Israel used cease-fire to gain intelligence for more precise bombings: source

Israel spent its recent seven day cease-fire gaining intelligence to plan “surgical air strikes” to avoid civilian causalities, and its military spokespeople promised Hamas will receive the “mother of all thumpings” following the end of the cease-fire.

Minutes before the cease-fire was set to expire at 7 a.m. Friday morning, Israeli forces said they shot down a Hamas rocket fired from Gaza, breaking the fragile agreement and leading to the shelling of the area.

Government spokesperson Eylon Levy said Friday that “Hamas will now take the mother of all thumpings” after it failed to release all the female hostages promised as part of their cease-fire agreement.

The terrorist organization still has 20 female hostages in captivity, as well as 117 males and two infants, according to Levy.

A Hamas official said he didn’t know how many hostages had died under the terror group’s control as the “number isn’t important.”

Israel claims there are 137 still in captivity.

“Hamas says it doesn’t know how many hostages are still alive and ‘the number is not important,’” Levy said in a damning tweet. “Israelis value life. Hamas worships death.”

The Israeli Defense Forces are still steadfastly working to “neutralize” Hamas as it enters the next phase of its war, but will work to reduce the civilian death count, a military analyst told The National, a United Ararb Emirates-based newspaper.

The newspaper said it had used the last week to gain intel on Hamas positions through its intelligence sources housed inside the rogue region.

“After an awful lot of intelligence gathering one would expect them to be far more precise,” former British Army officer Col. Hamish de Bretton Gordon said, adding they will be using “more surgical air strikes” to take out targets in Gaza.

Brigadier Ben Barry, of the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank, also thinks the US’ influence over Israel will play a large role in how the country proceeds with airstrikes.

“The known unknown is the extent to which the US has influence over Israel in terms of getting them to try and operate in a way that causes less Palestinian civilian casualties,” Barry said.

Many Americans have called for concern surrounding the high number of Palestinian deaths – which is estimated to be around 14,000, according to Hamas – and Barry doesn’t think the US government will continue to tolerate high death tolls.

“We will go out of our way in order to limit civilian casualties,” an Israeli official said, according to The National.

Hamas claimed Friday that more than 100 people have been in killed in Gaza since the cease-fire ended.