 "Why has Israel withdrawn its troops from south Gaza? Will Rafah invasion come next?")
On 7 October last year, Palestinian militants belonging to Hamas carried out an audacious and brutal attack in Israel, killing nearly 1,200 people and taking many more hostage. This consequently led to Israel waging war in the Gaza Strip with the sole aim of eliminating Hamas. It’s now been six months into this war — countless other lives have been lost, destruction has been at an unprecedented level and diplomatic ties between various countries have changed.
And on 7 April, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) marked the six months of the heavy fighting by withdrawing its ground troops out of southern Gaza. As of today, only two brigades will stay in the northern half of the Gaza Strip, in order to “preserve the IDF’s freedom of action and its ability to conduct precise intelligence based-operations”.
Why have the troops been withdrawn from southern Gaza? What does this withdrawal of troops mean for the ongoing war? We examine this and much more.
Orders to leave
On Sunday morning (7 April), the IDF withdrew all of its ground troops from the southern Gaza Strip, including Khan Younis. “Today, Sunday April 7th, the IDF’s 98th commando division has concluded its mission in Khan Younis. The division left the Gaza Strip in order to recuperate and prepare for future operations,” the army said in a statement on Sunday.
“A significant force led by the 162nd division and the Nahal brigade continues to operate in the Gaza Strip and will preserve the IDF’s freedom of action and its ability to conduct precise intelligence based operations,” it said.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsNews agency Reuters confirmed the troop withdrawal but added that one brigade has remained, without giving further details.
Shortly after the withdrawal of troops, the Times of Israel reported that five rockets were fired from the Khan Younis area at communities near the Gaza border. According to the IDF, some of the rockets were intercepted by the Iron Dome air defence system. There were no reports of injuries or damage.
As troops began to withdraw from the city of Khan Younis, some Palestinians began to return. However, many of them were wary and concerned. One of them was Osama Asfour who told New York Times, “The military might say it left today, but they can come back tomorrow. I’m not going to go on an adventure with my life and my family’s lives.”
Another resident of Khan Younis, said that the city, which now lay in ruins, smelled “like death”. “We don’t have a city anymore — only rubble. There is absolutely nothing left. I could not stop myself crying as I walked through the streets,” said Maha Thaer, a mother of four, to AFP. “All the streets have been bulldozed. And the smell… I watched people digging and bringing out the bodies.”
Reason for troop withdrawal
Initially, the IDF gave no specific reason for their withdrawal, causing confusion and more speculation. However, later, an army official who spoke to the Israel daily Haaretz said: “There’s no need for us to remain in Khan Younis. The 98th Division dismantled Hamas’s Khan Younis brigades and killed thousands of its members. We did everything we could there.”
The IDF spokesman Lt Col Peter Lerner later was quoted as telling the BBC that “this is another stage in the war effort”.
Lt Col Lerner said: “The war is not over. War can only be over when they [hostages] come home and when Hamas is gone. It is a decline in the forces but there are more operations that need to be conducted. Rafah is clearly a stronghold. We need to dismantle Hamas’ capabilities wherever they are.”
Earlier, before Israel gave any sort of response to its actions, the US National Security spokesman John Kirby said that the move appeared to be a “rest and refit”.
“As we understand it, and through their public announcements, it is really just about rest and refit for these troops… and not necessarily that we can tell indicative of some coming new operation for these troops,” Kirby said when asked about the same.
“They’ve been on the ground for four months, the word we’re getting is they’re tired, they need to be refit,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby tells ABC’s This Week, though he stresses that it is “hard to know exactly what this tells us right now.”
Israel’s defence minister Yoav Gallant later was quoted as saying that the troops were leaving to “prepare for their follow-up missions”. He said their achievements in Khan Younis were “extremely impressive”, adding that Hamas had ceased to function as a military organisation throughout Gaza.
Some believe that the troop withdrawal is linked to negotiations over the release of hostages . Officials from the United States, Egypt and Qatar met on Sunday in Cairo with delegations from Hamas and Israel hammer out an agreement on a temporary ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages Hamas took when it led an attack on Israel on 7 October last year.
Impact on the ongoing war
Israel’s decision to withdraw troops has drawn question marks over the future of the Hamas war. Some experts are wondering if this means that Israel is rethinking its incursion in Rafah — the southernmost city in Gaza. Experts noted that the troops leaving Gaza would make a large-scale land invasion of Rafah unlikely, at least in the short term.
However, the country’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant stated that an operation in Rafah would take place, without giving details. “The forces are exiting and preparing for their next missions, we saw examples of such missions in the al-Shifa operation, and also of their coming mission in the Rafah area.” Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted that an operation in Rafah was imminent despite the international condemnation this move was drawing.
Israel’s military chief Lt Gen Herzi Halevi also said that the troops leaving was merely regrouping as the army prepares to move into Hamas’ last stronghold, Rafah. “The war in Gaza continues, and we are far from stopping.”
As per a report in Sky News, this troop withdrawal was a new phase in the war. The media outlet reported that it was the third phase in the six-month war — the first being aerial bombardment and the next being the ground invasion. “Israeli forces would now operate in a counter-terrorism fashion, launching raids based on specific intelligence, rather than having an all-out continuous presence in much of Gaza,” stated the report.
Al Jazeera’s Imran Khan also noted that Israel’s move was a new step in the six-month war. “We’re told that they don’t need that number of troops to put this new strategy into place,” Khan told Al Jazeera.
“But if you listen to the Israeli military analysts, you get a slightly different take on things. What we are hearing is that this could be a redeployment of forces in order to get ready for a ground offensive into Rafah,” Khan said, noting that the United States is “dead set” against the plan.
With inputs from agencies
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