The Israeli Defense Forces Chief of Staff has announced that the Israeli military plans to expand its ground operations into southern Gaza while continuing its campaign in the northern Gaza Strip.
”IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi confirms the military is beginning to operate in southern Gaza, as ground operations continue in the northern part of the Strip.
Speaking to troops at the Gaza Division in southern Israel, Halevi says ‘yesterday, today, we killed [Hamas] battalion commanders, company commanders and many operatives. And yesterday morning we started the same move in the south of the Gaza Strip’.
‘It will be no less powerful than [the operations in northern Gaza], it will have no less results’, Halevi says. ‘The Hamas commanders will meet the IDF everywhere’.
‘We have the capabilities to do it in the most thorough way, and just as we did it with strength and thoroughly in the north of the Gaza Strip, we are also doing it now in the south of the Gaza Strip, and we also continue to deepen the achievements in the north of the Gaza Strip’, he adds.
Unverified footage circulated online over the past day has shown Israeli tanks in southern Gaza, north of Khan Younis. Hamas has also claimed to have clashed with troops in the area”. -Emanuel Fabian, Times of Israel
Although Israel ordered the evacuation of parts of the main southern city of Khan Younis, directing Palestinians to move toward the Mediterranean Sea and the town of Rafah, near the Egyptian border, the head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees in Gaza stated that people in Rafah were themselves being forced to relocate.
And while White House National Security Council director John Kirby asserted that the United States would not support the IDF’s southern operations unless or until the Israelis have “factored in” all residents currently living in the region, as well as the newly arrived civilian population that fled the fighting in the now-devastated north, it appears that, despite appeals to pursue a more cautionary approach, the IDF will shift offensive to southern Gaza in the aftermath of the collapse of the week-long truce.