what we want to do," he continued. "We want to liberate ourselves and liberate the people of Gaza from the awful terror of Hamas."
Netanyahu has been under diplomatic pressure, including from the Trump administration, to broker a ceasefire that includes the release of the remaining hostages. Instead, it appears Netanyahu is pivoting to a final encircling attack to wipe out Hamas for good.
Despite international claims the IDF coldly targets and kills Palestinian civilians, Mitchell said the Israelis work to minimize civilian casualties and will continue to do so in heavily populated Gaza City.
“On the contrary, Hamas uses those very same civilians as human Shields,” he said. “There are reports that they've actually killed their own people as they try to leave to the safe areas."
