Israel wants Hamas out of Gaza but even rooting it from the north hasn’t worked

Renewed violence in north Gaza, which the IDF had largely cleared of Hamas, serves as a sobering example of the difficulties they face as the militants switch to guerilla warfare.

People rush to landing humanitarian aid packages dropped over the northern Gaza Strip on Tuesday. Picture: AFP

Fighting between Israel and Hamas intensified in northern Gaza, the first battleground in the war, where 200 days into the conflict territory is still heavily contested and Israel says thousands of militants remain.

The renewed violence, in areas Israeli forces had previously largely cleared of Hamas, serves as a sobering example of the difficulty of consolidating gains as they prepare an offensive in the southern city of Rafah, the militant group’s last major bastion.

Stabilising northern Gaza will take time, said Amir Avivi, a former deputy commander in the Israeli military who oversaw operations in Gaza. “A huge challenge is not the first part, when you go full-scale and control an area: It’s maintaining and deepening that control,” said Avivi. “It’s a different kind of warfare.” Intense clashes have occurred in recent days in the towns of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia, close to the fence with Israel, and in Gaza City, which before the war was the enclave’s most populous locale. Residents of the city reported multiple strikes in the Zeitoun neighbourhood.

The Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesman in a message on X on Tuesday instructed people in the Beit Lahia area to immediately evacuate for their own safety, saying: “You are in a dangerous combat zone.”

Earlier Tuesday, the military said four rockets were launched from northern Gaza toward the Israeli city of Sderot on Tuesday morning, a reminder of the enduring ability of militants to target Israeli territory. All four rockets were intercepted, but a falling piece of shrapnel set fire to a warehouse, according to the local municipality.

Northern Gaza was the site of Israel’s first major operations against Hamas in the wake of attacks by the militants on Oct. 7 that killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli authorities. The Israeli military launched a widespread aerial-bombing campaign there in the immediate aftermath of the attacks on southern Israel before beginning its ground invasion of the enclave in the area a few weeks later. More than 34,000 people have been killed in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to Palestinian health officials. The numbers don’t distinguish between combatants and civilians.

A United Arab Emirates Air Force C-17 Globemaster III drops aid packages on the northern Gaza Strip on Tuesday. Picture: AFP

Israel considered northern Gaza the heart of the militant group’s intelligence and operational activities. Most Palestinians at the time fled south for safety at the direction of the Israeli military.

But even as the focus of the fighting gradually shifted south in Israel’s hunt for Hamas militants, northern Gaza remained a stubborn flashpoint in the war. Israeli forces largely dismantled Hamas’s combat battalions operating in northern Gaza, but Hamas fighters regrouped in smaller units, shifting to urban guerrilla-warfare tactics. There are still several thousand militants in northern Gaza, according to an Israeli defence official. Around 300,000 people still live there.

Ghassan Hisham, 43, a resident of Zeitoun, said artillery shelling in the area started on Monday evening and continued into Tuesday. Many of his neighbours fled. “I choose not to because we have a lot of children and adults, and we have nowhere else to go,” Hisham said. The violence was some of the worst he has witnessed since the early months of the war, he said.

Khalil Kahlout, a resident of the Jabalia neighbourhood in northern Gaza City, said that there have been frequent air strikes and shelling in nearby Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun since Monday morning and that the intensity of the violence has picked up.

“Some residents of Beit Lahia have fled to shelters in Jabalia because of the shelling,” he said. “The bombardment continues.”

The Israeli military on Tuesday morning said it had struck 25 targets across the strip over the past day, including rocket-launch posts.

Men walk through rubble past damaged buildings with aid packages collected from a drop over the northern Gaza Strip. Picture: AFP

The clashes in the north come as Israeli forces have temporarily scaled back the number of troops and the intensity of their operations in the Gaza Strip. Earlier this month, Israel’s military said it called up two reserve brigades to the enclave as Israel prepares a ground incursion in Rafah, where they believe Hamas has its four last battalions. That is also where Israeli officials believe some hostages kidnapped from Israel on Oct. 7 are being held.

More than one million Palestinians who have fled the fighting elsewhere in the strip are currently sheltering in Rafah. The city is also the hub for the humanitarian response for the whole of Gaza, where the majority of the population of 2.2 million is suffering from acute levels of hunger and can’t access adequate medical care.

Israel says it will ensure civilians can be evacuated from battle zones before a ground incursion in Rafah, something on which the Biden administration has repeatedly pressed the Israelis.

Israeli forces want to prevent civilians and militants reaching the north when they leave Rafah and are working to bolster their control of the strip of land that cuts the enclave in two.

“That’s important because there is a vast infrastructure of terror in Gaza. Dealing with the remaining tunnels, weapons, and [improvised explosive devices] spread all around will take a long time. It cannot be done if you have hundreds of thousands of citizens moving around,” said Avivi, who is also founder of the Israel Defense and Security Forum think tank.

Talks for a ceasefire have stalled in part over whether Israel will concede to Hamas’s demand to allow the unrestricted return of Gazans to the northern part of the enclave, in addition to the withdrawal of Israeli troops from populated areas – moves that if done in tandem could allow Hamas to regain power in the strip and survive the war.

Dow Jones