2:36 am ET, December 1, 2023
As fighting resumes in Gaza, the Israeli military is once again “ready to destroy” Hamas, the spokesman says.
From CNN’s Dale Rebane and Jennifer Houser
IDF/Reuters
After a week-long ceasefire between Israel and Hamas ended, a spokesman said the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have again moved to “destroy” Hamas.
The Israeli military’s mission is to destroy the militant group “so they cannot commit this crime again in Israel, and along the way, bring our people home,” IDF spokesman Maj. Doran Spielman told CNN Friday that Israeli forces have resumed combat operations against Hamas in Gaza.
Spielman said the military’s targets were “Hamas strongholds, Hamas terrorists and places where they fired rockets.”
Sirens sounded in Israel an hour before the cease-fire was due to expire on Friday morning, when an incoming rocket was intercepted. Sirens continued in Israeli communities around Gaza.
“Sleeping Israelis awoke once again to the red siren sound of Hamas rockets falling on us from Gaza,” Spielman told CNN, interjecting on Friday that “there are many rockets.”
Resuming the ceasefire is up to politicians, not the military, Spielman said.
“The political group can decide to take this in the direction they want, that is always their option. We as the army have been given orders that this ceasefire has been violated,” he said.
Asked about the IDF targeting civilian areas in Gaza, Spielman said: “We don’t want to see Gaza civilians die, but Hamas is operating directly from within those areas, and we have to ask ourselves what is the alternative?”
“If we do nothing, if we lay down our arms, we are going to allow Hamas to carry out another massacre like the one on October 7. Morally, I think that is completely unconscionable,” he said.
Spielman also argued that Hamas did not target troops, “they directly targeted civilians.”
