TEL AVIV — Israel’s military sent ground troops back into the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, the spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces announced, just over a day after it broke a two-month ceasefire with a sprawling bombing campaign that killed hundreds across the enclave.
The “targeted ground operation” has focused on the central and southern Gaza Strip over the past 24 hours, the IDF said in a statement.
Ground troops had also retaken about half of the “Netzarim Corridor,” the IDF said, referring to the Israeli-built roadway that bisects Gaza and has been used to cut off traffic between the northern and southern parts of the enclave.
In a statement issued Wednesday evening, Hamas said Israel’s ground incursion, “constitutes a new and dangerous violation of the signed ceasefire agreement.”
People look through the rubble in a house after an Israeli strike in Gaza City on Tuesday.Majdi Fathi / NurPhoto / Getty Images
The IDF’s ground incursion came as Israel’s defense minister issued a bellicose statement, threatening that the military would once again begin evacuating civilians from combat zones.
“The air force attack against Hamas terrorists was only the first step. The rest will be much more difficult and you will pay the full price,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in the statement. “If all the Israeli hostages are not released and Hamas is not eliminated from Gaza — Israel will act with forces you have never known before.”
The return of Israeli ground forces marks the collapse of a U.S.-negotiated ceasefire that had largely quieted the fighting in Gaza for two months after 15 months of war laid the Palestinian coastal enclave to waste.
Alongside their statement, the IDF circulated a video that showed Israeli tanks as well as infantry soldiers walking, taking up positions and gathering in groups around destroyed homes in what the IDF said was central Gaza.
Under the terms of the treaty which came into effect on January 19, Israeli forces had gradually withdrawn their ground operations to Gaza’s periphery. Though the treaty dramatically diminished the intensity of the fighting, health officials in Gaza, said Israeli forces had killed at least 160 people during the two-month truce.
More than 400 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes in the renewed offensive early on Tuesday morning, according to Palestinian health officials, and at least a a dozen on Wednesday.
An American security company and Egyptian security contractors who worked for a Qatari-Egyptian committee had been securing the Netzarim Corridor. Those forces vacated the roadway today ahead of advancing Israeli forces.
At about 9 a.m. local time Wednesday, Israel’s Arabic-language spokesman published a map on social media advising residents in Gaza to vacate areas around the perimeter and move toward the coast, highlighting two square blocks of territory in the enclave’s northeast and southeast for urgent evacuation.
The demise of the hard-won peace treaty ends a short period of calm in Gaza and threatens a return to the kind of Israeli attacks that Palestinian health officials say have already killed more than 48,000 people.
Israel ended the peace treaty because, it said, Hamas refused to hand over the remaining hostages held in Gaza.
The first phase of the treaty expired on March 1 and repeated attempts to either extend the first phase or negotiate a move toward the second phase have failed.
The ceasefire’s first phase saw almost weekly exchanges of hostages for Palestinian prisoners. By the time it ended earlier this month, Hamas had released 33 hostages for about 1,900 Palestinian prisoners.
But while Hamas repeatedly attempted to negotiate toward the second phase of the treaty, which would see a more permanent truce and eventually the full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, Israel pushed for a weeks-long extension of the first phase.
Steve Witkoff, President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy, presented multiple “bridging” proposals that would have extended the first phase of the treaty. After Hamas refused, hewing to its insistence on negotiating toward the second phase, Israel’s government scrapped the treaty and moved to renew the fighting.
Matt Bradley
