IDF expands operations in Gaza, 5 soldiers killed
Army orders civilians to evacuate Rafah and Jabalya • IDF accuses gov’t of wasting war achievements
The IDF ordered evacuations of both Jabalya in northern Gaza and portions of Rafah in southern Gaza. Five soldiers were killed in fighting over the weekend.
The IDF said that 100,000150,000 Palestinian civilians would need to be evacuated from Jabalya for a large renewed operation there, which the IDF notified had started, though at press time there were still few details.
This was the first time since January, when the IDF declared full operational control of northern Gaza, that it has effectively acknowledged such a substantial loss of control that it must evacuate between a third and a half of all remaining civilians there in order to undertake another massive operation.
In mid-March, the IDF undertook a significant operation against around 1,000 Hamas fighters at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City for about a week, but it was a targeted operation that did not require evacuating substantial numbers of civilians.
This latest evacuation in Jabalya goes far beyond the periodic small-scale “clean-up” operations that the IDF predicted it would need to undertake for up to nine months from January to put down a second attempted Hamas insurgency.
According to the IDF, Hamas is restoring command and control capabilities, and only a larger operation, including evacuating large numbers of Palestinian civilians, would be sufficient to prevent its potential return to power in the near future.
Further, the IDF publicly acknowledged that the months of delay by the government since January in selecting a new entity or hybrid of countries
and entities to manage Gaza in place of Hamas has squandered many of the IDF’s operational achievements.
Moreover, the military said that if the government does not choose a replacement for Hamas, a wider number of IDF war achievements could be endangered and the most likely outcome would be Hamas’s continued attempts to make a comeback.
This is despite Hamas’s loss of 15,000 dead terrorists, a similar number of wounded ones, and a couple of thousand more arrested.
Although the IDF did not comment on the volume of Hamas forces, it appears that the organization’s total number of fighters must have been closer to 40,000 or more on October 7, and not the 30,000 number often discussed.
Alternatively, Hamas has recruited thousands of new operatives during the course of the war.
At this point, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, war cabinet ministers Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, and most of the IDF high command have been pushing for months for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to go forward with US plans to have a reformed Palestinian Authority take over Gaza along with assistance from Washington, NATO and various Arab allies, like Egypt, the UAE and others, but Netanyahu is stridently opposed to PA involvement in Gaza.
Besides Jabalya, the IDF widened its evacuation orders in Rafah from impacting around 100,000 Palestinian civilians to around 300,000 in eastern Rafah.
This is still a fraction of the over one million Palestinian civilians there, but it is a significant escalation over initial IDF moves to only take over parts of the Philadelphi Corridor with Egypt as well as small portions of eastern Rafah.
Given opposition from the US and Egypt, it is unclear how far the IDF operation in Rafah will go.
On Friday, Yediot Ahronot’s
Nadav Eyal reported from three sources that half of Hamas’s 4,000-8,000 fighters in Rafah had left the area to avoid being attacked by the IDF.
Three top defense sources have denied Eyal’s report to The Jerusalem Post, including multiple sources with no political affiliation.
News that half of Hamas forces have left Rafah would potentially serve US interests and the views of Gantz and Eisenkot, who want to focus on a hostage deal with Hamas without a full-blown Rafah operation.
A spokesman for the two war cabinet ministers gave a general denial that they had leaked the information, though there were indications that at least one of the sources for the Yediot story could have been a war cabinet member.
There was no way for the Post
to independently resolve which narrative regarding Hamas in Rafah was true, though it was also possible that Israeli intelligence on fluid, hidden movements of the terrorist group through tunnels is imperfect, and there may be no clear answer.
The IDF announced that five soldiers were killed in a number of different incidents.
Four 19-years-old soldiers having the rank of sergeant were killed in combat in the Zeitoun neighborhood near Gaza City in the northern part of the enclave on Friday. Their names are Itay Levni, Yosef Dasa, Armias Mekurio, and Daniel Levy. All four were soldiers in 931st Battalion of the IDF’s Nahal Brigade.
An additional three soldiers were injured in the same neighborhood, according to Maariv.
Levni was from Ramat Hasharon, Desa was from Kiryat Bialik, Mekurio was from Beersheba, and Levy was from Kiryat Motzkin.
On Saturday night, the IDF announced the death of 20-year-old Staff-Sgt. Ariel Tsym from Modi’in. Tsym was a combat soldier in the 931st Battalion’s Nahal Brigade and was killed in battle in the northern Gaza Strip.
In a smaller more classic “clean-up”-style series of operations in Zeitun in northern Gaza, the brigade located weapons, destroyed terrorist infrastructure, and eliminated a relatively small number of terrorists.
As part of the operation, Nahal soldiers seized weapons, including Kalashnikovs, combat vests, and grenades.
Additionally, the soldiers identified a small number of terrorists that posed a threat. An air force aircraft worked in cooperation with the brigade to kill them. The IDF also killed a terrorist belonging to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad who participated in the October 7 massacre.
Alongside the military’s continued operations in the Strip, the IDF’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) also announced the establishment of an additional field hospital run by the International Medical Corps in Gaza.
The hospital joins seven other field hospitals established in Gaza since the beginning of the Gaza war.
According to a KAN report, 200,000 liters of fuel were transferred to Gaza through the Kerem Shalom Crossing on Saturday. The fuel would be used for essential purposes, such as hospitals, humanitarian areas, logistical centers, and aid distribution.
The military also announced that around 10 IDF soldiers had been attacked by hundreds of hornets in southern Gaza. The Sheba Medical Center reported that ten soldiers had arrived at the hospital for treatment.