‘The coffee was still hot’: IDF general says troops were ‘minutes’ from catching Sinwar

The IDF was “minutes away” from capturing Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in a Gaza tunnel, the commander of the IDF’s 98th Division told Channel 12 News in an interview broadcast Sunday.

Asked in the lengthy interview how close he came to catching the architect of Hamas’s October 7 invasion and slaughter in Israel, Brig. Gen. Dan Goldfus replied: “We were close. We were in his compound. We got to an underground compound. It was ‘hot.’”

What does that mean? he was asked.

“We found a lot of money there. The coffee was still hot. Weapons strewn around.”

So it was minutes after he left?

Goldfus replied: “Minutes, really.”

Israel has said that Sinwar is “marked for death” as the architect of the October 7 attack, orchestrated along with Hamas military wing commander Muhammad Deif. Deif was killed by the IDF last month. Hamas’s overall leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in an explosion in Tehran two weeks ago, for which Israel has not claimed responsibility. Sinwar has since been chosen to succeed him.

The IDF aired a clip in February showing troops giving a tour of one of the tunnels that Sinwar, his family, and other senior Hamas officials had been using as a compound during the war.

The video showed that the tunnel had two bathrooms, a stocked kitchen, an area to sleep in, and a separate room that the IDF said belonged to Sinwar himself, in which soldiers found a safe with millions in cash.

Goldfus is one of the senior officers who has led the charge against Hamas in Gaza, and he has been appointed as the next head of the Northern Corps and Multi-Domain Joint Maneuver Array, and will soon be promoted to the rank of major general.

Describing the military’s successes in its war against Hamas, Goldfus said IDF troops were successfully dismantling the terrorist organization both above and underground.

“It doesn’t happen in two days. I know everyone wants it to happen fast, so do we, but we’re dismantling an infrastructure of many years,” he said.

When the 98th Division first entered Khan Younis, he added, it took 10 hours to get past Hamas’s defenses, whereas when they launched another operation in the city last week, it only took an hour and a half.

Asked whether he was obsessed with Hamas’s tunnel system, he replied that it was the organization’s center of gravity and it needed to be taken away for Hamas to be fully defeated.

“When I plan an operation now, I look first underground, and from there, I go above ground,” he said.

When troops have control of the tunnels, he added, “it means you can carry out much more complex activities because your freedom to act is much greater. It’s a real achievement. It’s where Hamas is and it’s their strength as of today, and we’re taking it apart.”

Goldfus said that part of what enabled the army to succeed in Gaza was that “everyone came to their senses” after the initial shock of October 7, when thousands of Hamas soldiers breached the Gaza border, overrunning Israeli communities and IDF bases and killing some 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and taking 251 hostages.

After October 7, “it took time for the system to come to its senses, from the IDF chief of staff [Herzi Halevi] to every last soldier,” he said.

“I think the system is working excellently now and decisions are being made. There is excellent dialogue between the commanders and the operational level. Our system, our commanders, our soldiers — their feeling of capability is incredible,” he said, adding that this generation of soldiers was a “generation of winners.”

Despite his division’s successes in the war, Goldfus said he was still finishing his time as its commander in emotional turmoil.

“We’re winning, and it’s very very important… On the other hand, there are 115 hostages still on the other side, and we need to do everything to get them back,” he said, adding that he had lost 182 soldiers since October 7, and regretted that he had not been able to visit all of their families.

“That will happen now,” he said.

Regarding criticism of the IDF following October 7, Goldfus said that it was natural and fair and that his job was to do everything he could to provide good answers for people’s questions.

“We will give answers. We’re investigating, but we are also fighting and pushing forward,” he said.

Addressing a speech he made in March for which he faced backlash after telling politicians that they had to be deserving of the IDF and its soldiers’ sacrifices, Goldfus said he had apologized to Halevi for the way it had been delivered.

His comments to politicians came at the end of a planned statement, but the additional comments had not been okayed before he delivered them.

“As a commander in the IDF, I don’t think I intended to harm the IDF’s values, its stateliness, and especially not the chief of staff. And I think that when we look at our soldiers, we fight together, so I think we can also live together,” he said.

Asked whether he had considered resigning from the IDF at any point, Goldfus said he had because the responsibility can be difficult.

“But then you pull yourself together, and you look at the soldiers and the commanders, and I look at this nation that I love so much. It’s impossible for us not to just keep going. We don’t have the right to give up. We don’t have anywhere else… We have to find solutions together, and we have to be deserving of the sacrifices together. We have to find a way to overcome our differences. We have to defend the country together.”

The interview concluded with Goldfus being asked about what victory in the war looked like to him.

First and foremost, he said, true victory would come when Hamas was fully defeated and unable to recover, but that it was essential that the army maintain its values in the process.

“Our values are not for the enemy. Our values are for us, to protect us. I’m better than the other side, and I have no intention of becoming Hamas. I’m in the State of Israel, a Jewish democratic state, with everything that entails,” he said, adding that it was a mistake to think that the IDF’s values were an obstacle in combat.

“In order to carry out the complicated, valuable, precise actions we do, the ones that destroy the enemy and overwhelm it above and below ground, we have to hold on to our values,” he said.

The war in Gaza has been ongoing for 10 months since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel in which terrorists murdered some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 hostages. The IDF believes 111 hostages remain, including 39 it has confirmed are dead.

Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.

The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 39,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 15,000 combatants in battle and some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 attack. Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including schools and mosques.

Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stands at 332.

Source » timesofisrael.com