Population evacuation… the Israeli army’s new approach in Gaza – from the Israeli media

For the past month, the Israeli army has been using a new method: anywhere in Gaza where rockets are fired, an order to evacuate the population is issued a few hours later. Given the intermittent bombardment that continues in large parts of the Gaza Strip (except for humanitarian zones), most areas have now been ordered to evacuate. Nothing drives Hamas crazier than the evacuation of the population. But only in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, residents used by Hamas as “human shields” are not evacuated, as happened last Saturday, when a school in the Daraj Tufah neighborhood where the Hamas leadership was located was bombed.

The key to Israel’s victory over Hamas lies there, in the northern Gaza Strip, not in Rafah or Khan Younis. This is the main reason why Hamas demanded in the first phase of the kidnapping deal that 1 million displaced persons return to their homes in the city.
On July 1, the Khan Yunis area fired 20 rockets at settlements south of the Gaza Strip. Immediately afterwards, the army issued an unprecedented order to evacuate 250,000 residents who had returned to their homes only a few months ago. They packed their bags and quickly formed a convoy to head west to the humanitarian zone.
But to their surprise, the Israeli army did not reoccupy the area, but only fired artillery shells. A few days later, residents began to return to the area, understanding that the evacuation was a tool to send a message: whoever allowed the rockets to be fired, whose homes would be evacuated. A few weeks later, the same pattern reappeared: the army issued an order to evacuate a large area between the axis of Kisufim and the town of Karara, as far as southeast of Khan Yunis. Experienced residents heard the fighting and fled the area. In recent days, the army has used the formula many times: after firing 4 missiles in Kisufim, a new evacuation was announced, and this time the target was the Hamad neighborhood (built by the Qatari emir) in the northwest of Khan Yunis.
Displacement is a thousand times worse than war
Gazans have complained about the evictions on social media; Gaza resident Samer wrote on his Instagram account that “displacement is a thousand times worse than the war. We are no longer thinking about returning, nor about the end of the war. All we want now is to stay in one place, without chaos, without humiliation, without displacement from one place to another. I see people crying and asking: where are we going?”
Anyone who has followed what has been posted on Gaza social media sites over the last month will have noticed a phenomenon that the Israeli army has downplayed in its statements and publications, namely that for a month and a half, the army has been mainly active in northern Gaza. This phenomenon is undoubtedly difficult to notice in light of major events such as the assassination of Mohammad Deif and the two operations in Beirut and Tehran, and requires regular daily monitoring: many reports on Gaza social media sites show that the Israeli bombing in northern Gaza is much larger. In fact, fighting has been taking place every day in Gaza City for a month, especially in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood and Sabra, where a large tunnel was discovered near the UNRWA center, as well as in other parts of the city. Apparently, several Hamas leaders were killed in the explosions, including Rawhi Mushtaha, Sinwar’s friend, who shared a cell with Sinwar in Israel. The Al-Zaytoun neighborhood is bombed every day, and half a year ago, the Israeli army hoped to begin trying to establish an independent local government there without “Hamas”.
Last week, the army bombed the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood and school, which was being used as a refuge center, but in reality, was being used as a “hub” for the resistance leadership. Among the dozens of dead was the commander of the Beit Hanoun battalion, who was displaced from near Sheikh Radwan, along with a large number of “resistance” members from nearby Jabaliya, who had fled when the 98th Division was fighting there.
In recent months, a cat-and-mouse game has been going on between the army and Hamas, similar to a game of musical chairs: the Israeli army has been stationed in a specific neighborhood at each invasion; once in Jabaliya, another time in the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood or Al-Shuja’iya, sometimes in Beit Hanoun, and once again in the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood. The army issued orders to evacuate nearby residents, sometimes openly asking them to move south to the Nezarim axis, but they did not obey the orders. Gazans call them “resolute” because they insist on staying in the city. Photos of the mass evacuation from the neighborhood show residents walking with Hamas members, who are distributed side by side and move to another neighborhood where the Israeli army is inactive, and a few days later they return to the original neighborhood destroyed by the war and set up new sites there. In this way, after the evacuation of Shuja’iya, the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood became the center of Hamas in Gaza.
Only once, a month ago, when Hamas feared that a major Israeli army operation in Gaza City would lead to the capitulation of part of the city’s inhabitants and force them to leave the south, it immediately launched a campaign on social media. It was titled #IWILLNOWAYOUT and posted it on Twitter (X platform) and Telegram. The campaign was a stunning success: last week, rocket fire from the Gaza Strip (mainly from Beit Hanoun) increased in the “cover settlements”: Sderot, Nir Am, Zikim and Ashkelon. The army tried to issue evacuation orders, but it admitted to military journalists that they were not being carried out and no one was displaced. The army returned and ordered the residents of Beit Hanoun to leave, this time with a map telling them how to move south, but the internal dialogue of the residents of Beit Hanoun on the Telegram channels was clear: do not leave the city; do not leave the city; do not leave the city. Do not move, #WeWILLNOWAYOUT.
Awareness raising war and dealing with abductees
The resilience of Gaza City is at the heart of the war of ideologies that is taking place between the Israeli army and Hamas, which insists on returning Gaza residents to the city in the first phase of the kidnapping agreement. It realizes that one million citizens will return to Gaza City immediately after the start of the kidnapping agreement, along with thousands of “fighters” and members of the Hamas authorities who are currently in the southern Gaza Strip. As for weapons and missiles, they can be obtained from secret locations in the city that the army has not discovered.
This is the real war that is currently taking place in the Gaza Strip: “Hamas” is successfully tightening its grip, and we must be more severe with those residents who use “human shields” for the “Hamas” authorities that are still active in the Gaza cities. Only the evacuation of 250,000 people from the northern part of the Gaza Strip to the south of the Nezarim axis can be the necessary turning point in putting pressure on Sinwar to retrieve the kidnapped people and take back power from Hamas, a strategic weapon based on the use of hundreds of thousands of people as “human shields”.

Eyal Ofer
N12 Channel
Palestine Institute