I visited Gaza four times during this war and was on the Israeli side of the Gaza border countless times, starting from October 11, 2023, while the IDF was still finishing up its clearance of Hamas invaders.
And yet it was critical for me to see the changes, both on the Israeli side and, as much as possible, on the Gaza side, since the January 19 ceasefire.
The ceasefire led to massive IDF withdrawals from nearly all of Gaza, other than a 700-1,100 meter perimeter and a small force on the Philadelphi Corridor with Egypt.
As of February 3, it also led to Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinian population returning to their home communities, including hundreds of thousands returning to northern Gaza.
I would have visited the Gaza border closer to February 3, but after initially expressing an openness to organizing a tour, the IDF declined to cooperate with any tour.
‘Post’ visits the Gaza border area. (Credit: YONAH JEREMY BOB).
Many local contacts on the Gaza border have also become temporarily overwhelmed with managing the week-to-week and sometimes day-to-day changes regarding the rounds of hostage returns.
Finally, I managed to organize a tour that led me to visit Nirim (near Khan Yunis in southern Gaza), Beeri (near El Bureij in central Gaza), Alumim, and Nahal Oz (both near Shejaia and Gaza City in northern Gaza.)
On a personal level, the tour was night and day from earlier visits. There were comparatively no roadblocks (in the early war months, roadblocks were everywhere in the South), there were no rockets blowing up over my head, and my GPS was not scrambled.
What I saw was a mixed picture of radical transformation, potential long-term quiet, along with still dangerous tensions beneath the surface.
Given the lack of IDF cooperation, I had to suffice with driving around nearby border fields and seeking makeshift lookout spots to judge the progress on both sides of the border. (The IDF seemed more excited about showing off victories in the field in Gaza than about showing withdrawals – another blatant sign of this being they have not updated the public when withdrawing other than with vague messages that try to bury the withdrawal theme.)
I also spoke off-the-record with some soldiers and local village security volunteers.
In terms of radical transformation, vast areas of Khan Yunis and Shejaia have been flattened since the start of the war.
In an earlier briefing, which The Jerusalem Post was part of, it was made clear that hundreds of meters of residences and buildings near the border would be destroyed to make room for a security perimeter and to make it harder for future Gaza invaders to sneak up on Israeli-side Gaza border towns.
Unlike parts of Gaza where houses were destroyed only if Hamas was using them to fight from, with these close border areas, a policy decision was made to “clean house” whether houses were used by Hamas or not in order to generally improve Israel’s future defensive posture.
On the Israeli side of the border, the transformation is that the border towns are still much worse off than one might have expected.
Although many of the 22 villages that Hamas conquered on October 7 have been rebuilt and repopulated, at least 10 close border towns still are prohibited from accepting their residents to return.
In such places as Nirim, only those residents who are part of the local voluntary security team and some critical local business workers are permitted to live in their towns.
No one knows how long this policy will last, but some believe it could easily last into the next school year of fall 2025, if not longer.
In terms of a lasting quiet, the good news was that I did not hear or see any active fighting.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians may have returned to northern Gaza, and Palestinians, in general, may be returning to their origin communities from refugee areas on the Mediterranean coastline, but this has not led to any major new security threat.
This is despite the fact that the number of soldiers handling Gaza is down from five divisions at the start of the war to one to two lighter divisions at this point.
The less robust Gaza Division and reservist Division 252 have replaced the more powerful Divisions 98, 162, and 36.
I could not see a large number of IDF forces at any of the spots that I stopped at – certainly nothing compared to what I saw during my visits in the early months of the war when vast fields were covered with tanks, armored Namer personnel carriers and legions of troops.
But I was told that the IDF is building 14 tougher positions along the border, a significant increase, and a number of smaller outposts were flagged for me as having quadrupled in size.
Some local security volunteers said they had plenty of ammunition and training materials, while some said these were deeply lacking and complained about the IDF not keeping promises to improve their ability to defend their towns.
Despite the quiet that I experienced, I was told that there was constant gunfire and drone surveillance on the Gaza border.
I was told that for each of the half dozen or so laconic messages that the IDF has sent out in recent weeks about using distancing fire, that actually such incidents are constant, and that the military is only picking a select few to update the public about.
Some soldiers also expressed concern about reports in recent days of penetrations into Israel from Gaza. Though each incident so far was revealed as false, I could see the concern in many soldiers’ eyes that the future is less secure than people think.
Also, some soldiers said that many Gazans are starting to plant improvised explosives near the border without necessarily being stopped.
Still, the buzz of Israeli drones has made some Gaza border residents feel safer, as though there is a constant IDF eye watching for intruders in a way that there was not on October 7.
In addition, sources say that the mix of more soldiers and improvements physically and technologically for the border fence and obstacles to invasion somewhat increase Gaza border residents’ sense of safety.
Yet, still hanging over their heads is whether the war is really over now or whether there could be a return to war if phase two of the hostage deal and ceasefire negotiations blow up.
Jesus Christ is King
Comments are closed.