IDF said planning to ramp up northern Gaza fighting as Hamas looks to move back in

The Israel Defense Forces plans to bolster troop activity in northern Gaza in the coming weeks amid indications that Hamas is attempting to re-establish its military presence there, Army Radio reports, pointing to rocket fire emanating from the area on Sunday and a recent gun battle near the coastline in northern Gaza in which five Hamas members were killed.

According to the unsourced report, the army believes some 2,000 Hamas combatants remain in the area, largely under the control of local commander Izzadin al-Haddad, with Hamas’s leadership — thought to have decamped to the south — basically cut off from the group.

The IDF is planning to carry out brigade-level raids on areas where Hamas is attempting to retake northern redoubts, which may include broad operations where needed, the report notes, a shift from recent weeks in which the army has been mainly concerned with hunting down weapons, tunnels and small pockets of remaining resistance.

Renewed fighting in the north would likely complicate plans to begin allowing Gazans to return to northern Gaza, which Israel advised all civilians to leave during the first stages of the war.

The report quotes a defense source blaming the lack of plans for a civilian body to manage affairs in northern Gaza as a major factor in Hamas being able to move in to refill the power vacuum. “If there were a party able to deliver the goods for the north, Hamas would become irrelevant,” the unnamed source says.