Over a million Gazans to return to northern Gaza Strip in phase 1 of deal – report

Limiting almost two million noncombatants to humanitarian zones is what permitted the IDF to fight Hamas effectively.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Allowing the Gazan civilian population to return to their homes is allegedly included in the first stage of the hostage deal, whose final details are currently being worked out in Doha, Ma’ariv reported Tuesday.

The paper noted that this clause has been “hidden” from the public. According to Ma’ariv, what has been reported in most media is that during this six-week phase of the ceasefire, some 1,000 Palestinian security prisoners will be released from Israeli jails, the IDF will withdraw from population centers in the coastal enclave, and a massive amount of humanitarian aid will be permitted entry in exchange for the release of 34 hostages.

“A million men, women, and children will move north along the coastal route to Gaza City [and points north] without any restrictions,” the report said, and an additional 300,000 will return to the southern city of Rafah.”

“The only Israeli demand is that the returning cars be inspected. There is no restriction on the movement of those returning on foot,” the report added.

“If true,” the paper noted, Hamas will “receive the big prize” in the beginning of the deal instead of at its end, after all the rest of the hostages are freed, including the more than one-third who are dead.

This is because the residents’ return effectively means the end of the war, since limiting almost two million noncombatants to humanitarian zones is what permitted the IDF to fight Hamas successfully everywhere else.

The deal also reduced political pressure on Jerusalem to stop fighting, although the international community continued to press Israel unremittingly about the number of civilian casualties being reported in Gaza, despite the low 2-1 noncombatant-to-combatant ratio being unheard-of in war.

Hamas would still hold more than 50 hostages, which would allow it to demand further concessions from Israel, the report noted, such as the release of even more prisoners and more aid, which would allow the terrorists to boast that they had achieved a victory over Israel that no other Palestinian or Arab entity had attained.

Without mentioning at which stages this would occur, Channel 14 reported on Tuesday that “in the deal,” the IDF will maintain a presence along the entire border area, extending 800 meters into the Strip. This will include a good part of the Philadelphi Corridor that runs along the Gazan border with Egypt and which Jerusalem calls Hamas’s “oxygen pipeline,” as weapons and supplies were smuggled through and under this border area for nearly two decades.

According to the report, the Netzarim Corridor, which cuts Gaza roughly in half and has become a wide highway dotted with small military bases and watchtowers along its length, occupying 56 square kilometers, will be taken over by an international force that will supervise the return of some one million northern Gaza residents to their homes.

Whether they can ensure that no terrorists will be among them is the question, the report concluded.