‘New phase’ in Israeli offensive in Gaza, mainly ‘provided for tunnel system’

Heavy bombardment, telecommunications shut down, ground troops moving in: reports from the Gaza Strip indicated a significant escalation of the war between Israel and Hamas. Volker Türk, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, warned on Saturday of the “potentially catastrophic consequences” of the Israeli operation in Gaza.

“Continued violence is not the solution,” said Türk, who fears that “thousands of civilians” could die from the intensified attacks. He called on the warring parties and states with influence in the region “to do everything in their power to de-escalate this conflict.”

Analysts puzzled over what exactly was happening. Is this the ground invasion that Israel has been announcing for a while?

This is partly a semantic issue: after all, there has been talk of an Israeli military presence in Gaza in recent weeks. Brigadier General Han Bouwmeester, professor of military-operational sciences at the Dutch Defense Academy, takes into account that shortly after the large-scale attack by Hamas on October 7, Israeli elite troops (special forces) entered Gaza.

“We don’t know for sure, because these types of operations are secret by definition. But it is likely that soldiers were sent ahead to gather information. Where is Hamas, what is their headquarters, where are the rocket firing locations, where are the hostages?”

This, says Bouwmeester, was the “preliminary stage” for a ground offensive. “Not only do you gauge where they are, but also how they react to your presence. This provides valuable information about how to organize your own troops.”

Rain of bombs on Hamas tunnel network

According to Bouwmeester, a “new phase” started on Friday evening. According to the Reuters news agency, the Israeli army has entered the strip of land in two places, with armored bulldozers, tanks and heavy infantry fighting vehicles in the vanguard. One place is Beit Hanoun, Gaza’s northeastern-most city; the other ground invasion is said to have taken place at the Bureij refugee camp in the middle of the strip of land.

This entrance was accompanied by a large-scale rain of bombs on the Gaza Strip, carried out by about a hundred fighter jets. These bombs were mainly aimed at destroying Hamas’ extensive tunnel network. According to various media, Israel has hit more than one hundred and fifty tunnels and bunkers. Israel also used artillery fire on Hamas’ front lines of defense.

According to Bouwmeester, these combat actions clear the way for the ground troops. This does not mean that all 360,000 reservists will enter the strip of land at once, he says. “The BBC reported that Israel slice by slice enters Gaza, and that does indeed seem plausible to me. If you all go at once, you get in each other’s way. There are also only a limited number of roads in Gaza.”

Moreover, the professor says, Israel also needs manpower at the border. “A bit disrespectfully, you can compare it to a tube of toothpaste that you squeeze empty: the Hamas fighters who are chased away have to go somewhere. The strip is not large, so perhaps they will end up at the border with Israel.”

Massive ground invasion

Bouwmeester does not expect a very large-scale attack in the form of a massive ground invasion in this war at all. “The United States is exerting too much pressure not to do that. And even though Israel is sometimes wayward, it does need American support.”

Israel will want to clear residential block by residential block, neighborhood by neighborhood of Hamas militants, says Bouwmeester. “The tunnels naturally pose a problem in this regard, because fighters can disappear into them and emerge from them.”

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According to the brigadier general, the fact that Israel is now mainly focusing on the tunnels is evident from the visit that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid to the yahalom, the army’s genius. That is the department that disables explosives and mines, and builds bridges and houses. Part of this is the samur unit, which is dedicated to finding and destroying tunnels. “Netanyahu’s visit makes it clear where the priorities lie.”

The biggest problem for Israel is the location of the hostages. The testimony of previously released hostage Yocheved Lifshitz showed that she was being held by her kidnappers in the tunnel network. At this time it cannot be said with certainty how Israel is trying to spare them from the attacks.

Citizens left behind

War strategist Mick Ryan draws up his blog that Israel will have used the recent attacks on Gaza primarily “to gather intelligence on the impact of Israeli airstrikes, on the number of civilians remaining in areas where Israel could potentially carry out even larger-scale attacks, and on Hamas’s responses ”.

The Israelis, Ryan says, are moving quickly and launching attacks in many different places. “Not only will this aim to confuse Hamas commanders about what is happening and why, but it will also ensure that the Hamas leadership’s responses always come just a little too late to matter.” These rapid actions also aim to encourage Hamas fighters to come out and fight so that they can be tracked down and eliminated.

Queuing for fresh drinking water in Gaza City. The city came under fire from the Israeli army on the night from Friday to Saturday.

According to Ryan, the small-scale raids will also have been used to convince the remaining civilians that Israel was serious about the evacuation order. Third, this attack would serve as a kind of toe in the pool water: to gauge how the United States and European allies respond to Israeli ground forces in Gaza.

Saturday afternoon the Israeli army posted on X, formerly Twitter, a renewed call for residents of the Gaza Strip to evacuate from North Gaza. “Attention, residents of Gaza. Listen carefully. This is an urgent military advice from the Israeli army. For your immediate safety, we ask all residents of North Gaza and Gaza City to temporarily resettle in the south […] This is a temporary measure. Moving back to North Gaza will be possible when the heavy hostilities end.”

With this call, Israel addresses the fear among some Palestinians that a new Nakba (Catastrophe) is coming. This event refers to the period 1947-1949, when some 750,000 Palestinians were forced to leave their homes in what is now Israel. Many of them ended up in one of the refugee camps in Gaza.

No internet or telephone

Due to the telecommunications shutdown, this video will not be visible to most Gaza residents. Palestinian journalists and aid organizations in Gaza hardly have any contact with the outside world. Through her X account journalist Hind Khoudary was still able to get messages out. According to her, the Israeli bombings have caused many fatalities, especially in the Al-Shati refugee camp near Gaza City, also known as the Beach Camp.

According to several testimonies collected by the AFP news agency, the heaviest bombings were concentrated on the areas around two hospitals in Gaza City. This concerns the so-called Indonesian hospital, which was built with donations from Indonesia, and the Al-Shifa hospital, the largest hospital in Gaza.

Buildings were also bombed in the south of the Gaza Strip, such as here in Rafah.

The internet outage, Ryan argues, will help Israel break down Hamas’ command networks. This makes it unclear, especially for citizens, aid organizations and the media, what exactly is happening.

Phillipe Lazzarini, the head of the UN organization UNRWA, is “very concerned” about his employees in Gaza. In a letter to staff on Saturday, he wrote that he had not yet been able to make contact with “the vast majority” of his team in the Gaza Strip since the Israeli attacks intensified on Friday evening and the lines of communication were severed. “This makes me extremely concerned for my colleagues and their families.” UNRWA takes care of Palestinian refugees in the region.

The Hamas fighters themselves are less affected by the internet outage, Professor Bouwmeester thinks. “They have undoubtedly ensured that they can continue to communicate in such a situation.”

With the cooperation of Mandula van den Berg and Flori Hofman