TEHRAN- Israeli minister Gideon Sa'ar has admitted to the Army Radio that "Hamas is far from being defeated" despite more than 100 days of Israeli war on the Gaza Strip. 

The remarks come one day after another cabinet minister, Gadi Eisenkot, said Israeli authorities should stop deceiving themselves and reach an agreement to secure the release of captives.  

The admission is perhaps the first time that ministers within the Israeli government are starting to publicly acknowledge what the world has already known for more than two months now. 

The Palestinian resistance has the upper hand against the Israeli military in the Gaza Strip, forcing the regime's infantry units to withdraw from the northern Gaza Strip. 

The rising casualties among Israeli soldiers fighting in Gaza are also becoming a growing concern for the Israeli public who are questioning why the captives have not been rescued yet and why missiles are still being fired at their settlements. 

With the Israeli military effectively withdrawing from northern Gaza, the Palestinian resistance is still firing rockets from the northern part of the enclave. 

This spells the initial defeat for the Israeli military as it has failed to "wipe out" Hamas. 

And experts argue it has no chance of achieving that goal. 

The Israeli military's focus has shifted to the southern Gaza Strip and Khan Younis in particular, yet the ground forces leading the invasion are facing the same difficulties as they did in the north. 

On Wednesday, the Palestinian resistance forces continued to confront the Israeli occupation army trying to invade the south, as it engaged in fierce clashes with the regime's ground forces in the al-Manara neighborhood of Khan Yunis. 

Reports indicated heavy clashes have also taken place between the resistance and the Israeli military south of Khan Yunis. 

Sources within the Palestinian resistance movement have told regional media that the Israeli army "is rushing to end its ground operations in the southern region of Gaza, after it ended them in the northern region of the Strip." 

Despite failing to defeat the Palestinian resistance in the coastal enclave, the regime has created a humanitarian crisis in the enclave while reducing most of the residential buildings to rubble in the small besieged territory that is home to 2.3 million Palestinians. 

Nearly two weeks ago, a Wall Street Journal report said about 300,000 out of 439,000 homes have been destroyed in Israeli attacks on the coastal enclave. 

There is nothing else the Israeli regime can be proud of apart from the death and destruction campaign it has carried out against Gaza's civilians, with women and children bearing the brunt of the Israeli aggression. 

There is not a single safe place where Palestinians can travel in the Gaza Strip without escaping Israeli airstrikes. Even near the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, Israeli airstrikes are "wiping out" entire families, instead of "wiping out" Hamas. 

Qatar's prime minister delivered a stinging criticism of Israel and the international community over the situation.  

Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said, "Gaza is not there anymore. I mean, there is nothing over there," 

The Israeli occupation is "carpet bombing everywhere," the prime minister said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland
Al Thani warned Hamas's 7 October al-Aqsa Storm Operation and the Israeli military response in Gaza show the region could not return to the way it was before. 

Footage has shown starving children in Rafah, southern Gaza, queuing for days to receive food supplies from a charity kitchen.  

Many displaced Palestinians from different parts of Gaza have been forcibly displaced by the Israeli military to live in makeshift tents in Rafah?, despite the bitter cold weather. 
In a bid to hide its growing atrocities, the regime has cut off internet connection for the longest time since the war on Gaza began on October 7 last year. 

According to a top United Nations official, a "great majority" of nearly half a million Palestinians that the UN has said are at risk of starving "are actually in famine, not just at risk of famine". 
"[The war] has brought famine with such incredible speed to the front of the lines," UN under secretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator Martin Griffiths told CNN.  

Griffiths recalled how attempts to move aid to those living in the north of Gaza remain a very dangerous task. 

"If you cannot rely on deconfliction of access routes of people in need, if you cannot rely on hospitals not being attacked... if you cannot rely on people having to move from one place of insecurity to another place of insecurity, those are the issues that make humanitarian aid deliveries," he said.  

"It's not a matter of the number of trucks that can get in." 

Last week, the office of the top UN official warned that the Israeli regime had denied critical supplies from entering northern Gaza.  

As a pretext for its indiscriminate airstrikes, the regime has repeatedly claimed that Hamas is using civilians as "human shields" without providing a shred of evidence. 

Yet footage has emerged showing Israeli troops using a Palestinian civilian as a human shield to protect themselves during a raid on the town of Dura near the city of al-Khalil (also known as Hebron) in the occupied West Bank, where Palestinian youth began throwing stones against the invading army. 

Footage showed a Palestinian civilian being forcibly marched up a street by a soldier who guided him from behind with one hand and kept a lethal assault rifle resting on his shoulder with the other. Two other Israeli troops advanced carefully behind them, their rifles raised. 

Baha Abu Ras said he had been taken from his mobile phone shop on Monday in Dura during a raid in which two Palestinians were shot dead. 

"He [the first soldier] told me that he will use me as a human shield, that young people shouldn’t hurl stones," Abu Ras told Reuters. “‘You will walk in front of me.’ That’s what happened, and he took me toward the center of the town." 

In Gaza, the Israeli military does not differentiate between Hamas fighters, Hamas members, and Hamas supporters. 

With the sharp surge in support for Hamas among Palestinians in Gaza during the war on Gaza, it essentially means that almost all the Palestinian civilian population living in the enclave have been targeted by the Israeli military. 

In one instance, the Israeli army carried out a deadly attack against a care home for dozens of disabled Palestinian people?. The Israeli military claimed Hamas members were inside the center, without providing any evidence and despite the center's authorities warning that there were no Hamas members, armed or unarmed inside. 

It is just one case in a long list of Israeli war crimes being committed against civilians in Gaza.