IDF Gearing Up to Remain in Gaza Until End of 2025, at Least. This Is What It Looks Like - National Security & Cyber - Haaretz.com
The work is progressing at full speed. What was a dirt embankment with the rubble of destroyed buildings a few months ago is now a very active construction site. Wide roads are being built, cellular antennas are going up, water, sewage and electricity networks are going in and of course there are the buildings, some portable and others less so.
This isn't a new public housing project, it's a completely different type of project. Scenes similar to this one, near the Netzarim corridor, can be seen in additional places in the Gaza Strip. The development momentum is in full swing, and the goal – whether it is talked about openly or not – is clear: building the infrastructure for the military's prolonged stay in the field, at least in the first stage.
Credit: Copernicus Sentinel, EO Browser
From the very beginning of the war, the Israel Defense Forces took control of areas and roads in the Strip. But data obtained by Haaretz demonstrated the size and scope today of the enclaves, which are beginning to recall the days before Israel's 2005 disengagement from the Strip. There's a road that resembles central Israel's Ayalon Highway on the Netzarim corridor, surrounded by a series of army posts, some newer than others. At Kissufim, too, there's a new road, alongside a staging ground and surrounded by exposed earth – at least for now.
But it isn't only the sights on the ground which suggest that the army is digging in for the coming year. The same conclusion emerges from perusing a kind of "combat graph for 2025" distributed in recent weeks to combat soldiers and commanders. They say that some weeks ago, the IDF began "exposing large areas" in the Strip: in less military jargon, destroying existing buildings and infrastructure in such a way that dangers to the forces cannot hide in them, but no one can live in them either. This is in addition to the construction of roads and preparations for building more permanent military facilities.
"We slept in reinforced containers with electrical outlets, air conditioning and everything, it was at a higher level than most of the outposts I was in during my service," an officer who served at the end of the summer at an outpost near the Netzarim corridor told Haaretz. "We had a dairy kitchen and a meat kitchen [for purposed of kashrut], a synagogue that was brought in, and the war room was also inside a protected container." He said the feeling was that it was another front in the Gaza border area or in the West Bank, not a temporary arrangement in a danger zone. "We went around without helmets and without ceramic vests, and played soccer inside the post," he added. "We grilled meat outside almost every night. There wasn't a sense of being in a war zone."
The conditions have even improved in the two months or so since then. Together with the emptying out of northern Gaza's civilian population, the area turned into a kind of military enclave. Senior political and defense officials reiterate that the evacuation of northern Gaza is not part of the "Generals' Plan," which calls for imposing a siege on the area and emptying it of civilians, and also holds that the withholding of humanitarian aid is legitimate.
Jabalya has seen continued demolitions in October and has become a sort of military enclaveCredit: Planet Labs PBC
But senior defense sources who spoke to Haaretz confirm in closed conversations that what is being presented to Israelis is not necessarily what is actually happening. They said the IDF is currently required to empty villages and cities of their residents. By way of illustration, only about 20,000 people, if that, remain in an area that was home to more than 500,000 Gazans before the war.
This came up in talks held in recent weeks between senior officials in the Biden administration and their Israeli counterparts, in which the Americans warned that reports from international organizations say there is a concrete fear of an attempt to starve the civilian population in the northern Strip. This is an area where almost no habitable buildings remain, and for good reason: From conversations with field commanders and combat solders as well as a tour of the combat zone, it appears the IDF is systematically razing the structures that are still standing. "We don't get up in the morning and set up a D9 [armored bulldozer] and destroy neighborhoods," a high-ranking officer who is involved in the fighting explains. "But if we need to advance into certain areas, we will not expose our forces to boobytraps and explosives."
Destruction in east Jabalya throughout October. The IDF sometimes fires at still-populated areasCredit: Planet Labs PBC
And yet, there are Palestinians who aren't going anywhere, not again. Many of them fled their homes in the north at the beginning of the war, toward Gaza City, before returning to the north despite the difficult conditions due to the difficulty of moving from place to place with their families, especially if any of their members were wounded, as many have been. Now they are home again. It seems that most of the residents in the combat zones simply prefer to shelter in place for the winter, however flimsy and dangerous that shelter may be, rather than leaving for the unknown.
In early October, most buildings in this neighborhood north of Beit Lahia still stood. By 24 October, dozens were flattenedCredit: Planet Labs PBC
Their current situation is far from stable, given Israel's efforts to drive them away, sometimes with the help of artillery fire into open areas near the places that are still inhabited. "In recent months," says a senior commander who served in Gaza until recently, "the only thing the forces are asked to do in the area is to move the population to the south – and to flatten the buildings within a few kilometers of the logistic axes and the areas where the forces are staying in the entire territory of the Strip." And in all these places, military construction for the long term is being carried out. "These are not posts that are built for a month or two," the commander stresses.
While northern Gaza is indeed a large part of the picture, it's not the entirety. According to the plan that is being carried out, the army is acting to hold no fewer than four large areas in different parts of the Strip. One of the most prominent of them is the Netzarim corridor. At the start of the war, the Combat Engineering Corps took control of it as a logistic axis for the forces, and later for the introduction of humanitarian aid. However, over time it changed its purpose and form. Now, after extensive groundwork in the surrounding area, it is not a road but rather a large area with no buildings. Instead of homes, a road; instead of a neighborhood, desert.
Credit: Planet Labs PBC / September 26, 2024
"Today, when you stand on the road," says a combat soldier, "in some places you no longer see any houses." The corridor, which leads to the former site of the Netzarim settlement, is five to six kilometers (three to four miles) wide and about nine kilometers long. Sources told Haaretz that the dimensions are not final: The IDF is currently working to widen it even more.
But this isn't a road in the middle of nowhere. The old buildings are gone, but new ones are going up. In some ways it can be said that this is the flagship project of the new Gaza outposts: On either side of the corridor are a few large ones, with wide roads leading to them, that could house a considerable number of troops for an extended period.
Another area on Israel's new road map is the Philadelphi corridor. While the hostage talks are stalled (as is the debate on the necessity of controlling the road), the army has already flattened large expanses on either side of it: about one kilometer in some places, as many as three in others.
The IDF entered Rafah in May. By November, many neighborhoods were flattened while the IDF built a base and military infrastructureCredit: Planet Labs PBC
The political leadership has even asked for an additional kilometer, but military sources say that four kilometers is unfeasible in some areas, because it would mean destroying entire neighborhoods in Rafah. That would likely anger the international community (which already views the current situation as problematic).
In May, Gaza's 'Swedish Village' stood near the Philadelphi Corridor. By November it was gone, with a new IDF base being constructedCredit: Planet Labs PBC
The fourth area is the longest of all. It's a strip running along the entire border between Gaza and Israel that the Gaza Division is responsible for reshaping. Or in other words, it's a buffer zone at least a kilometer deep between the Israeli communities near the Gazan border and the first houses inside Gaza. The end is to keep the threat of antitank missiles further from Israelis' homes. The means is by destroying entire neighborhoods.
Since October, this Rafah neighborhood has seen large-scale destructionCredit: Planet Labs PBC
Nevertheless, what is being done near Kibbutz Kissufim these days hints that the project of clearing the ground hasn't yet come to an end. Last week, the IDF announced that it was opening a road for logistical purposes from there into Gaza (on Tuesday, it was reported that this road will also be used to bring in humanitarian aid).
At this stage, it's a short, narrow road that ends in a not particularly large staging area. But according to officers in the field, that's also how the previous projects began. If so, then the Kissufim corridor will very soon resemble the Philadelphi corridor.
Nor is it just the roads that reveal the way short-term needs expand into permanent ventures. This is also the story of the crossing that was hastily set up at the start of the war to control movement from northern to southern Gaza. At first, it resembled a temporary checkpoint. Now, it already looks something like a border terminal – i.e., a normal border crossing between two countries.
"The way it looks on the ground, the IDF won't leave Gaza before 2026," an officer in one of the brigades fighting in Gaza said. "When you see the roads being paved here, it's clear that this isn't intended for the ground maneuvers or for raids by the troops into various places. These roads lead, among other places, to the places from which some of the settlements were removed. I don't know of any intent to rebuild them, that isn't something we're told explicitly. But everyone understands where this is going."