Israel withdraws thousands of troops from Gaza as fighting focuses on the Enclave’s main southern city
Israel has vowed to continue until its war goals are achieved, including the dismantling of Hamas, which has ruled Gaza for 16 years.
Tel Aviv, Israel: Thousands of Israeli soldiers are being expelled from the Gaza Strip, the army said on Monday, in the first significant withdrawal of troops since the start of the war, as troops continued to attack the main city in the southern half of the enclave.
The troop movement could signal a scaling back of fighting in some areas of Gaza, especially in the northern half, where the army has said it is close to taking operational control. Israel is under pressure from its key ally, the United States, to switch to lower-intensity fighting.
Word of the pushback came ahead of a visit by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to the region and after the Biden administration bypassed Congress for the second time this month to approve an emergency arms sale to Israel.
But heavy fighting continued in other parts of Gaza, especially in the southern town of Khan Younis and central parts of the area. Israel has vowed to continue until its war goals are achieved, including the dismantling of Hamas, which has ruled Gaza for 16 years.
The army said in a statement on Monday that five brigades, or several thousand troops, will be moved out of Gaza in the coming weeks for training and rest.
In a briefing Sunday that for the first time announced the troop withdrawal without specifying how many forces were leaving, army spokesman Admiral Daniel Hagari did not say whether the decision meant Israel would launch a new phase of the war.
“The objectives of the war require prolonged fighting, and we are preparing accordingly,” he said.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas’ military and administrative capabilities in its war, which was sparked by the militant group’s Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people. About 240 people were taken hostage.
Israel responded with a blistering air, ground and sea offensive that has killed more than 21,900 people in Gaza, two-thirds of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which makes no distinction between civilians and fighters in its count.
Israel says more than 8,000 militants have been killed, without providing evidence. It blames Hamas for the high number of civilian casualties and says the militants are in residential areas, including schools and hospitals.
The war has displaced some 85% of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents, sending a flood of people seeking shelter in Israeli-designated safe areas that the army has nevertheless bombed. The Palestinians are left with the feeling that there is no longer a safe place in the small enclave.
As tensions remain high in the region, the US announced Monday it would send home an aircraft carrier strike group and replace it with an amphibious assault ship and accompanying warships.
FIGHTS IN THE SOUTH
In Khan Younis, where Israel reportedly has thousands of troops, residents reported airstrikes and shelling in the west and center of the city. The army and the militant group Islamic Jihad reported clashes in the area.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said on X, formerly Twitter, that it was transporting several dead and wounded following a strike late Sunday on Beach Street in Khan Younis. It posted nighttime footage showing doctors taking victims to ambulances.
Fighting was also reported in urban refugee camps in central Gaza, where Israel expanded its offensive last week.
“It is our routine: bombings, massacres and martyrs,” said Saeed Moustafa, a Palestinian from the Nuseirat camp. He said he could hear sporadic explosions and gunfire in Nuseirat and in the nearby Bureij and Maghazi camps.
“Just at this moment there is a big explosion not far from my house,” he said by phone Monday morning.
An Associated Press reporter saw at least 17 bodies, including four children, after a rocket struck a house in the central Gaza town of Deir al-Balah. The victims were taken to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. No other details about the blast were immediately available.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Monday that 156 people had been killed in the past day.
The Israeli military, meanwhile, said an airstrike killed Adel Mismah, a regional commander of Hamas’ elite Nukhba forces, in the central city of Deir al-Balah.
Hamas fired a large barrage of rockets into Israel, including at the commercial center Tel Aviv, as the clock struck midnight on New Year’s Eve.
‘ANOTHER METHOD’
Israel has said the war will last months. It has argued that it needs time to rid Gaza of militants’ weapons and infrastructure and prevent Hamas from carrying out more attacks. Israel has resisted international calls for a long-term ceasefire, saying this would amount to a victory for Hamas.
Shlomo Brom, a retired brigadier general who was once responsible for strategic planning in the Israeli army, said the troop changes could be a result of American pressure. He said it indicated a shift in the way Israel was waging the war in some areas.
“The war doesn’t stop,” Brom said. “It is the beginning of a different way of working.”
Israelis still largely support the war’s objectives, even as the cost in soldiers’ lives rises.
Over the weekend, the military said that of the soldiers killed since the ground operation began — 172 in total as of Monday — 18 were killed by friendly fire, while another 11 died from weapons or equipment failures or accidents.
REGIONAL TENSION
The fighting in Gaza threatens to spread throughout the region.
Israel is involved in almost daily fighting with Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, northern Israel, and has also hit Iran-linked targets in neighboring Syria. Meanwhile, Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have fired long-range missiles at Israel and attacked civilian cargo ships in the Red Sea, disrupting global shipping trade.
The United States has sent warships to the Mediterranean and Red Seas to provide Israel with protection and underscore concerns that fighting could spread.
On Monday, the US Navy announced that the strike group from the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford will be returning home after months of additional deployment at sea. The Ford will be replaced by the amphibious assault ship USS Bataan and its associated warships, the USS Mesa Verde and the USS Carter Hall. The three ships had been in the Red Sea.
The Ford was deployed to the Eastern Mediterranean to be within striking distance of Israel since the day after the Hamas attacks on October 7. The accompanying warships had entered the Red Sea, where they repeatedly intercepted incoming ballistic missiles and attacked drones fired from Houthi-controlled Yemen.
The Ford and the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower have been part of a two-carrier presence in support of the war between Israel and Hamas. The Eisenhower recently patrolled near the Gulf of Aden, at the mouth of the Red Sea waterway where so many commercial ships have been attacked in recent weeks.
(Jobain reported from Rafah, Gaza Strip and Magdy from Cairo. Associated Press writer Tara Copp in Washington contributed to this report.)