The Israeli military on Monday called on Palestinians in eastern neighborhoods of Khan Younis to evacuate the area and head toward the designated “humanitarian zone,” likely preceding a renewed ground offensive in the southern Gaza city.
The Israel Defense Forces pulled out of Khan Younis in April after operating there for four months, similar to its withdrawal from the northern Gaza Strip earlier in the campaign against Hamas. The IDF has since returned to those areas to carry out smaller, localized operations, and looks set to repeat this in the southern city.
Col. Avichay Adraee, the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesman, published a list of the zones that need to be evacuated alongside the announcement, including the Khan Younis suburbs of al-Qarara and Bani Suheila, the Abasan neighborhoods, the town of Khuza’a, and several other areas.
The move came after the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group fired a barrage of at least 20 rockets from the Khan Younis area at Israeli border communities, in the largest volley in at least seven months.
“Fear and extreme anxiety have gripped people after the evacuation order,” said Bani Suhaila resident Ahmad Najjar. “There is a large displacement of residents.”
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s spokesman said “it just shows yet again, that no place is safe in Gaza, more efforts need to be made to protect civilians.”
“It’s another stop in this deadly circle of movement that the population in Gaza has to undergo on a regular basis,” added the spokesman, Stephane Dujarric.
Further south in the city of Rafah, Islamic Jihad’s largest rocket manufacturing site found to date was located and demolished, the military said.
The IDF said troops of the Commando Brigade, 401st Armored Brigade, and elite Yahalom combat engineering unit raided an Islamic Jihad compound and underground site in Rafah’s northwestern Tel Sultan neighborhood, where they found a subterranean facility used by the Hamas ally to manufacture rocket parts and long-range rockets.
According to the IDF, the facility was used to build hundreds of projectiles in recent years.
During the raid on the site, the IDF said the commandos and elite combat engineers battled gunmen above and below ground, killing several operatives using drones and guided missiles.
As mediators attempt to jumpstart talks for a hostage deal, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday that Hamas’s June response to the latest Israeli ceasefire proposal can “most charitably be described as ‘a yes, but,’” with the terror group “trying to impose new conditions, moving the line, actually coming back on positions that it had already agreed to and trying to get more.”
International mediators have been trying to reach a deal that would secure freedom for the hostages and some form of ceasefire, however gaps remain between Israel and Hamas on how permanent the lull in fighting would be.
“We’ve been in an intense effort with the Egyptians, with the Qataris to see if we can close the gaps that Hamas created,” Blinken said during an on-stage interview at the Brookings Institution, acknowledging that ultimately it is up to Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar to decide whether the war will continue.
Blinken said that recently, “the Israelis talk about a significant downshifting of their operations in Gaza. That remains to be seen.”
“When this conflict ends, it cannot and must not end with a vacuum in Gaza. It has to end in a way that makes sure that there are clear, coherent, achievable plans for Gaza’s governance, security and reconstruction,” Blinken continued.
“The post-conflict plans are critical because if we get to a moment where the conflict really does shift dramatically at home — [hopefully]… via a ceasefire — if we’re not ready, if the region’s not ready, then you’re going to have a vacuum, and vacuums tend to get filled by bad things before they get filled with good things.
“We know that there are three things that are unacceptable for Gaza’s future: an Israeli occupation; Hamas perpetuating its leadership; or chaos, anarchy, lawlessness — which is what we’re seeing in big parts of Gaza today.
“We’ve told the Israelis that we expected them to develop their own plans, their own ideas. We’ve not seen enough of that from Israel,” Blinken lamented.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meanwhile asserted Monday that Israel was “progressing toward the end of the phase of eliminating Hamas’s terror army.”
“There will be a continuation in order to strike the remnants,” Netanyahu told students from the National Defense College, pledging that Israel will achieve all its war aims.
But even as Netanyahu declared that Israel is close to eliminating Hamas’s military capabilities, a lawmaker in his own party claimed the months-long offensive in Gaza has yielded few results.
Speaking to the Knesset Channel, Likud MK Amit Halevi said, “The results in Gaza are very bad, they’re very poor. The IDF has barely made any strategic achievement in the Gaza Strip.”
Halevi said the responsibility for this failure lies with the military as well as the government, though he mainly elaborated on the army’s portion.
“The government set goals — the elimination of Hamas’s military and governing capabilities — and the IDF brought a plan that can’t fulfill these goals,” he said, urging IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi to “rethink and bring forward a different plan.”
He argued the same approach will not work in countering the threat posed by Hezbollah, arguing that Israel should delay the start of a potential full-on offensive in Lebanon to ensure its success.
The war in Gaza was started by Hamas’s October 7 attack, in which Palestinian terrorists killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and seized 251 hostages. Israel responded with a military campaign to destroy the Gaza-ruling terror group and free the hostages.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says close to 38,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 15,000 combatants in battle and some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 attack.
319 troops have been killed during the ground offensive against Hamas and amid operations along the Gaza border. The toll includes a police officer killed in a hostage rescue mission. A civilian Defense Ministry contractor has also been killed in the Strip.
It is believed that 116 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza — not all of them alive — after 105 civilians were released from Hamas captivity during a weeklong truce in late November, and four hostages were released prior to that. Seven hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 19 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the military.
The IDF has confirmed the deaths of 42 of those still held by Hamas, citing new intelligence and findings obtained by troops operating in Gaza.
One more person is listed as missing since October 7, and their fate is still unknown.
Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.