With hostage talks at an inflection point, the Gaza war appears to have gone on cruise control from Thursday of last week through Sunday, with continued aerial attacks and limited new ground incursions, but no serious broadening of the invasion.
Given that there has been little new in the Gaza invasion in the last four to five days, the government appears to have held up a yellow light on the progress of the invasion to allow time for reaching a new hostage deal with Hamas before the IDF dives deeper into other portions of Gaza, forcing most of the population to evacuate to the al-Mawasi humanitarian zone on the Mediterranean coast.
The last time the IDF said it killed dozens of Hamas terrorists was Thursday of last week. On both Friday and Sunday, the IDF sent out zero updates on the Gaza war. On Saturday, there was one minor update about an incursion into a less important area of Rafah as well as an update on a series of air strikes.
The last major ground move was on March 26, when the IDF ordered a broad evacuation of Palestinians from northern Gaza, including portions of Zeitoun, Rimal, Tel-al-awa, and two other areas.
Adding these evacuations to earlier evacuations from Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun, and Jabalia, most of the northern Gaza areas, which are important to Hamas, other than the downtown part of Gaza City itself, Shejaiya, and Shaati, had been evacuated by then. As such, those new ground maneuvers on March 26 were significant.
On March 26, the IDF attacked those areas of Gaza that had been responsible for an unidentified impact near Zimrat in the Gaza Corridor.
Hamas’s rocket fire on March 26 was not successful in terms of killing anyone, but one of the two rockets fired did get through, and the Gazan terror groups continue to show the capability to fire two to three rockets at a time.
Likewise, on Saturday, the IDF struck areas of Khan Yunis from which mortars had been fired on nearby IDF forces.
In the broader view, the most destructive part of renewed hostilities by far was March 18 itself when the air force struck around 80 significant targets, including many top Hamas political officials, in under 10 minutes
The aftermath
What followed was a few days of steady escalation and invasion into different sectors of the Gaza Strip.
This seemed to culminate on March 26 and could have broadened further to Gaza City, new parts of Khan Yunis, and new parts of central Gaza, but instead so far it has plateaued.
Already last week, a forum of high ranking reservists called on IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir to broaden the invasion and soon to put maximal pressure on Hamas, just as advocates for the remaining hostages pressured the government to cut a new deal with the Gazan terror group and halt the latest hostilities.
Israel renewed hostilities after a 42-day ceasefire, followed by a nearly three-week deadlock between the sides on the next steps of the ceasefire.
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