The Israel Defense Forces (IDF), after 15 months of war in Gaza, are fighting in areas of northern Gaza that didn’t see IDF forces for eight months, between March – October 2024. The ceasefire in Lebanon in October, if it continues to hold, will free up further forces to re-engage in Gaza. But Hamas also used the period of IDF absence in northern Gaza to rearm and recruit.
According to various estimates, the IDF has killed or captured over 20,000 Hamas fighters, including key leaders, and destroyed much of the Hamas infrastructure (often dual use). Remaining Hamas terrorist cells are decentralized and local in their command and control. This suggests a low-intensity conflict that could continue for years. In the meantime, most Gazan civilians are living in make-shift tents in the Muwasi humanitarian zone in southwest Gaza, and there appears to be no Israeli plan for postwar Gaza.
Northern Gaza Again
As of mid-January 2025, three IDF divisions operate in Gaza, each with a rotating combination of infantry, engineering and armored units. They have the missions of targeting Hamas fighters and uncovering and destroying tunnels and weapon caches. They are assigned areas within the Gaza Strip: the 162nd focuses on the north, particularly Jabaliya, Beit Lahiya, and Beit Hanoun; the 99th operates in central Gaza; and the 143rd (a division whose normal assignment is to guard the Gaza border) in the south and center.
On October 16, 2024, Division 162 returned to the Jabaliya refugee camp, after an eight-month IDF absence from the area, except for isolated special forces’ raids. During the absence, Hamas re-grouped and recruited new fighters.
By mid-November, the IDF had cleared significant portions of Jabaliya, killing over 1,200 terrorists and apprehending over 1,000 others. Yet remnants of decentralized terrorist cells continued to attack the IDF, often armed with weapons such as Iranian-manufactured explosives, AK-47 rifles, and sniper rifles. They also sporadically fire Grad rockets across the border at nearby Israeli communities. The IDF estimates there are 100 to 200 rockets left in all of Gaza, down from the combined stockpile of some 15,000 held by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad on the eve of the war.
The IDF says it destroyed substantial tunnel networks, including over 7.5 kilometers destroyed by the Kfir Brigade of the 162nd Division over the past three months, and encouraged 65,000 civilians to relocate from northern Gaza to the al-Muwasi humanitarian zone in the southwest, near Khan Younis, a move that facilitated freer military operations by stripping away Hamas’s human shields.
The north Gaza campaign has extended from Jabaliya to Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya, with ground actions supported by intelligence and air support, aiming to ensure that Hamas operatives cannot return to these areas again.
Hamas, despite its significant losses, continues to adapt, and inflict significant casualties on Israeli military personnel, often using improvised explosive devices, in house-to-house fighting.
In October 2023, when the IDF first entered Gaza, it faced five centrally controlled Hamas brigades composed of 24 battalions, roughly 30,000 fighters. Today the IDF fights decentralized cells which possess only local control, total numbers estimated at 12,000. Muhammad Sinwar, the senior terror commander and younger brother of Yahya, is the de facto Hamas commander in Gaza. But Sinwar and his inner group’s ability to coordinate the activities of the guerilla cells in Gaza is severely limited.
Nevertheless, Hamas films its attacks to try and keep up local morale among its fractured ranks. Over 1,000 terrorists were arrested by the IDF in Jabaliya by mid-November. But those who committed atrocities on October 7 prefer to fight and die, knowing life in prison awaits them. Some force their own families to remain in their homes to use them as human shields; others have opened fire on Gazan civilians who complied with Israeli evacuation calls.
New Hamas recruits lack any training, and join up with the promise of payment and food supplies for their families.
The group continues to systematically use civilian areas, including hospitals, as command posts and storage sites for weapons, a tactic designed to exploit the IDF’s adherence to international laws of war.
For example, Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza was transformed into a hub for Hamas operations, where weapons and personnel were moved under the guise of medical activity.
Captured Hamas operatives have provided valuable intelligence, says the IDF. Anas Muhammad Faiz Al-Sharif, a terrorist apprehended near the Kamal Adwan Hospital, recently revealed the group’s systematic use of civilian infrastructure to sustain its activities.
Postwar Gaza Plans?
Beyond the immediate mission – destroying Hamas’s capability to threaten Israel – Israel’s longer term strategy for Gaza remains unclear. Some Israelis advocate for a military administration to oversee aid distribution and security, thereby eliminating Hamas’s source of control. But the IDF’s leadership has opposed this idea, citing concerns over resource allocation and soldier safety.
On the ground, the IDF has created a depopulated buffer zone around one kilometer deep from the Israeli border across the entire Gaza Strip. This joins an existing counter-tunnel underground border barrier, a concrete wall barrier, a fence with electronic sensors, and will likely be joined by a new, additional border barrier, creating four separate obstacles. In northern Gaza, the area is almost empty of civilians. They have largely complied with IDF evacuation calls (previously issued in Gaza City, Khan Younis, and Rafah).
The IDF appears to be preparing the Philadelphi corridor along the Gaza/Egypt border in the south, and the Netzarim corridor slicing through central Gaza, to remain under Israeli security control. [Note: news reports from ceasefire negotiations indicate the IDF may withdraw from the Netzarim corridor.] The Philadelphi Corridor allows the IDF to prevent smuggling of weapons from Sinai, and both corridors can control movements of civilians, filtering out terrorists moving between northern Gaza and the rest of the Strip. They could serve as launchpads for future targeted Israeli raids throughout the Strip.
The Israeli cabinet has yet to decide on the return of Gaza’s civilian population to northern Gaza, leaving the IDF focused solely on military objectives for now.
On December 19, I visited the Gazan side of the Kerem Shalom border crossing, and heard from IDF officers about new Israeli measures to try and protect the humanitarian aid trucks against hijacking and looting by Hamas and criminal gangs. Over the course of 10 days, 400 aid trucks entered the Gaza Strip in four convoys of 100 trucks each, following routes along the IDF-controlled Philadelphi corridor and the Gaza-Israel border road, reducing hijackings. Visually, what stood out was the well paved road made by the IDF and the Israeli traffic signs along the way.
It could take another year to clear out Gaza of most of its current Hamas cells, with operations eventually shifting to smaller, intelligence-guided raids similar to those conducted in the West Bank. Small-scale targeted raids, such as those that the IDF conducts in the West Bank, could be a permanent fixture.
For Gaza’s civilian population, the future remains uncertain, as Hamas’s leadership continues to insist on waging war, banking on hostages to achieve a degree of immunity. Most civilians are living in makeshift tents in the al-Muwasi zone, with no clear timeline for their return.
A September 2024 poll by the prominent Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki highlighted evolving perceptions among Palestinians. While 64 percent of West Bank residents supported Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, only 39 percent of Gaza’s population did so. This disparity reflects growing disillusionment among many Gazans with Hamas’s decision to lead them into an open-ended war with Israel.
On December 3, 2024, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi stated that “victory over the Hamas military wing cannot be achieved without maneuvering on the ground, without entering Gaza on foot, both above ground and through the tunnels… and without killing so many of the Hamas operatives and locating and destroying all of the infrastructure, bringing the enemy to sense real distress. We still have a long way to go. We will not stop until the hostages are returned and Hamas’s military capabilities are eradicated.”
He added, “We will continue so long as Hamas continues to try and rule.”
