Two weeks after the conclusion of Operation Guardian of the Walls, senior Israeli officials over the weekend said they believe a prisoner exchange deal can be finalized with the Hamas terrorist organization within weeks or months.
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The cautious optimism in Israel was due to Israel's policy shift following Operation Guardian of the Walls, whereby it has conditioned Gaza's rehabilitation on the return of Israel's fallen soldiers and captive civilians in Hamas hands and is only implementing "basic" humanitarian measures until their return home. Within the framework of its new policy, Israel is only permitting medicine and medical equipment, food, and fuel for the private sector to enter Gaza via the Kerem Shalom crossing. It is allowing Gazans in need of life-saving medical treatment to enter Israel via the Erez crossing.
It is not allowing anything else to enter Gaza, and at this stage, Israel is comprehensively preventing the export of goods from the Hamas-controlled coastal enclave. This issue is particularly troubling to the residents of Gaza, and to quite a few Israeli companies, mainly in the textile and fashion business, waiting eagerly for new shipments from Gaza.
Israel has allowed itself to adopt this policy after experts from the Defense Ministry's Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories unit determined unequivocally that there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza following Operation Guardian of the Walls, although it is no secret that the humanitarian situation in the Strip is dire irrespective of the recent round of violence with Hamas.
Throughout the operation, the IDF focused on precisely targeting military assets belonging to the terrorist groups in Gaza, while the scope of damage to civilian infrastructure was close to zero. According to assessments, despite the magnitude of the Israeli strikes in Gaza, the damage inflicted was just one-tenth of the damage caused during Operation Protective Edge in 2014.
Defense officials believe that beyond the damage to their military infrastructure, the issue Hamas leaders are currently most trouble by is that talks over long-term understandings with Israel gave stalled.
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