As troops advance in south Gaza, IDF sees cracks emerge in Hamas’s rule over Strip

RAFAH, Gaza Strip — As the Israel Defense Forces advance against Hamas in the southern Gaza Strip, some commanders believe they are beginning to see the terror group crack under the military pressure, though it is still far from a total collapse.

Over the past three weeks, following the disintegration of the ceasefire, the IDF’s 36th Division captured the so-called Morag Corridor, a strip of land located between the cities of Rafah and Khan Younis in the Strip’s south, effectively cutting off Hamas’s Rafah Brigade from the rest of Gaza.

Meanwhile, the Gaza Division has been operating inside areas of Rafah, working to locate and eliminate dozens of terror operatives still in the area, according to IDF estimates.

“The mission was to conquer all of Rafah and destroy all the terrorists here, and capture the entire territory of the Rafah Brigade,” Brig. Gen. Barak Hiram, the commander of the Gaza Division, told reporters in Rafah’s Shaboura camp on Monday.

The remaining terror operatives in Rafah would be unable to flee, like many of their comrades did in earlier stages of the war, as they would now encounter the troops of the 36th Division holding the newly established Morag Corridor.

As a result, the IDF believes that in the coming days of the operation, the rate of “friction” with the operatives in Rafah will increase. Still, Hamas operatives have largely avoided close-quarters combat with IDF troops, instead resorting to sniper attacks, RPG fire, and planting explosive devices.

However, some commanders in the military do not believe that defeating Hamas will come from counting the bodies of dead terrorists (the IDF claims it has killed some 20,000 operatives in the war so far) and that the terror group will never surrender, no matter how hard the IDF hits it.

Rather, Hamas would be considered defeated once the local Palestinian population turns on the terror group, some in the military have assessed. Signs of this have already been seen in Gaza, with increased protests against the war and the terror group, and incidents of Palestinians executing Hamas members.

These cracks in Hamas’s rule over the Palestinian population were the result of the IDF’s increased pressure on the terror group in recent weeks, including the elimination of government and police officials, and the halt on the entry of humanitarian aid to Gaza, military officials said.

The IDF has said that the aid entering Gaza before the collapse of the ceasefire was being used by Hamas to stay in power. Much of the aid would be captured by the terror group, and it would either use it for itself or sell it to the population at increased prices, to pay for the salaries of its operatives and to recruit more members.

However, the increased pressure on Hamas is mainly aimed at coaxing it back into a hostage deal, according to the IDF.

“The immediate purpose of the mission is to exert more pressure on Hamas to return the hostages, out of the understanding that Hamas is constantly trying, in any way possible, to stall. Hamas thinks that time works in its favor,” Hiram said.

“This operation is staged; we know how to intensify it. It is an operation that I think proves that time does not work in Hamas’s favor. Every day that passes, it loses assets. Every day that passes, it loses more fighters, loses senior officials, loses infrastructure, loses capabilities,” he said.

IDF Spokesman Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin, who also joined reporters on Monday, said the mission was to “increase pressure on Hamas to bring the hostages home and to destroy Hamas’s rule — the military wing and the governmental.”

“We are operating in the northern Gaza Strip and the southern Gaza Strip. Where we are standing now, we have bisected Khan Younis from Rafah. We are striking Hamas’s infrastructure. There are many achievements, including underground and overground, and we are striking Hamas’s chain of command, and we will continue to strike it frequently and consistently,” Defrin said from the Morag Corridor area.

He added that “since the start of the operation, we maintained ambiguity. This isn’t a slogan; this is part of the method, part of the operational thinking. We do not want to share with Hamas what we are currently doing.”

Some of the IDF’s ambiguity was lifted during Monday’s tour of the Morag Corridor and Rafah.

The IDF was in the process of constructing a road in the corridor, which, so far, is happening at a much faster pace than the construction of a similar road in central Gaza’s Netzarim Corridor — which took several months.

So far, some six kilometers (3.7 miles) of the planned 12-kilometer (7.5-mile) road — stretching from Kibbutz Sufa to the coast of Gaza — has been paved, with a buffer zone surrounding it of up to two kilometers.

Journalists were driven along the road during Monday’s tour, as massive explosions from Israeli airstrikes and IDF demolitions of Hamas infrastructure were seen and heard in the surrounding area.

The military has not only cut off Rafah from Khan Younis overground, but also located two major Hamas tunnels connecting the two cities. Troops are in the process of demolishing them and locating other underground routes in the Morag Corridor area.

During those operations, there has been some fighting, but mostly in the area north of the Morag Corridor road, meaning Hamas operatives from the terror group’s South Khan Younis Battalion — an area that the IDF did not fully operate in previously.

The IDF estimated that dozens of terror operatives have been killed so far during the Morag Corridor offensive. Only a few soldiers were wounded in the fighting.

Meanwhile, inside Rafah, IDF troops have also encountered limited fighting with Hamas operatives, as they work to clear the neighborhoods of Tel Sultan, Shaboura, and al-Jenina of remaining and previously undiscovered Hamas infrastructure.

While some 250,000 Palestinians evacuated the Rafah area when the IDF launched its fresh assault on the Strip, some civilians still remain in the Strip’s southernmost city. The military has been coordinating with the Red Cross to evacuate them out of the combat zone.

After the military completes operations inside Rafah, the IDF’s buffer zone in southern Gaza will stretch from the Egyptian border to the outskirts of Khan Younis — more than five kilometers (3.1 miles) away — and include the entire city of Rafah within it.

The buffer zone elsewhere on the border with Gaza has also been expanded from several hundred meters to around two kilometers (1.2 miles) in most areas.

‘Hostages before our eyes’

Earlier on Monday, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that bringing the hostages back from Gaza was “not the most important” goal of the government. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly said he is not willing to end the war for the return of the hostages until Hamas, which rules Gaza, is completely overthrown.

But the IDF appears to see things differently.

Defrin said that “the hostages are before our eyes all the time. This is a supreme goal for us. Every soldier here, from the chief of the [Southern] Command, through all the division commanders, until the last soldiers, understands this goal.”

“Hamas is under pressure. We will pursue Hamas anywhere it is located. Both in the northern part of the Strip and the south, and also outside of Gaza — anywhere,” he said.

“We won’t stop until we bring the hostages home, until the very last one, both the living and the dead,” Defrin added.

Hiram, similarly, said that “we are very focused on returning the hostages. This thought goes through our minds every day and in every action we take.”

“Unfortunately, the way to [returning the hostages] passes through more pressure on Hamas and more fighting,” he continued.

“The fighting now is at a certain level of intensity, and if we are required, we are preparing more tools and capabilities to intensity the fighting and increase it, to bring about a situation where we both return the hostages and defeat Hamas,” Hiram said.