IDF control of the Gaza Strip has jumped more than 50% in recent weeks. At that pace, the IDF is well on its way to controlling the vast majority of the enclave.
Whether IDF control of Gaza will stop at about 70% or reach 100%, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a major speech on Wednesday night, is a matter of debate and interpretation.
Even before Operation Gideon’s Chariots intensified earlier this week to further defeat Hamas and take over more Gazan territory, the IDF had taken control of about 50% of Gaza since it renewed hostilities when negotiations for releasing more hostages broke down in March.
On Wednesday night and Thursday, the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesperson, Col. Avichai Adraee, warned Palestinian civilians in large portions of northern Gaza, including Beit Lahiya and Jabalya, to move toward southern Gaza to avoid the impending IDF expansion of the invasion.
How many Palestinians are left in northern Gaza is a widely debated number.
Prior to the January 19 ceasefire, there were as few as 100,000 to 200,000 Palestinians left in northern Gaza from a prewar total of more than 1.2 million (more than half of Gaza’s prewar population).
During the ceasefire, however, an estimated hundreds of thousands of Palestinians returned to northern Gaza.Some Palestinian reports have said as many as 400,000 Palestinians had already left northern Gaza earlier this week even before Adraee’s latest warnings.
The number of Palestinian civilians in northern Gaza may be back down to 150,000 to 200,000 or even lower, as the military tries to clear most of the area, informed sources have indicated to The Jerusalem Post.
Previously published distribution plans for food aid were focused on getting most Gazans into southern Gaza or the Mawasi coastal humanitarian zone.
Adraee also sent out a message on Thursday, highlighting Hamas’s use of human shields in central Gaza.
IDF kills terrorists in Khan Yunis
Also on Thursday, IDF Division 98 killed dozens of terrorists in the Khan Yunis area in southern Gaza, the IDF reported.
It also destroyed about 200 terrorist targets, including combat compounds, observation posts, shafts, and underground tunnels, it said.
The IDF at times has also given updates about the progress of divisions 162, 143, 36, and 252, but it did not issue any specific updates about those divisions on Thursday.
The pace and nature of the IDF updates this week indicate that the primary goal is taking over territory in an effort to separate Gazan civilians from armed Hamas fighters and to control food distribution, as opposed to killing large numbers of Hamas terrorists.
Only a few hundred of Hamas terrorists have been killed this week.
More than 120 trucks carrying food aid have been cleared by the IDF for distribution in Gaza in recent days, but there is an ongoing debate regarding how much of it is getting to Gazan civilians. There is concern that much of it is being stolen by Hamas or seized by small groups of civilians in a disorganized way.
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