Why Israel withdrew troops from Gaza?

Stunning appears to be the only appropriate word for Israel’s withdrawal of troops from Khan Yunis in southern Gaza on Sunday. Some political and defense officials tried to offer apologetics for how it was hinted to, or consistent with Israel’s strategy to date – but it simply was not.

The clock is running out on Hamas’s potential return, invading Rafah, and the fate of the hostages.

For months, Israel’s consistent strategy was that the only way the IDF could convince Hamas to return more hostages would be to pressure it in its hometown of Khan Yunis.

Hamas Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar and military chief Muhammad Deif are both from Khan Yunis; it would be personal for them.

The best Hamas fighters were from Khan Yunis – losing them would be unspeakably demoralizing.

An intricate tunnel network, which puts the northern Gaza tunnels to shame, was in Khan Yunis. Overtaking them after millions of dollars and years were invested in them by Hamas would take the air out of the terrorists’ sails once and for all.

This is especially true after witnessing the fall of Gaza City in northern Gaza, Hamas’s capital.

Over the last two months, the line has been that as long as the IDF kept its forces in Khan Yunis, it acted like a stranglehold on Hamas, and at any moment, the terrorist group would gasp for air badly enough to agree to a deal.

The withdrawal of forces from Khan Yunis on Sunday, then, ends this strategy, and is an admission of failure.

But, this doesn’t mean the hostages will not come home. The IDF did defeat Hamas in both northern and southern Gaza, destroyed much of its tunnel network, and killed many senior officials.

Leaving Khan Yunis now does not negate those tremendous gains, gains that have set Hamas back years in terms of military capabilities.

Now, Israel will either need a new strategy or make bigger concessions to Hamas to get back more hostages, including opening up the north of the enclave.

A new strategy could be the hope that invading Rafah will bring Hamas to its knees. By this logic, once the IDF closes in on Rafah – something Hamas believes Israel is afraid to do – Hamas will finally crack and agree to a more reasonable deal. It could even work.

There is no specific reason why Israel cannot send its forces into Rafah.

If the IDF has no presence in Khan Yunis, large numbers of Palestinian civilians may voluntarily leave Rafah and go back there without needing to be formally evacuated.

This may alleviate America’s concerns about whether Israel can successfully evacuate 1.4 million Palestinian civilians.

The IDF could lure Hamas into a false sense of security and pull off a Shifa Hospital-style clean-up operation, just as soon as the terrorist group concentrates too many of its forces in one place.

The problem with this line of thinking is that even if it is true, there was no hint to it until US President Joe Biden dropped the hammer on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday.

Netanyahu opened Erez Crossing for transferring humanitarian aid, which was never going to open again after Hamas destroyed it on October 07.

He had also opened the port of Ashdod for transferring humanitarian aid, another action he had vowed never to take.

By Friday, the IDF had fired or dismissed several very senior officers under pressure from the US and the international community for killing seven aid workers. And on Sunday, the military suddenly pulled out of southern Gaza.

Even if this truly is a new strategy and even if it might work, there is very little credible way to argue that a significant cause for the radical shift was US pressure and that the shift is an admission that the old strategy of a bunch of months has failed.

There is also an outside shot that it was part of some unofficial Cuban Missile Crisis-style secret informal deal, where if the IDF withdraws from southern Gaza, Hamas will be able to claim enough victory to make concessions to the IDF regarding the hostages and northern Gaza.

The big question now is whether this shift will be sufficient to maintain at least lukewarm US support for invading Rafah or whether America may already have decided to force Israel into a hostage deal, even if it potentially undermines finishing off Hamas.

Washington supported Jerusalem for almost six months and through 33,000 dead Palestinians, but finally hit its breaking point.

While people wait for that question to be answered, Hamas will at minimum be able to restore some of its governance in southern Gaza simply because Israel never decided to allow anyone else in to take over.

 

Hamas HQ in Khan Yunis, claims Olmert

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert claims that in Khan Yunis Hamas leadership is hiding, they have the bunkers, they have the command positions, they have the launching pads.

In an interview with Euronews on Friday, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that the real headquarters of Hamas leadership were located in Khan Yunis.

“Every citizen, every baby, every child that is killed is terrible. So, I don't want to argue about the numbers. Everyone that is killed there, it’s terrible.” the former Israeli leader said.

He went on, though, asking that, when nations around the world voted against a ceasefire, an act, he argued that implicitly condoned the Israeli action, if those nations expected that there would be no casualties.

Euronews interviewer Shona Murray pushed back, stating that the narrative has been that Al-Shifa Hospital has been the center of the Hamas command structure, adding that Al-Shifa has not revealed Hamas tunnels or weaponry.

“You have seen the weaponry, you haven't seen the leaders,” Olmert clarified. “There [is] so many fake news. It’s now part of life. Everything is spread carelessly. Had you asked me two weeks ago, I’d have told you that the center is really in Khan Yunis. What Israel needs to do now is to announce that when the military battle is over, immediately, Israel is prepared to embark on negotiations with the Palestinian Authority for a two-state solution.”

A two-state solution would include Gaza in Palestinian state

This two-state solution, Olmert said, would include the Gaza Strip in the Palestinian state.

Israel has called on Gazan residents to evacuate cities in the southern portion of the Strip, including Khan Yunis. 

The Israeli military dropped leaflets making the request, asking civilians to go to designated areas where Israel could facilitate the transfer of humanitarian aid.

Murray then asked the former prime minister if Israel should conduct an inquiry into why the IDF didn’t show up to the southern Israel communities as quickly as it should have on October 07, a mistake that left many residents of Israel to bear the brunt of Hamas’s brutality for an extended period of time.

“We’ll have to make a very thorough investigation,” Olmert answered. He added that he believed the Israeli leadership, on whose watch the October 07 massacre occurred, drastically underestimated Hamas.

In a recent interview on BBC Newsnight, Olmert explicitly names Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as this leadership, saying that up until October 07, Netanyahu had security responsibility for Gaza, before he completely failed.

In the Euronews interview, he says that Israel has learned not to underestimate Hamas anymore. “They are serious. They are sophisticated. They are just brutal. We will have to destroy them,” he said.