Evacuating the remaining Palestinian civilians from Rafah could be imminent if there is no new hostage deal in the near future, a senior diplomatic source said on Monday.
Also, the source said they were "completely against giving up the perimeter, the demilitarized zone in front of the Gaza Corridor – to withdraw from the perimeter would be totally irresponsible. The security doctrine after October 7 is that the IDF must be placed in between the [Israeli] residents and the border."
Further, the senior diplomatic official stated that given Israeli invasions in so many parts of Gaza and ongoing evacuations of Palestinian civilians, Hamas is losing any benefit it received from Israel, allowing Palestinian civilians to return to northern Gaza as part of the January 19 ceasefire deal.
Still, the official said that the IDF has not come close yet to exercising its full power against Gaza, as it may at some point if no deal is reached with Hamas.
Without giving additional explanations, the official said that even greater IDF military operations in Gaza would not require a massive call-up of reservists as occurred in October 2023.
Next, the senior source said that the Palestinian protests against Hamas in Gaza were authentic, noting that Hamas had killed some of the protesters as proof.
Meanwhile, the IDF has killed 50 Hamas fighters in northern and central Gaza recently, it announced on Monday.
More specifically, the announcement was about the military operations of Division 252 around the Netzarim Corridor in central Gaza and in certain areas northward of the corridor.
In addition, those troops uncovered a network of tunnels running for a full kilometer, which they had not discovered during previous Gaza invasions.
Further, the IDF destroyed a location for rocket making.
This last element could be significant given that Hamas has returned to periodically firing rockets, albeit in small numbers, at the Gaza Corridor in recent weeks.
IDF expanding operations in Rafah
Earlier Monday, the IDF said that it was broadening its invasion to new areas of Rafah.
On Sunday, it seemed that with hostage talks at an inflection point, the Gaza war had gone on cruise control, though the threats by the senior defense official could signal a shift.
However, from Thursday of last week through Sunday, though there were continued aerial attacks and limited new ground incursions, there was no serious broadening of the invasion.
Even the announcements on Monday were relatively modest compared to the deeper and more aggressive invasions by the IDF earlier in the war or compared to predictions of how aggressively the IDF would attack Gaza if no new hostage deal were reached around a month ago.
Given that there has been little new in the Gaza invasion in the last several days, the government appears to have held up a yellow light on the progress of the invasion to allow time for reaching a new hostage deal with Hamas before the IDF dives deeper into other portions of Gaza, forcing most of the population to evacuate to the al-Mawasi humanitarian zone on the Mediterranean coast.
Before Monday, the last time the IDF said it had killed dozens of Hamas terrorists was Thursday of last week. On both Friday and Sunday, the IDF sent out zero updates on the Gaza war. On Saturday, there was one minor update about an incursion into a less important area of Rafah as well as an update on a series of air strikes.
The last major ground move was on March 26, when the IDF ordered a broad evacuation of Palestinians from northern Gaza, including portions of Zeitoun, Rimal, Tel-al-awa, and two other areas.
Adding these evacuations to earlier evacuations from Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun, and Jabalia, most of the northern Gaza areas, which are important to Hamas, other than the downtown part of Gaza City itself, Shejaiya, and Shaati, had been evacuated by then. As such, those new ground maneuvers on March 26 were significant.
In the broader view, the most destructive part of renewed hostilities by far was March 18 itself when the air force struck around 80 significant targets, including many top Hamas political officials, in under 10 minutes.
What followed was a few days of steady escalation and invasion into different sectors of the Gaza Strip.
This seemed to culminate on March 26 and could have broadened the invasion further to Gaza City, new parts of Khan Yunis, and new parts of central Gaza, but it has plateaued, though the senior diplomatic official suggested the invasion may escalate again soon.
Already last week, a forum of high-ranking reservists called on IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir to broaden the invasion and soon to put maximal pressure on Hamas, just as advocates for the remaining hostages pressured the government to cut a new deal with the Gazan terror group and halt the latest hostilities.
Israel renewed hostilities after a 42-day ceasefire, followed by a nearly three-week deadlock between the sides on the next steps of the ceasefire.
