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Israel will begin withdrawing some troops from Gaza this week, in the first significant reduction of its forces in the besieged enclave since the war with Hamas erupted almost three months ago.
The Israel Defense Forces said that five brigades — amounting to a few thousand troops — would be taken out of Gaza over the coming weeks for training and recuperation.
While the US has been urging Israel to move to a more targeted, lower-intensity phase of its war against Hamas, the IDF cast the troop reductions as part a practical step to manage forces through what it expects to be several more months of fighting.
Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, the IDF’s chief spokesman, said the withdrawal was designed to “significantly ease the burden on the [Israeli] economy and allow [troops] to gather strength for the upcoming activities in the next year, as the fighting will continue and they will still be required”.
He added the move was part of planning and preparations for the months to come, taking account of the requirements “for additional tasks and warfare throughout this year”.
Israel mobilised about 360,000 soldiers in response to Hamas’s surprise attack on October 7, during which militants killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials, and took another 240 hostage.
After initially bombarding Gaza for three weeks, Israel then launched a devastating ground offensive in the territory. The assault has killed more than 21,800 people, according to Palestinian officials, left hundreds of thousands homeless, and reduced huge swaths of the enclave to rubble.
The fighting continued to rage on Monday, with Israeli forces engaged in battles with Hamas in Khan Younis as well as in other areas in the centre of the strip.
The UN’s humanitarian arm, OCHA, said that 1.9mn of Gaza’s 2.3mn population had now been displaced, with many fleeing to the south of the enclave to escape the fighting. OCHA said that there were now more than 12,000 people per square kilometre in Rafah, the largest town in south Gaza, and warned on Saturday that the “lack of food, basic survival items and poor hygiene” were exacerbating the spread of disease.
The soaring civilian death toll and dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza have prompted mounting international pressure for a ceasefire. But Israeli officials have repeatedly made clear that they have no intention of ending the war until they have destroyed Hamas.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday evening that the war would continue “for many more months”. “In order to achieve absolute victory, in order to accomplish all of our goals, more time is required,” he said in a primetime televised address.
Israeli officials have previously told the Financial Times that they expect the high intensity phase of the fighting in Gaza to stretch into early 2024, before the conflict shifts to a “transition and stabilisation” phase of lower military intensity that could continue late into the year.
During that phase, Israeli forces are expected to carry out more targeted raids in Gaza in pursuit of senior Hamas leaders, rather than engaging in the widespread fighting that has been taking place for the past two months.
Although the US has publicly backed Israel’s offensive in Gaza, in private US officials have been urging Israel to scale back its operations. Several people familiar with the matter told the FT last month that Washington expected that a shift in tactics could come as soon as January.
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