The Israel Defense Forces continued its intensive operations in the northern Gaza Strip on Wednesday, focusing on the Beit Lahia and Jabalia areas.

Units from the 162nd “Steel Formation” Division, including combat teams from the Kfir and Givati Infantry Brigades and the 401st “Iron Tracks” Armored Brigade, located “numerous weapons in the past 24 hours and eliminated dozens of terrorists from the ground and through air force strikes.”

Just in the past 24 hours, according to the military, the Kfir Brigade eliminated a terrorist cell that fired anti-tank missiles and assault rifles at Israeli forces.

A senior source from the 162nd Division, which is operationally responsible for Jabalia and northern Gaza at this time, stated on Wednesday that as of now, the military had killed some 1,200 terrorists, and destroyed 1,800 enemy facilities.

A few hundred terrorist operatives remain active in Jabalia camp, and a civilian population of some 64,000 Palestinians has complied with Israeli evacuation calls and left the area, heading, via IDF screening checkpoints, south to the Al-Mawasi humanitarian zone.

Thousands of other Palestinian residents left before the IDF entered the area on Oct. 5, following Israeli calls to vacate. A few thousand people in total remain in Jabalia, according to IDF estimates.

More than a thousand terrorists from Jabalia have surrendered and are in Israeli custody, though the more senior terrorists, “including those who took part in the Oct. 7, [2023], mass murder attack, tend to fight to the death, knowing that they face life in prison in Israel due to the murders they committed,” the source said.

The IDF is active on the ground in northern Gaza for the first time in some eight months. It has sustained 24 soldiers KIA in operations in northern Gaza since Oct. 5, and more than 200 injured—121 of whom returned to operations, the source added.

Describing Hamas’s activities in Jabalia, the senior source said: “It drew lessons from past years of warfare and placed a special focus on booby-trapping buildings and alleyways. It is surveilling IDF activities and implementing attacks. It uses underground tunnels and the remaining civilian population as human shields intentionally.”

Gazan’s fear of Hamas is decreasing

Hamas has been demanding that Palestinians do not leave Jabalia and according to Palestinian eyewitnesses has shot Palestinians seeking to leave in the legs on multiple occasions, the source added.

As soon as the civilian population leaves, the IDF gains far more freedom of operation. The fear of Hamas on the part of Gazan civilians appears to be decreasing substantially, the source noted.

“After 10 days, we saw significant civilian movement out of the area. Hamas is applying terrorism against its civilians,” the senior source emphasized.

“Hamas not only uses civilians in general, but terrorists insist their own families remain with them in homes, calling on them to die with the terrorists. This is really cruel,” the source said.

The IDF has found some 300 booby-trapped homes in Jabalia thus far. “If Rafah [in southern Gaza] is the land of tunnels, Jabalia is the land of explosive devices.

“In Jabalia, Hamas worked hard to recruit new terrorists from a range of age groups. It is in no position to offer training or to screen new recruits. It offered a general call for enlistment,” the source explained.

In Jabalia, Hamas has been conducting hit-and-run attacks on sight of Israeli forces, setting off explosives linked to wires and using vehicle reverse cameras to monitor Israeli movements, using tactics that are reminiscent of Hezbollah and Amal attacks from Israel’s South Lebanon Security Zone in the 1980s and 1990s.

Snipers are at large as well.

The IDF has uncovered a range of weapons, including Iranian-made mines, AK-47 assault rifles and RPG launchers. Anti-personnel mines and Hamas-made explosives have been found en masse, planted in walls and on the streets, the senior source said.

Grad rockets and rocket launchers have been found pointed at the western Negev, before they could fire. Children’s rooms have turned into weapons storage and attack bases, the source said.

Hamas even took Israeli Air Force munition duds and turned them into explosive devices.

Hamas often films and publishes its attacks to boost morale and gain new recruits, as part of its war propaganda efforts, the source stated.

One node for this effort has been Kamal Adwan Hospital in neighboring Beit Lahia, which Hamas converted into a command headquarters, complete with video editing rooms and offices for senior terrorists located next to cancer treatment rooms, the senior source revealed.

However, Hamas’s ability to centrally orchestrate these activities is practically nonexistent, with Hamas military-terror leadership largely cut off from the field operatives. Locally, however, field commanders are able to exercise a degree of command and control of attacks, the source explained.

“Our goal is to fully destroy these terrorist infrastructures and secure the people of the western Negev. The effort in northern Gaza is to cleanse the sector and not allow fire on Israeli residents of the south, not to allow terrorists to return, and create security for a region that absorbed the most barbaric brutal attack on October 7,” the senior source said.

Image - IDF