Why Israel’s push into southern Gaza could be a ‘real hell of a fight’

Once a temporary truce ends between Israel and Hamas, fighting is expected to enter the deadliest phase of the war, when Israeli troops confront the main Hamas force in southern Gaza. 

Israeli troops inside of Gaza for about a month have largely cemented control over the northern half of the coastal strip, including the urban center of Gaza City, and will next focus on the south, where 1.7 million Palestinian civilians are sequestered. 

But southern Gaza is also currently home to the bulk of Hamas, most of which is still intact after nearly two months of war. Many Hamas fighters fled Gaza City and other strongholds in the north to hide down south. 

If Israel wants to destroy Hamas, as per its stated goal, that will require taking the fight south — where they will risk a high rate of civilian casualties and increased pressure for a cease-fire, which could magnify depending on how long the ongoing truce extends and how many hostages are released. 

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged “there is no place in Gaza that we will not reach,” brushing aside any calls to halt the campaign to annihilate Hamas for launching a deadly Oct. 7 surprise attack on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people. 

“There is no hiding, no shelter, no refuge for the murderers of Hamas,” Netanyahu said earlier this month.

At the moment, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says it is committed to securing the release of the hostages during a temporary truce while preparing for the next stage of the war. 

“We are determined to return to the battlefield and deepen our achievements,” said IDF spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari at a Monday press briefing. 

Israel and Hamas are continuing to exchange hostages and prisoners as part of the temporary cease-fire agreement, which is also allowing for a much-needed surge of humanitarian aid into Gaza.  

The U.S. is working on extending the truce to get more hostages out of Gaza, which could end up taking more than a week if the current agreement of 10 detainees per day stays in place. Hamas took around 240 hostages when it attacked Israel on Oct. 7, and about 70 people have been released in the past five days. 

John Hannah, a senior defense fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, said Israel will struggle to make the case for a military operation in the south after a drawn-out cease-fire and the release of all the hostages. But he noted that public pressure was dependent on changing variables. 

“How long can Hamas keep dribbling out hostages? At what point in time does the momentum for a cease-fire build up sufficient international pressure on Israel to stand down?” Hannah said.

There are also crucial questions about how Israeli forces conduct the next phase of the war. 

The Biden administration told reporters this week that Israel must take extra precautions in the south and should avoid the same trappings of the fighting in the north, which has killed more than 14,000 people so far, many of them women and children, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, which is run by Hamas. 

U.S. officials are pushing Israel to create “areas of deconfliction” in southern Gaza, which would include United Nations shelters and sites that would be kept out of the fighting.  

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said Monday that President Biden “doesn’t want to see any more innocent civilians killed or wounded as a result of the fighting in Gaza.” 

“Not one. The right number of civilian casualties is zero,” Kirby said. “Each and every one of those data points is a grieving family, and the president understands that.” 

“That’s why we’re going to continue to urge our Israeli counterparts as they go back,” Kirby added, “that they do it in the most discrete, deliberate, careful, cautious way possible.” 

Israel may force civilians into Muwasi, a small strip of land on the coast of southern Gaza. But the entire coastal enclave of Gaza is just 141 square miles, and the even smaller block of territory in the south is crowded with nearly two million people. 

Robert Sanders, a professor of national security at the University of New Haven, expressed skepticism of whether Israel can safely manage to separate Hamas and civilians inside such a small zone of territory.  

“How do these people now get supported in all of the ways that human beings need to be supported when you push them into this so-called safer zone?” Sanders said. 

Sanders argued that if Israel heads south, it should conduct an operation that is more controlled and “more infantry intensive,” cautioning against the airstrikes that pummeled northern Gaza for weeks ahead of the ground invasion. 

“If they go into the south the way they went into the north, the ire of the world will just increase,” said Sanders. “I don’t think the world will accept that type of attack in the south, where the Israelis have told the people to go.” 

Hannah, from the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, said Israel must go south to dismantle Hamas, where he believes most of the militant group’s leaders and forces are. But he questioned if it was feasible to cram people into a tiny humanitarian zone, and he said the fighting could get more intense in an urban environment with crowds of civilians. 

“It’s going to be a real hell of a fight,” he said. “It’ll make the north look now like a walk in the park.”

After Israel entered northern Gaza in late October, troops quickly established control over that half of the territory. The fighting in northern Gaza and inside of Gaza City has been brutal, but Hamas fighters have so far only lost a small part of their forces and command structure, based on public death counts. 

Before the war, Hamas had a fighting force of between 30,000 and 40,000 fighters, and while Israel appears to have taken out some high-level officials and command structures, most of Hamas is still operating. 

Two-thirds of the more than 14,000 killed in Gaza have been women and children, according to the United Nations, and even the U.S. has acknowledged the heavy toll on civilians in the strip.  

That means many seasoned fighters have likely bunkered in the south, including Yahya Sinwar, the top Hamas official in Gaza. 

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the truce has also given Hamas the ability to “retool” and reconfigure its operations, which he called a “hard trade-off” to get hostages home. 

“But the Israeli government has been prepared to accept that risk because of the benefit they’re getting, which are these incredible images of people being reunited with their families, the humanity of it, the sense of accomplishment of that,” Sullivan told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday.  

Israel has lost about 77 IDF soldiers in the Gaza operation so far. Troops may suffer more losses in the south, especially if the IDF limits the operation to protect civilians. 

Jerry Meyerle, the principal research scientist for plans and warfighting at the Center for Naval Analyses, said the fighting in southern Gaza would not be easy, but he explained U.S. forces have faced similar challenges in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.

“We learned a lot of lessons over the years,” he said of U.S. operations. “A lot of those lessons have migrated over to the Israeli Defense Forces, and I think that they’re employing a lot of those, those lessons and tactics, in Gaza. So it’s much more of a discriminant military operation in Gaza than I think people will realize or understand.” 

But Gaza is among the densest territories in the world and poses unique challenges, Meyerle added. 

“They’re facing challenges there I don’t think any other military has,” he said. “The more the population gets jammed up in southern Gaza, it just snowballs and becomes more and more difficult.”

Updated at 3:16 pm.