NEW YORK, December 20. /TASS/. Israel believes that the current position of Palestine’s radical Hamas movement in the north of the Gaza Strip can be described as "close to a collapse," Senior Advisor to the Israeli Prime Minister Mark Regev has told CNN.

"As you know, in the north, there have been many, many surrenders of Hamas terrorists. They are close, we believe, to a collapse there. In the south - because we started our operation a bit later - it will take a little more time," he said.

Regev added that the Israeli army is "managing to be more surgical in hitting Hamas," and, as a result, "the number of civilians getting caught up in the crossfire is going down.".