Israel is shifting its focus to its likely military campaign in the southern Gaza as fighting with Hamas resumed following a weeklong ceasefire.
As Israel prepares to launch a ground invasion of southern Gaza, Israeli officials are bracing for weeks of fighting with Hamas in a crowded area where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians are now living after fleeing the north in the first weeks of the war.
Hamas has several brigades in southern Gaza, according to multiple Israeli officials who asked to speak on condition of anonymity to discuss Israel’s plans. The militant group’s presence in southern Gaza includes fighters who left the north when Israel urged civilians to evacuate northern Gaza at the start of the war, the officials said.
Israel has not announced when it plans to move ground troops into southern Gaza. But even as the fighting in northern Gaza resumed following a weeklong ceasefire, Israel is shifting its focus to the coming campaign in the south.
Israel’s military operation in southern Gaza will likely last for at least several weeks if not longer and could last as long as the current phase of fighting, a senior Israeli defense official said. The war is now approaching two months.
„We do not want to see civilian casualties“ in southern Gaza, the official said. „The problem is, we face a terrorist organization that is embedding itself in dense populations and using humans as civilian shields.“
Hamas is also holding some of the hostages it abducted in its Oct. 7 attack on Israel in southern Gaza, multiple officials said, further complicating Israel’s plans for the next phase of the war.
Israel has secured the release of 110 of the approximately 240 hostages abducted by Hamas, according to an Israeli government spokesperson.
