With a Temporary Truce, Hamas’ New Tactic Is Sending Gazans North

The four-day truce between Israel and Hamas has just started and Hamas is already encouraging Gazans to head north to complicate resumption of the War.

The Times of Israel is reporting that the terrorist group began urging Gazans displaced by the fighting in the northern part of the Gaza Strip to return to their homes on Thursday night, hours before the truce went into effect.

As Friday progressed, thousands of Gazans emerged from shelters in southern Gaza and began heading north in vehicles and on-foot, carrying their belongings with them. Their motivation is likely a mixture of the natural inclination to return to their homes and pressure from Hamas. What expectations they have for resuming any kind of normal existence in the northern Gaza Strip, much of which has been destroyed, are unclear.

In anticipation of the tactic, the IDF dropped flyers warning Gazans against doing so. Israeli troops have apparently been using riot dispersal measures inside the territory in order to prevent people from moving north.

Retired general Israel Ziv, a former head of IDF operations, told The Times of Israel that Hamas is trying to persuade (by encouragement or threats) the hundreds of thousands of Gazans who fled south after the commencement of hostilities to return home in order to “completely disrupt” Israel’s military campaign to destroy Hamas.

It can be an effective tactic. Israeli architect and urban warfare scholar Eyal Weizman once said, “To control a city is to control the means of circulation through a city…”

Images and reports of Palestinian civilians moving north into areas of destruction blocked by IDF soldiers can be of public relations value to Hamas, ratcheting up pressure on Israel as the world observes the scenes. However, the reality that the returning Gazans face is a landscape without power, services or safe structures.

The IDF will have to be highly astute and selective in responding, keeping the Gazans at bay while not being seen to use inappropriate force to bar them from re-entering combat zones. That effort will naturally take its concentration partially away from pursuing Hamas targets and the presence of more civilians can blunt its momentum.

Israel’s desire to recover the 250 or so hostages Hamas has taken has provided the fulcrum for this move by Hamas to pressure the progress of its campaign. U.S. and Qatari brokerage of and involvement in the deal adds another layer, stretching the conflict out into the Winter.

As the Modern War Institute at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point observed in a 2021 paper on urban warfare observed, the urban defender has the advantage on many fronts including the use of civilians – a feature of urban fights in Iraq, Syria and Ukraine (before the latest Ukraine War).

Hamas will press the tactic as far it can, and it is highly probable it will seek to use Palestinian civilians in other ways in southern Gaza. As General Ziv said in his remarks to The Times, “Hamas has no problem sacrificing all the residents of Gaza, as it has proved.”