While the eyes of the world and Israel are focused on Rafah, where the IDF has begun a limited and targeted ground operation to the east, a new reality is forming in another part of the Gaza Strip that reflects Hamas' military recovery and the IDF's establishment beyond the border.
Three unarmed Palestinians, carrying a white flag, approached an IDF position in the Netzarim Corridor about a week ago, coming from Gaza City, and asked to surrender. One of them appeared suspicious to the soldiers, who quickly drew their weapons and aimed at the strange group. A quick check revealed that he was heavily drugged and, like his two companions, was sent by Hamas lookouts who were monitoring the situation from a distance. After hours of interrogation, they were released.
"They come in small numbers every week, mostly during daylight hours. We have already started calling them 'the subdued ones.' At night, they know they will be shot in the leg from a distance of a thousand meters," the military explained about one of the phenomena developing around the IDF's sole ongoing mission in the strip - the military activity in the Netzarim Corridor seven months after October 7.
Another nickname among the forces, reflecting the evolving reality in their mission in the corridor, is "engines"- government buildings in the northern strip that are still intact, which cannot be attacked unless there is approval from a senior officer, at the level of at least a division commanding officer. These may serve Hamas operatives.
Quietly, the IDF has recently completed the construction of four large outposts along the Netzarim Corridor, for the relatively comfortable and permanent stay of hundreds of soldiers, now from two reserve brigades. One of these brigades, albeit on a small scale, is responsible for securing the construction of the new port by the U.S. military.
The soldiers are also deployed in temporary outposts across an undefined strip of land about three kilometers wide, at the center of which is a new and fast road that the IDF paved, starting at crossing 96 near the border next to Kibbutz Be'eri, and ending at an outpost and a nearby beach checkpoint where the Americans will soon complete the construction of a small port for receiving humanitarian aid from the sea, reducing the transfer of aid trucks between the two disconnected parts of the strip.
To the south of them, the IDF has identified a build-up of hundreds of Hamas operatives from various regions in the strip, coming to reinforce the central towns' battalions of Hamas, which have not yet been dealt with in the IDF maneuver.
These are the battalions of Nuseirat and Al-Bureij, where Hamas has been preparing traps and many explosive fields in recent weeks in anticipation of possible IDF brigades. Through these two towns, the army is also preparing for another frightening scenario: thousands of Gazan civilians rushing toward the Netzarim Corridor to return to their homes in the north of the strip, driven by Hamas.
A few such small attempts have been thwarted following early intelligence and identification of buses arriving at Nuseirat. Discussions on this sensitive issue have also taken place in the Southern Command over the past month. The officers have developed aggressive contingency plans for the fighters, should the scenario materialize: for Hamas, it would be another victory image in the war with hundreds of IDF soldiers confronting thousands of Gazan civilians in broad daylight. The stuff PR nightmares are made of.
But now, the approach of Hamas operatives in the area is more passive. Almost daily mortar fire toward the forces in the corridor, minimal exposure to avoid damage, and regouping forces against the IDF on both sides of the corridor - to the north in Gaza City and to the south in the central towns.
Therefore, the IDF strives to be the one reaching the regrouped Hamas in the north of the strip, both in the depth of the territory and near the border, in battalion or brigade raids. In this sense, Hamas attacks the forces in the corridor only if it finds an opportunity, like the sniper who located soldiers exposed briefly from a building they had taken over near the corridor. Miraculously, a soldier who was injured from the shooting after being exposed was only lightly wounded.
In another case in the past two weeks, a soldier was lightly injured from a shot by a Hamas sniper from a distance of 500 yards. The mortar cells, thanks to the strengthening of the IDF's collection capabilities in the sector, forces of the 99th Division manage in most cases to identify and attack from the air. The forces also managed to reduce the incidents of Hamas armed takeovers of aid trucks.
Thousands of Hamas operatives have returned in recent weeks to impose their control over the population that returned to Khan Younis, from where the IDF withdrew after doing so in Gaza City and its surroundings in the north of the strip. But the new daily routine of IDF fighters at the only point in the strip where there remains a permanent IDF presence shows that Hamas' rehabilitation is military, not just civil-administrative.
According to official IDF reports – on a daily basis and based on testimonies from soldiers performing their fortification mission in the Netzarim Corridor – Hamas attacks almost every day, mainly with mortars, at the forces preventing the return of about a million Gazans to the northern Gaza Strip, as the last card Israel holds in the negotiation for the return of the captives.
In the past week, IDF forces discovered two tunnel shafts near the Netzarim Corridor, which had not been detected during the first half year of the war, and this in the only place where the IDF remained active in the Gazan territory. The army is still searching for tunnels also under the Gaza River, the only natural obstacle that is supposed to assist the forces in scouring the strip near the corridor.
Steamrolling their in Gaza
(Video: Yoav Zitun)
Israeli forces attacked these tunnel shafts, and the soldiers also targeted a UAV that attacked terrorists identified near them. In another recent event, the forces located a terrorist who entered a military building of Hamas in the center of the strip, in the corridor sector, and directed a fighter jet that destroyed the building with its occupant inside.