8 | APRIL 4 • 2024 
J
N

T

he presence of over a 
million Gazan civil-
ians in the Rafah area 
serves as a kind of “armor” for 
Hamas’ remaining battalions in 
southern Gaza, 
which is why any 
Israel Defense 
Forces operation 
aimed at taking 
control of this 
last bastion of 
the terror group 
must begin with 
the evacuation of civilians. 
In order for the Israel 
Defense Forces to be able oper-
ate freely in Rafah, the civilians 
there will have to evacuate — 
and Hamas will do everything 
in its power to prevent them 
from doing so for precisely this 
reason. 
Since the start of the war, 
some 1.5 million Gazans, most 
of them from northern Gaza 
and Gaza City, complied with 
IDF calls to evacuate to the 
south. 
The IDF’s Southern 
Command and its Population 
Evacuation Unit possess a state-
of-the-art control center and 
real-time map of Gaza’s civilian 
situation, enabling evacuation 
from specific areas and the 
tracking of those efforts. 
By December, the IDF was 
able to evacuate over a million 
people from northern Gaza, 
including 850,000 from Gaza 
City — setting a vital prece-
dent.
The IDF uses an array of 
means to communicate evacu-
ation requests to Gaza civilians, 
including phones calls, text 
messages, flyers, loudspeakers 
and social media platforms.

During these past evacua-
tion efforts, the IDF witnessed 
many attempts by Hamas to 
stop Palestinian civilians from 
leaving, with the terrorists then 
using every possible human-
shield tactic imaginable, such 
as firing on Israeli forces from 
hospital wards or family living 
rooms. 
The difference this time will 
be that now, the IDF will need 
to set up checkpoints to filter 
out any terrorists attempting to 
move north with the civilians, 
with or without Israeli hostages. 
Such a filter was not required 
at the start of the ground offen-
sive on Oct. 27, enabling many 
terrorists to flee to Rafah from 
other parts of Gaza, possibly 
taking hostages with them.
Currently, the IDF complete-
ly surrounds Rafah, and Hamas 
forces there will not be able to 
escape. 
It seems reasonable to assess, 
based on past evacuation 

efforts, that it will take two to 
three weeks to complete the 
Rafah evacuation efforts, which 
would see civilians move to 
new safe zones, potentially 
in Al-Mawasi, west of Khan 
Yunis, and in new locations 
along the central and southern 
Gazan coastline.
Currently, most Gaza civil-
ians are located in Rafah, in the 
Mawasi safe zone and in Dir 
al-Balah in central Gaza.
After the Rafah evacuation 
is complete, combat there will 
likely resemble that in other 
parts of Gaza, as the IDF will 
be engaging a large concentra-
tion of terrorists — both the 
four remaining Hamas bat-
talions and the terrorists who 
joined them from northern 
Gaza. 
Two barely functioning 
Hamas battalions are also 
active in central Gaza’s Nuseirat 
and Dir Al-Balah areas.
The IDF’s Division 98, which 

is leading the combat in south-
ern Gaza, will command the 
Rafah stage of the war, and 
will likely receive significant 
reinforcements from additional 
brigades for this mission. 
The past six months have 
demonstrated that the IDF has 
the ability to conduct a large-
scale operation in Rafah and to 
evacuate civilians, but this time, 
once the order is given, military 
planners and field commanders 
will face new operational 
challenges. 

Yaakov Lappin is an Israel-based mili-

tary affairs correspondent and analyst. 

He is the in-house analyst at the Miryam 

Institute; a research associate at the 

Alma Research and Education Center; 

and a research associate at the Begin-

Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at 

Bar-Ilan University. He is a frequent 

guest commentator on international 

television news networks, including Sky 

News and i24 News. Lappin is the author 

of Virtual Caliphate: Exposing the Islamist 

State on the Internet. Follow him at: www.

patreon.com/yaakovlappin.

PURELY COMMENTARY

Yaakov 
Lappin
jns.org

Displaced Palestinians pitch tents next to the Egyptian border in the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza 
Strip on March 8, 2024. 

analysis
Hamas Will Do Anything 
to Stop Gazans Leaving Rafah

ABED RAHIM KHATIB/FLASH90

