The Israeli military urged Palestinians in Gaza‘s Shejaiya neighborhood to evacuate the area, which it previously operated in, on Thursday.
“You are in a dangerous combat zone,” the Israel Defense Forces wrote in a statement in Arabic for residents of Shejaiya and nearby. “The IDF will act forcefully against terrorist organizations in your areas,” it said. It warned civilians to “evacuate immediately south on Salah al-Din Road.”
Israeli officials have not confirmed they have begun a ground operation in the area, but Palestinian officials reported airstrikes, according to the New York Times. Israeli troops carried out a ground operation targeting Hamas due to intelligence pointing to the group restoring control in the neighborhood, reported Kan, Israel’s public broadcaster.
This operation would represent the latest instance of Israeli forces having to go back to an area within Gaza where they had already operated. The pattern underscores the difficulty Israeli forces are encountering when it comes to ensuring the lasting defeat of Hamas.
This is the same area where the IDF accidentally killed three hostages in December.
Several Israeli leaders have indicated Israel’s war in Gaza is winding down as it shifts to a lower intensity, though it is unclear what left it has to accomplish to achieve its objectives of destroying Hamas’s military capabilities and removing the group from power in the strip.
“The intense stage of the war with Hamas is about to end,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last weekend. “This does not mean that the war is about to end, but the war in its intense phase is about to end.”
“We are clearly approaching the point where we will say we dismantled the Rafah Brigade,” IDF chief of staff Herzi Halevi recently added.
Israeli forces entered Gaza following Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack that left roughly 1,200 people dead while another 250 people were taken hostage. Their ground operations began in northern Gaza, and they have proceeded south as time has gone on, but they have not held the territory it had occupied, leaving it vulnerable to a Hamas resurgence.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
The United States continues to pursue the ceasefire agreement that it and Qatari and Egyptian officials have sought for several months.
“We want to see the ceasefire deal in place because if you get that ceasefire deal in place, you get six weeks of calm. … You can maybe get up to several hundred trucks a day. And the goal of phase one is 600 trucks a day,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said on Wednesday.
