I'm John Batser with Colonel Jeff McCausen, CBS News, Gaza.

The surprising contest these last days day after day is an operation underway at the Al-Jifa

Hospital in the north of Gaza, the north, heretofore understood it's cleared of Hamas fighters.

The summary looks like this.

Of the battalions that started the war for Hamas, all but four have been disorganized in some fashion and are moving into fighting

a guerrilla-like war which is very different than the early weeks of the early months of the war.

While in Raffa, the southernmost part of the Gaza Strip,

there are four battalions intact, in other words, command and control still functions.

Israel is proposing an assault on those four battalions.

The U.S. has now made it very clear day after day it does not support that assault.

The additional question is raised in Israeli reporting that Israel may be about

have to deal with, may be about to abandon its ambition, its mission of destroying Hamas.

To attack Jaffa and moves all sympathy from the U.S. and perhaps the money in Congress or to stand down and fight another day.

Jeff, it's not a choice that is easy to make.

I hope I've outlined it correctly.

Well, it there is a strain between the United States and Israel as this war progresses.

And it comes down to this question of a massive military assault on Raffa which translates on the

US side into a greater fear of more and more civilian casualties. We stand right

now, John, at roughly 32,000 Palestinians have been killed.

Nearly 75,000 have been injured in this war so far.

Due to the dense nature of the refugee population in Rotha now about 1.3 million people in and around

this city which prior the conflict was about 300,000. The belief in the

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