Posted on 05/22/25
| News Source: JPost
The IDF's control over Gaza has jumped over 50% on the way to being the vast majority of the Strip.
Whether that vast majority will stop at around 70% or go up to 100% as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a major speech on Wednesday night is a matter of debate and interpretation.
Already before this latest "Operation Gideon's Chariots" took off at the start of this week to further defeat Hamas and take over more Gazan territory, the IDF had taken over around 50% of Gaza since it renewed hostilities when negotiations for releasing more hostages broke down in March.
On Wednesday night and Thursday, IDF Col. Avichai Adraee warned Palestinian civilians in large portions of northern Gaza, including Beit Lahiya, Jabalia, and many other areas, to move toward southern Gaza to avoid the impending IDF expansion of the invasion.
How many Palestinians are left in northern Gaza is a wildly debated number.
Prior to the January 19 ceasefire, there were as few as 100,000-200,000 Palestinians left in northern Gaza from a pre-war total of more than 1.2 million Palestinians (more than half of Gaza's pre-war population.)
However, during the ceasefire, an uncertain number of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians returned to northern Gaza.
Some Palestinian reports have said that as many as 400,000 Palestinians had already left northern Gaza earlier this week even before Adraee's latest warnings.
Sources have indicated to The Jerusalem Post that the number of Palestinian civilians in northern Gaza may be back down to 150,000-200,000 or even lower, as the military tries to clear most of the area.
Previous publicized food aid distribution plans were focused on getting most Gazans into southern Gaza or the al-Muwasi coastal humanitarian zone.
In addition, Adraee sent out a message on Thursday highlighting Hamas's use of human shields in central Gaza.
Also on Thursday, IDF Division 98 killed dozens of terrorists in the Khan Yunis area in southern Gaza.
Further, Division 98 destroyed around 200 terrorist targets, including combat compounds, observation posts, shafts, and underground tunnels.
The IDF at times has also given updates about the progress of divisions 162, 143, 36, and 252, but did not put out any specific updates about those divisions on Thursday.
The pace and nature of the IDF updates this week have made it clear that the primary goal is taking over territory in order to try to separate the Palestinian civilian population from armed Hamas fighters and to control food distribution, as opposed to killing large numbers of Hamas terrorists.
Only a couple of hundred Hamas terrorists have been killed over the course of the week.
Meanwhile, although over 120 food aid trucks have been cleared by the IDF for distribution in Gaza over recent days, there is an ongoing debate as to how much of it is getting to the wider population of Palestinian civilians, versus being stolen by Hamas, or seized by small groups of civilians in a disorganized way.