On the near horizon of the Gaza campaign, the question of the southern Gaza Strip will come before us.
The evacuation of most non-combatants from the northern Gaza Strip is apparently nearing completion in the coming days. In recent days, more than 200,<> people have moved south, a happy fact that will reduce casualties. Hamas's attempt to prevent their eviction under evil "national" pretexts sheds more light on its despicable nature.
Cleansing the underground in the north, including the main headquarters beneath the hospitals, will take more time, while the issue of rescuing the abductees and their location in the northern or southern Gaza Strip will continue to occupy the entire security establishment.
But the question of what will be done in the southern Gaza Strip, where Hamas is also entrenched above and below ground, will be before us even before the completion of the northern chapter of the dual mission that the government has assigned to the IDF and our other security organizations – uprooting Hamas from the entire Gaza Strip and releasing the hostages.
In the southern Gaza Strip, hundreds of thousands of refugees were concentrated, adding to the permanent residents of Deir al Balah, Khan Yunis, Rafah and the "permanent refugees" camps there (from now on we will have to talk about real refugees and preserved "refugees" who are great-grandchildren of refugees under UNRWA auspices). But Hamas is also entrenched in the south in the first place, of course, and it can be assumed that some of its terrorists fled and will still flee there from the north.
We do not know – and this is a good thing, of course – what the IDF's plans are for the southern phase of the campaign, which will probably begin even before the cleansing of the north is completed. But as in the north and in the south, non-combatants and their fate during the offensive are critical, operational and moral. The necessity of uprooting Hamas from the south is also security and moral, and must be reconciled with the desire to avoid harming non-combatants, which distinguishes us from the enemy.
The way to reconcile the two was already marked in the northern phase of the campaign in the Gaza Strip – the evacuation of non-combatants. But this time there seems to be nowhere to turn them. Their evacuation to the north will completely disrupt the fighting in the north, which will continue for a long time.
The IDF will not be able to agree to an action that would deny it the opportunity to fulfill its mission. It was out of the question for Israel itself to evacuate a population that brought out bands of murderers, rapists and sadists who joined Hamas terrorists on 7 October. Egypt made such an absurd proposal and announced a complete refusal to accept refugees from Gaza, even if only temporarily. It sees itself as a sacred national duty to preserve the "Palestinian problem." As far as she is concerned, the refugees will be tortured and even harmed.
There is a line between Hamas's barbaric treatment of the non-combatant population and Egypt's inhumane treatment of refugees. But such a state of affairs gives Israel an effective opportunity to pressure Egypt. It will announce that the war will not end as long as it cannot uproot Hamas from the southern Gaza Strip and complete the release of the hostages.
There is reason to hope, therefore, that the United States will demand that Egypt temporarily absorb the entire population of the Gaza Strip in northern Sinai, Egyptian Rafah, and elsewhere, and that the demand will be met with influential leverage
If Israel cannot act freely to uproot and eliminate Hamas in the southern Gaza Strip, and complete the release of the hostages, the will of the United States, the other Western powers, and the Sunni Arab states to begin returning the entire population to the Gaza Strip (those of them who do not want to emigrate from the area) and rebuilding the Gaza Strip will be thwarted. All this comes at a time when overcrowding in the southern Gaza Strip is very severe and when the place is on the verge of worsening the humanitarian crisis.
There is reason to hope, therefore, that the United States will demand that Egypt temporarily absorb the entire population of the Gaza Strip in northern Sinai, Egyptian Rafah, and elsewhere, and that the demand will be met with influential leverage. In Israel, there has recently been a growing discourse about Israel's future control of the Gaza Strip, the necessity of it in order to safely rehabilitate the western Negev, and the quality of civilian self-management in the Gaza Strip. It is indeed important to plan the "day after", and especially to wean ourselves off the malignant routine of Oslo concepts such as "strong local police". But before that, the fulfillment of the operational mission in the southern Gaza Strip must be ensured.
Wrong? We'll fix it! If you find a mistake in the article, please share with us