IDF advances in Gaza, expands buffer zone to pressure Hamas, but no fighting taking place
Defense Minister Israel Katz claims ‘great achievements’ bringing terror group closer to agreeing on hostage deal; says military preparing for ‘big move’ to defeat Hamas
Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian is The Times of Israel's military correspondent
RAFAH, Gaza Strip — Little to no fighting has taken place in the Gaza Strip since the Israeli military resumed its offensive against the Hamas terror group several weeks ago.
The Israel Defense Forces has advanced in the Strip’s south, capturing the so-called Morag Corridor, located between the Palestinian cities of Rafah and Khan Younis; vastly expanded its buffer zone along the Gaza border; carried out over 1,000 airstrikes on Hamas targets, eliminating more than 40 senior officials and mid-level commanders; and located several new tunnels.
The current offensive is aimed at “increasing the pressure on Hamas for the sake of releasing the hostages” and preparing the ground for Israel’s plan to “defeat Hamas,” Defense Minister Israel Katz told reporters on Wednesday during a visit to the Morag Corridor, an area where the IDF has previously not operated.
Katz said the IDF was bringing about “great achievements” during the resumed fighting, including evacuating the civilian population in Rafah and encircling the city.
But those “achievements” do not appear to be affecting Hamas for the time being.
Talks with the terror group to release the remaining 59 hostages still in captivity have seemingly stalled, and at the same time, Hamas operatives are almost entirely not engaging Israeli troops on the ground.
The terror group has also been recruiting more fighters and attempting to restock its limited weapon caches. The IDF estimates that the terror group has some 20,000 active fighters, half of what it had before the war.
Israeli officials have said the country is willing to engage in talks on ending the war in Gaza but will insist on achieving its aims — the return of all the hostages, the disarming of Hamas and other Gaza terror groups, the exile of Hamas leaders, and a new governing structure that does not include Hamas.
And if the terror group continues to dig in its heels and refuses to meet Israel’s demands, the IDF will eventually call up a large number of reservists to “defeat Hamas,” Katz said.
“If Hamas continues its refusal and will not release the hostages soon, the IDF will move to intensive fighting across all of Gaza, until the hostages are released and Hamas is defeated,” he said.
Some military officials believe that Hamas will never surrender, no matter how hard the IDF hits it.
Katz said he believed that reaching a new hostage deal with Hamas was “more likely than it was before” because of the new IDF offensive, which he said was pressuring the terror group.
“Moving the population, capturing territory, the continued humanitarian blockade, all of these bring strong pressure on Hamas to release the hostages. I hope that this pressure, alongside the powerful IDF activities, will work, and we will return to the path of releasing the hostages,” he said.
Regarding the growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, after Israel stopped allowing the entry of aid, Katz asserted: “There are no shortages in Gaza, and there is no intention to reopen.”
Katz said that if a hostage deal happens, the IDF’s current offensive would stop “immediately.”
But he said the military was still preparing for “the big move,” which would involve drafting numerous reservists to defeat Hamas. “This will happen eventually,” he said.
New corridor, expanded buffer zone
Some 250,000 Palestinians — mostly from Rafah — have evacuated areas in Gaza declared by the IDF as combat zones since March 18, and among them are many terror operatives who are choosing not to fight, according to military estimates.
The IDF launched massive strikes in southern Gaza before troops of the 188th Armored Brigade and Golani Infantry Brigade — operating under the 36th Division — entered the Morag Corridor area for the first time.
The Morag Corridor is set to run for some 15 kilometers from the Israeli border community of Sufa to the coast of the Strip, parallel to the Philadelphi Corridor on the Egypt-Gaza border area, which is also controlled by the IDF.
Once the corridor is fully established, the IDF will have effectively cut off Rafah from Khan Younis.
The military aims to operate inside areas of Rafah to defeat the remaining Hamas forces there, despite declaring six months ago that the terror group’s Rafah Brigade had already been defeated.
So far, the IDF has located several Hamas tunnels in the area between Rafah and Khan Younis, along with other terror infrastructure.
In all, the military estimates that it has destroyed just 25% of Hamas’s tunnels across the entire Strip since the beginning of the war. It argues that the main focus has been on Hamas’s attack tunnels and those used as command centers or for weapons manufacturing — the majority of which have been destroyed — rather than the numerous tunnels that Hamas uses to move around the Strip.
After Hamas’s Rafah Brigade has been defeated, the IDF’s buffer zone in southern Gaza will stretch from the Egypt border to the outskirts of Khan Younis — around 5 kilometers away — and include the entire city of Rafah within it — around 20% of the Strip.
The IDF’s buffer zone elsewhere on the border with Gaza has also been expanded from several hundred meters to around 2 kilometers in most areas.
Amid all of the new operations in Gaza in the past weeks, the IDF has only reported one incident of troops coming under fire.
With 20,000 active operatives and apparently no plans to surrender, it is unlikely that Hamas is too weakened to engage the IDF.
Rather, Hamas is preparing, just like the IDF is, for a much more major battle, one that would more than likely endanger the remaining 24 living hostages still being held by the terror group.
