In Gaza’s Netzarim Corridor, IDF establishes temporary bases for an indefinite stay

NETZARIM CORRIDOR, Gaza Strip — Everything the Israel Defense Forces has established in the Netzarim Corridor is temporary, military officials have said. But the reality on the ground in this zone bisecting the Gaza Strip indicates that the IDF will remain here for the foreseeable future.

The army does not know when it will leave the corridor, which according to some officials is intended to serve as a bargaining chip in a hostage deal with Hamas. As the months have passed, and the prospect of an agreement with the terror group to release the remaining 100 hostages it holds grows and then recedes, the military has been steadily expanding its presence in the corridor.

The corridor — which is now known internally by the military as the Be’eri Corridor, after the Israeli border community that was attacked on October 7, rather than after the former Netzarim settlement in the Gaza Strip — is currently controlled by the 99th Division’s Harel Reserve Armored Brigade and the 551st Reserve Paratroopers Brigade.

The Harel Brigade is responsible for the southern portion of the corridor and the entire road, while the 551st Brigade is tasked with the northern section.

This week, The Times of Israel was given exclusive access to the corridor during an escorted visit by the military.

At the start of Israel’s ground offensive against Hamas in late October 2023, the corridor was just the tracks left behind by IDF tanks and armored personnel carriers, as the military’s 36th Division pushed into Gaza from the east and reached the coast, south of Gaza City.

Over the following months, the IDF established a four-mile road running along the corridor, as part of efforts to block Palestinians seeking to return to northern Gaza after fleeing south.

The IDF had ordered northern Gaza residents to evacuate and head to the Strip’s south as it focused the beginning of its offensive against Hamas on the top half of the Strip. Not all of the estimated one million residents heeded the orders. Some of those who remained were Hamas fighters, some faced threats by Hamas not to evacuate, others feared the seemingly no-less-dire conditions of the coastal humanitarian zone, and some reported coming under IDF fire while trying to evacuate.

The road along the corridor was eventually paved —  dubbed Route 749 after the 749th Combat Engineering Battalion that constructed it  — and the surrounding area turned into a buffer zone to secure the thoroughfare from Hamas attacks.

The military has also periodically enabled humanitarian aid organizations to use the road to deliver crucial supplies to the war-torn north of Gaza.

As time went on, the IDF expanded the buffer zone, from just a few dozen meters on each side of the road to reaching as far as the outskirts of Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood to the north, and the Wadi Gaza stream to the south, encompassing around 47 square kilometers (18 square miles) of land, or around 13% of the Strip’s total territory.

Hundreds of buildings were destroyed in the process, wiping out Palestinian villages in the area. The IDF has argued that it was necessary to demolish the buildings to adequately secure the corridor, as Hamas was using the structures to launch attacks on troops.

In what is now a massive zone, the IDF has established more than a dozen small military outposts, where soldiers carry out guard duty, and at least four forward operating bases, which serve as logistics hubs and as headquarters for the units operating in Gaza.

From these bases, the IDF launches raids against Hamas in Gaza City and central Gaza. One such operation was the rescue of four hostages from Hamas captivity last summer.

Such major operations have been increasingly rare as the war enters its 15th month, but smaller raids are carried out nearly every day, according to the army.

The raids are “based on intelligence against concentrations of terrorists and terror infrastructure,” Lt. Col. Omri, one of the Harel Brigade’s deputy commanders — whose surname was withheld by the IDF for security concerns — told The Times of Israel during an interview from the corridor.

Asked why the corridor had been expanded so widely in recent months, Omri said that under the IDF’s doctrine, “you need to build security zones.”

“You can’t just live in your little square and say it’s all good. No, you need to protect the soldiers. You need to create an area from which you will have enough time to respond if [the enemy] tries to attack,” the deputy brigade commander elaborated.

While this may justify a buffer zone around the corridor, it was not clear why expanding it to the size of 47 square kilometers was truly necessary for operational purposes.

“Early warning is the reason why we are doing this. Nobody is doing this for you know what,” he said, referring to claims that troops have been capriciously demolishing homes. The army has come under close scrutiny over the past year, as some undisciplined soldiers have recorded themselves celebrating the demolition of homes in clips uploaded to their social media accounts.

“We do this to create a protected area from which our soldiers can work,” he asserted.

“We aren’t coming from a place where we want to take revenge and destroy. Absolutely not. Everything has a rationale. There are orderly orders, with logic behind them,” Omri said.

Temporary infrastructure, permanent presence?

To reach the corridor, this reporter needed to go through three separate military checkpoints — one near Be’eri, another at a military position close to the border, and a third on the border fence itself — highlighting the difficulty for any unauthorized people to try and enter this part of Gaza.

The IDF’s main checkpoint to enter the corridor was initially called Gate 96. It was later renamed Control Point 3, and is now known as Terminal 3.

In a small convoy of open-top humvees, we drove from Terminal 3 into the Gaza Strip. The only threat the officer in charge of the convoy warned us about was potential mortar fire by Hamas operatives at the corridor.

After driving some three kilometers, the convoy reached a forward operating base positioned alongside the Salah a-Din road — the Gaza Strip’s main north-south highway.

The IDF considers this base to be part of the military’s rear, relatively distant from the enemy — or the opposite of the frontline — despite being inside the Gaza Strip.

The base featured everything one would expect at a well-entrenched position for troops to remain indefinitely, except that nothing seemed to be permanently attached to the ground.

All of the buildings at the base were caravans or a type of reinforced shipping container to protect against shrapnel impacts. Two antennas for cellular service were attached to large concrete foundations, rather than being dug into the ground. A fuel depot at the base for the IDF’s tanks and other vehicles was a large above-ground container.

The offices and living quarters in the base all had air conditioners.

A new water line from Israel to the IDF’s bases has allowed the soldiers in Netzarim to have functioning toilets and hot showers. Electricity lines, along with backup industrial generators, keep the base running at all times.

“We need to give the soldiers minimal facilities in which to live. We are the IDF, not some guerrilla organization. I don’t want to use equipment that belongs to Palestinians, and I don’t want to use Palestinians’ homes,” the deputy brigade commander said. Palestinians’ homes in other parts of the Strip, by contrast, are regularly used to house soldiers during military operations.

The base visited by The Times of Israel also serves as a checkpoint for Palestinians heading south from northern Gaza, though very few civilians have been doing so of late.

Palestinians are instructed to walk along the Salah a-Din road, and the IDF can single out suspected members of terror groups, pull them aside, and interrogate them inside the base.

Military officials have said that all of the IDF’s temporary infrastructure in Netzarim can be removed within a short while. There is a ready-to-go plan if the army is ordered to leave the area, but many in the IDF are skeptical that will happen in the foreseeable future.

‘Nothing really happens here’

At the beginning of the war, troops were not supposed to bring phones into Gaza, though many of them did. The erection of cell towers in Netzarim demonstrates that the policy has changed.

Ground troops involved in raids against Hamas are still not permitted to have phones on them during the operations for security concerns, but those hanging back at the bases in Netzarim are.

No longer needing to climb up on a hill for spotty reception, this reporter was able to send updates on Thursday to The Times of Israel’s liveblog after preparing a coffee at the base’s well-stocked lounge.

Because the vast majority of the buildings in the corridor have been flattened, and the IDF has set up advanced surveillance equipment, very rarely do Hamas operatives try to carry out raids against the army positions in Netzarim, according to soldiers.

The deputy brigade commander said there are “constant intelligence alerts” regarding potential Hamas attacks on the military’s posts in Netzarim, but few are carried out.

Since there have been no direct attacks on the corridor’s forward operating bases in months, soldiers stationed there — including those on guard duty — have long stopped wearing their helmets and protective vests.

There have been weeks at a time with no action: “Nothing really happens here,” said one soldier stationed at a post on the edge of the base.

“In the frontier posts there’s a bit more action,” he went on, referring to the army’s small positions on the edge of the corridor — at the farthest points from the road and the large bases — where at times Hamas operatives have tried to attack.

The small posts deeper in the corridor are “aimed at establishing the line of contact,” Omri said, meaning a type of demarcation or dividing line between the IDF and the rest of Gaza.

“The closer you get to the line of contact, the more you experience incidents of sniper fire or RPGs,” the deputy brigade commander said.

Palestinian civilians have also approached and crossed the “line of contact” in Netzarim, which military sources in the 99th Division said was at times Hamas sending them to “test the army’s response.”

“They want to see how we will respond, from where do we respond, when did we identify them, how quickly,” one source said.

A report by Haaretz earlier this month compiled testimony from soldiers from another division that previously served in the corridor, who described seemingly indiscriminate and casual open-fire policies and who claimed that the IDF was tallying the deaths of civilians as slain terror group fighters.

The IDF rejected the report, and military sources in the division currently deployed in the area said that troops have been far more careful with people approaching the corridor than was described in the report.

The sources said that when possible, the IDF attempts to detain apparent Palestinian civilians who try to enter the corridor and that steps are taken before carrying out an airstrike or using other deadly fire.

With raids by Hamas on troops in the corridor becoming rare, the terror group has mostly resorted to launching mortars and short-range rockets at the IDF’s bases in Netzarim, both from south of the corridor and north of it.

Those attacks, too, have become less frequent recently, according to soldiers serving in the corridor.

Settlement desires

Some Israeli government lawmakers have become increasingly vocal in recent weeks about their desire to re-establish Jewish settlements inside the Gaza Strip, especially inside the Netzarim Corridor, for the first time in almost two decades.

Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005 under the Disengagement Plan, uprooting some 9,000 people and demolishing 21 settlements, including Netzarim.

With the land now cleared of Palestinian homes, and the military setting up its infrastructure here (albeit officially temporarily), some far-right activists are waiting for the moment when they can enter and revive Jewish settlement.

“I am not interested in political discourse. I have ultra-Orthodox fighters with me, leftists and right-wingers. Political discourse and political opinions have no place — none,” Omri said when asked what he thought about the potential re-establishment of settlements in Netzarim.

“We have a mission. I trust my ultra-Orthodox brother, I trust my leftist brother and I trust my right-wing brother. They will all have my back, and I will have their back, because we are here together. People’s desires are people’s desires. Everyone has their own opinion. This is their right. But it has no meaning [on the battlefield].”

“There is a political echelon that decides, a military echelon that commands, and us to carry out what is required,” he added.