Israel Prepares for Lengthy Invasion of Southern Gaza

As Israel prepares to launch a ground invasion of southern Gaza, Israeli officials are bracing for weeks of fighting with Hamas in a crowded area where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians are now living after fleeing the north in the first weeks of the war.

Hamas has several brigades in southern Gaza, according to multiple Israeli officials who asked to speak on condition of anonymity to discuss Israel’s plans. The militant group’s presence in southern Gaza includes fighters who left the north when Israel urged civilians to evacuate northern Gaza at the start of the war, the officials said.

Israel has not announced when it plans to move ground troops into southern Gaza. But even as the fighting in northern Gaza resumed following a weeklong ceasefire, Israel is shifting its focus to the coming campaign in the south.

Israel’s military operation in southern Gaza will likely last for at least several weeks if not longer and could last as long as the current phase of fighting, a senior Israeli defense official said. The war is now approaching two months.

“We do not want to see civilian casualties” in southern Gaza, the official said. “The problem is, we face a terrorist organization that is embedding itself in dense populations and using humans as civilian shields.”

Hamas is also holding some of the hostages it abducted in its Oct. 7 attack on Israel in southern Gaza, multiple officials said, further complicating Israel’s plans for the next phase of the war.

Israel has secured the release of 110 of the approximately 240 hostages abducted by Hamas, according to an Israeli government spokesperson. But the release of Israeli and foreign hostages stopped abruptly last week after negotiations between Israel and Hamas broke down.

It’s unclear how many of the remaining hostages are in southern Gaza. Israeli officials said they believed that some of them were moved by Hamas or other militant groups from the north to the south after the war began in October.

The region has now seen some of the deadliest fighting in years. Hamas killed 1,200 people in Israel in its Oct. 7 attack. Israel has killed more than 15,200 people in Gaza, according to Gaza health officials.

Israel Will Not Stop

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to “continue the ground incursion” against Hamas in remarks Saturday announcing the end of the ceasefire. Israel will not stop until it achieves its goals of destroying Hamas’s military capacity and all of the remaining hostages are released, he said.

“It is impossible to achieve these goals without continuing the ground incursion,” Netanyahu said.

Netanyahu’s speech came the same day that Israel hit the city of Khan Yunis and other targets in southern Gaza in dozens of airstrikes. Gaza health officials said 193 people were killed in the bombings.

Other actions taken by Israel suggest a ground incursion of southern Gaza may be imminent.

The Israel Defense Forces released a map of Gaza that divided the territory into hundreds of numbered areas. An IDF official said the map was intended to give civilians — in southern Gaza and elsewhere in the tiny coastal strip home to 2.2 million people — detailed information about where to go to seek safety in the event of a larger military campaign by Israel.

But humanitarian groups have warned that civilians in southern Gaza are running out of safe places to go. Many residents of northern Gaza who were displaced earlier in the war would likely have to move again if fighting intensifies in the south. Some have already moved to an area near Rafah in southern Gaza that Israel has said will not be targeted by the military.

Israel’s decision to continue the war after the ceasefire collapsed has also led the United States and other nations to warn Israel to limit civilian casualties. Even before the ceasefire ended, the U.S. began warning Israeli officials to proceed with caution in the south of Gaza, according to a senior White House official who spoke on background to discuss private diplomatic conversations.

Vice President Kamala Harris weighed in on the issue Saturday during a meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi on the sidelines of an international climate conference in Dubai. Harris said the U.S. opposed any “forced relocation” of Gazans as a result of the fighting.

“The Vice President reiterated that under no circumstances will the United States permit the forced relocation of Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank, the besiegement of Gaza, or the redrawing of the borders of Gaza,” the White House said in a statement.

Middle East analysts warned that an Israeli ground operation in Gaza would have devastating effects.

“All of the population that was in the north has been squeezed into the center and south of Gaza,” said Sultan Barakat, a professor at the Qatar Foundation’s Hamad Bin Khalifa University. “If Israel goes on the same way they started the war, it’s going to be a horrific disaster.”