After the end of the cease-fire, Israel has shifted the focus of its ground attack more strongly than before to the southern parts of the Gaza Strip, where the residents of northern Gaza have also fled in the past.
Senior researcher at the Foreign Policy Institute Timo R. Stewart reminds that there were already many people living in the southern parts of Gaza.
– With the refugees who arrived from the north, there are now a couple of million people packed in, which makes military operations and avoiding civilian casualties very challenging, says Stewart.
Lieutenant colonel of the Defense Forces Research Institute Juha Mäkelän according to Israel and Hamas, there have been no significant changes in the methods of operation since the ceasefire.
– In a way, we move in a gray zone all the time, on both sides. Hamas continues to use civilians as human shields and strives to use civilian targets in the south as their bases, against the rules of war, Mäkelä states.
According to Mäkelä, it is very difficult to prepare for an asymmetric war in Gaza. Basically, the weaker Hamas does everything to make it difficult for Israel to operate, and according to him, no textbooks tell how such an urban war should be fought among civilians.
– When the other side consciously uses civilians as their shield, it is impossible to follow any textbook, says Mäkelä.
Stewart cannot assess how orthodox Israel has treated civilians in Gaza. However, he states that the civilian population in the conflict zone should be protected to the best of its ability, and military measures must not be aimed at it.
– For example, from the published satellite images of the city of Gaza, you can see that more than half of the buildings have been destroyed. If this is a textbook operation, the destruction and death toll is pretty massive, says Stewart.
Due to the number of people, the risk of damage in southern Gaza is higher than before, according to Stewart.
The shift in focus is not surprising
According to Juha Mäkelä, the shift of focus of the fighting to the south was expected.
– Hamas has an equally extensive tunnel network in the south as in the north, says Mäkelä.
According to Mäkelä, Israeli intelligence has known for a long time that one of Hamas’s major terrorist strongholds is located in the southern parts of the strip.
– In the first phase of the fighting in the north, Israel tried to get the civilians to safety in the south. Now it’s quite crowded in the south, and the combat zones and the safe areas for civilians are very close to each other, says Mäkelä.
According to Stewart, Israel has never stated directly what it is aiming for in Gaza in the long run. However, he does not believe that Israel’s immediate goals have changed during the ceasefire.
– Israel still wants to destroy Hamas, release the hostages it has taken and prevent Israel from being threatened in the future from the Gaza Strip, Stewart estimates.
New zones cause confusion
As the fighting moved to the southern parts of Gaza, there are not many places left for civilians to go. Egypt does not agree to accept refugees from Gaza, and according to Mäkelä, Hamas does not always allow civilians to leave the areas where it is present.
Israel has been repeatedly criticized during the Gaza war for the fact that the number of civilian casualties in Gaza is too high.
Last Friday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) published a map where the Gaza Strip is divided to 620 zones. Zone sizes vary from 25 square kilometers to areas the size of two football fields.
According to Mäkelä, Israel tries, for example, with leaflets and social media to communicate to the Palestinians which zones civilians should leave at any time. The flyers dropped by Israel have qr codes that direct to sites giving evacuation instructions.
– Israel is at least trying to give civilians the opportunity to leave. Whether the information reaches all people is a different matter, says Mäkelä.
Stewart strongly doubts the functionality of zoning.
– The situation in Gaza is really challenging, and Israel will not overcome it with any qr codes or map grids. They are waging asymmetric warfare, and Hamas has the ability to hide among civilians. That leaves Israel with only poor options.
According to Stewart, the maps distributed by Israel have been considered very confusing in Gaza. Not everyone has internet or electricity, and there have been inconsistencies in the maps.
According to him, it is not possible for everyone to move, and there is not necessarily room in the evacuation areas. Israel’s warnings also do not guarantee that the evacuation zones will be safe, says Stewart.
– Doubts arise as to whether this really aims to avoid civilian casualties, or whether it is only intended to keep people who have already been displaced many times in the grip of fear. If civilian casualties can be avoided in this way, that is of course a good thing.
The heavy price of fighting
An Israeli officer who spoke on condition of anonymity told the news agency Reuters last week that Israel has managed to kill about 5,000 Hamas fighters during the war. According to him, this corresponds to about a fifth of the strength of the armed wing of Hamas.
If the estimate is correct, there are still 20,000 Hamas terrorists infiltrated as civilians in the area inhabited by more than two million people.
According to Stewart, Israel is capable of capturing and destroying Hamas’s network of tunnels, bases and weapons depots. Destroying its forces from the middle of the civilian population is still practically impossible.
– If the goal is to destroy Hamas, as Israel has formulated it, it must also be remembered that Hamas does not only operate in the Gaza Strip. It has leadership in many other countries and the West Bank, and therefore Hamas will not be destroyed only in the Gaza Strip.
Hamas claims nearly 16,000 people have been killed in Gaza during the conflict that began on October 7.
Both sides of the war are also running a very strong information campaign, and according to Mäkelä, none of the casualty figures announced by Israel or Hamas should be trusted.
However, the presented figures have raised questions about how high a price Israel should pay for the destruction of Hamas.
– I believe that the issue is constantly being evaluated in Israel as well. Domestic support for the operation seems to be still strong, and there are currently no signs that Israel is ending the operation, says Mäkelä.
According to Stewart, it is difficult to assess the reasonableness of Israel’s southern operation because it is not known what Israel is aiming for.
– If we knew what Israel’s plan is for the future of Gaza and the Palestinians, we could assess how meaningful it is to promote it with these military actions. Now this looks like a very tricky and potentially very bloody equation.
There are no winners in a long war
Mäkelä believes that the fighting will continue in the southern parts of Gaza for several more weeks.
– Fighting in settlement centers is not a quick activity. When there is an exceptionally high number of civilians in the area, the fighting can continue for several more weeks, even months.
Mäkelä emphasizes that the international support Israel receives affects the continuation of the fighting.
However, Hamas still has hostages, and Mäkelä therefore does not believe that Israel is ready to negotiate a longer peace.
Stewart, on the other hand, does not believe that the Israeli operation can continue in the same way for a long time. There will hardly be any change in the coming days.
– Over the weekend, there was a strong message from the United States that the number of civilian casualties is too high. If this continues, the volume of voices will probably increase and the pressure for a new ceasefire will increase, says Stewart.
According to Stewart, the southern parts of Gaza were bombed even before the ceasefire, and there is a lot of war damage there. Food, water and medicines are running low.
– The clock is therefore also ticking for the need for humanitarian aid.
According to Stewart, there is a point at which the United States determines that the human cost of the operation is too high.
– This is not beneficial to anyone in the long run, and I don’t think this can continue for months. Although the reason for the October attack lies entirely with Hamas, Israel has an obligation to think about the balance and what the cost of this operation is.