The military said in a statement on Monday that five brigades, or several thousand troops, were being taken out of Gaza in the coming weeks for training and rest.
“The IDF [Israel Defense Forces] must plan ahead, understanding that we will be required for additional tasks and warfare throughout this year,” Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told reporters.
“The objectives of the war require prolonged fighting and we are preparing accordingly.”
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The war between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, erupted after Hamas fighters carried out a deadly attack on southern Israel on October 7.
Hagari said the army was currently planning how to deploy troops in the months ahead.
“Some of the reservists will return to their families and employment this week,” he said.
“This will significantly ease the burden on the economy and allow them to gather strength for the coming activities in the next year, as the fighting will continue and they will still be required.”
Israel has vowed to crush Hamas’ military and governing capabilities in its war, which was sparked by the militant group’s October 7 attack on southern Israel, which killed 1,200 people. Roughly 240 people were taken hostage.
Israel responded with a blistering air, ground and sea offensive that has killed more than 21,800 people in Gaza, two-thirds of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count.
One of the senior figures in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition called for Palestinian residents of Gaza to leave the besieged enclave, making way for Israelis who could “make the desert bloom”.
The comments by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has been excluded from the war cabinet and discussions of day-after arrangements in Gaza, appear to underscore fears in much of the Arab world that Israel wants to drive Palestinians out of land where they want to build a future state, repeating the mass dispossession of Palestinians when Israel was created in 1948.
“What needs to be done in the Gaza Strip is to encourage emigration,” Smotrich told Army Radio on Sunday. “If there are 100,000 or 200,000 Arabs in Gaza and not 2 million Arabs, the entire discussion on the day after will be totally different.”
Smotrich, whose hard-right Religious Zionism party draws support from Israel’s settler community, has made similar comments in the past, setting himself at odds with Israel’s most important ally, the United States.
But his views do not reflect the official government position that Gazans will be able to return to their homes after the war against the Islamist movement Hamas which controls Gaza, now nearing the start of its fourth month.
“Contrary to false allegations, Israel does not seek to displace the population in Gaza,” an official in the prime minister’s office said in a statement on Sunday.
Battles in the south
In Khan Younis, where Israel is believed to have thousands of troops, residents reported air strikes and shelling in the west and centre of the city. The military and the militant group Islamic Jihad reported clashes in the area.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said on X, formerly Twitter, that it transported several dead and injured following a strike late Sunday in the Beach Street in Khan Younis. It posted nighttime footage showing doctors carrying casualties to ambulances.
Combat was also reported in urban refugee camps in central Gaza, where Israel expanded its offensive last week.
“It’s our routine: bombings, massacres and martyrs,” said Saeed Moustafa, a Palestinian from the Nuseirat camp. He said he could hear sporadic explosions and gunfire in Nuseirat and in the nearby Bureij and Maghazi camps.
“Just as we speak, there is a big explosion not far from my home,” he said in a phone call on Monday morning.
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The military said an air strike killed Adel Mismah, a regional commander of Hamas’ elite Nukhba forces, in the central city of Deir al-Balah.
Hamas fired a large barrage of rockets toward Israel, including at its commercial hub Tel Aviv, as the clock struck midnight on New Year’s Eve.
Shlomo Brom, a retired brigadier general once in charge of strategic planning in the Israeli military, said the troop changes may be a result of the US pressure. He said it indicated a shift in how Israel was conducting the war in some areas.
“The war is not stopping,” said Brom. “It is the beginning of a different mode of operation.”
Israelis still largely support the wars aims, even as the cost in soldiers’ lives is mounting.
Over the weekend, the military said that of the soldiers killed since the ground operation began – as of Monday, 172 in total – 18 were killed by friendly fire while another 11 died by weapons or equipment malfunctions or accidents.
One in six Israeli soldiers killed since the start of the ground offensive in the Gaza Strip has been either accidentally killed or killed by their own comrades, the Israeli army said on Monday, confirming media reports.
Reporting by Agence France-Press, Associated Press, Reuters, dpa