Israeli forces divide Gaza in half ahead of fight in the city
Mike Brest
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The Israel Defense Forces have essentially split Gaza in two and will soon move into Gaza City.
“Troops of the 36th Division reached the coast in Gaza. We’ve completed encircling northern Gaza, separating Hamas strongholds in the north from the south. This is proving to be effective,” IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Richard Hecht said. “In the meantime, we’ve been urging civilians in north Gaza to evacuate for weeks. We will continue to allow civilians to evacuate through the evacuation corridor that we’ve opened, despite Hamas efforts to stop them.”
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Hecht noted that Israeli forces have “engaged in close-quarter combat” against Hamas during fighting that he described as “fierce.”
Similarly, Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, another spokesman, told CNN that the IDF’s separation of the north and south, the north being Hamas’s stronghold and the south being where the IDF wants civilians to evacuate to, “indeed means that we are pushing forward toward Gaza City,” which he described as “the fortress of Hamas’s terrorist activities.”
Israeli military officials have said they are allowing civilians in the north to use an evacuation corridor to the south, though those routes have not been completely safe from Israel’s aerial campaign, according to the outlet.
The Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry said on Monday that the death toll in Gaza has surpassed 10,000, while more than 25,000 people have been injured since the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks were carried out by Hamas. The ministry’s numbers cannot be independently verified and are not broken down between civilians and combatants, Hamas has an incentive to inflate those numbers, and the Biden administration has cast doubt on their trustworthiness.
The death toll in Gaza, even if not exact, represents a significant jump in the number of Palestinian fatalities in a given year, dating back 15 years. In only one year since 2008 did the death toll in Gaza exceed 2,000, and that was in 2014, a year that included a six-week war between Israel and Hamas that was prompted by the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenage soldiers in the West Bank.
There’s no end in sight to the current conflict, meaning the death toll will presumably continue to grow.
Hamas has embedded itself within Gaza’s civilian population, making the jobs of Israeli forces more difficult as they attempt to destroy Hamas’s numbers and capabilities. Hamas has also spent years developing a complex web of tunnels under populated areas of Gaza where its forces are able to move freely and store and smuggle weapons.
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Approximately 1,400 Israelis were killed in the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks, the worst such attack in Israel’s history. The overwhelming majority of the victims were civilians, some of whom died in excruciating ways that officials compared to the tactics used by the Islamic State. Israeli leaders have since declared the previous status quo, of Hamas governing Gaza while amassing military capabilities, no longer tenable.
The country’s military operation has raised international concerns about specific strikes in densely populated areas, the humanitarian conditions in the area, as well as other aspects of how it has responded to the terrorist attacks. The Biden administration has nevertheless remained supportive of Israel’s right to defend itself, though U.S. officials have repeatedly stressed the importance of protecting civilians.