Commentators will continue to spend huge amounts of time analyzing whether Israel will return to war around March 1, on the 42nd day of the ceasefire, which is supposed to signal the transition from Phase I to Phase II of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal.
But the war may have ended already on Monday.
Hundreds of thousands and possibly up to one million Palestinians are already returning to northern Gaza from southern Gaza, having evacuated that area in fall 2023.
Keeping them in southern Gaza was the single largest bargaining chip that Israel had to hold over Hamas – far larger than whether it remains in the Philadelphi Corridor or not.
As long as they were not in northern Gaza, Hamas could not claim to truly have control over its “own” territory, even if it has remained stronger than any other local Palestinian group.
One million or more Palestinians in northern Gaza
Also, what would it mean for Israel to return to war with one million or more Palestinians back in northern Gaza?
From January 2024 until now, each time that the IDF sent forces back into a part of northern Gaza, it was usually evacuating single digit thousands of people from an area, at most a couple tens of thousands.
It usually only took 15-30 minutes and around 500-1,000 IDF soldiers to penetrate and clear out large areas of Hamas terrorists.
How will that work with hundreds of thousands to a million Palestinians back in northern Gaza like at the start of the war when the IDF took weeks and used five divisions, possibly around 50,000 soldiers, to clear most of the area?
Even if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to return to war with Hamas in early March, the challenges of doing so after Monday will be infinitely more difficult in terms of: physically having to move the Palestinians again – if they will even move a second time – the new additional legitimacy problems of having to move one million Palestinians after 15 months of war versus in the weeks after October 7 when Israel briefly had global sympathy, and the question of whether Israel can rally sufficient reservists back into a full large invasion of Gaza as it did in fall 2023.
There are of course alternatives to a complete end to the war and a return to full war in northern Gaza.
The IDF could start again to do smaller and localized penetrations which would not require most Palestinians to move, whether in northern, central, or southern Gaza.
This would not achieve any new strategic change against Hamas, but would renew some additional level of pressure on Hamas.
Israel could also not renew attacks, but refuse to leave the Philadelphi Corridor and the 700-1,100 meter perimeter defense line it has taken up around Gaza.
Moreover, Israel has humanitarian obligations to facilitate minimal necessary food and other aid, but under the ceasefire deal is facilitating far more than the minimum – something that it could curtail to a degree.
But all of these tactics that Israel can use to try to pressure Hamas into giving up its rule over Gaza or agreeing to power-sharing with other groups, whether the Palestinian Authority (which already is quietly controlling aspects of the Rafah Crossing), Egypt, the UAE, the CIA, or a hybrid of all of these – have one thing in common: they are limited measures and are not actually going back to a real full war.
When The Jerusalem Post asked the IDF if the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian going North were being checked for weapons, the military astonishingly said this was no longer its responsibility, given that oit had withdrawn from the Netzarim Corridor. They referred the issue to the Prime Minister’s Office.
There are reports that private US companies are doing some checks, but when the Prime Minister’s Office was asked to confirm this following reports from global media that there are no security checks occurring, there was no response.
In that sense, whether Netanyahu formally declares the war over or continuing may be less important at this point than the situation with up to one million Palestinians returning north on the ground which may speak for itself.
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