TEL AVIV—As fighting erupts in Gaza again, a top Israeli official told The Daily Beast that the entire enclave awaits “the same fate” as the decimated north.
The remarks follow a weeklong truce that saw a brief pause in hostilities and allowed the release of 110 Israeli and foreign hostages. Now, having effectively destroyed northern Gaza City, the Israeli military has turned its attention to the south of the strip. Israeli officials are clear that this is only the start of a protracted military campaign—intended, they say, to destroy Hamas at almost any cost.
The Daily Beast interviewed Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus, the International Spokesperson for the Israeli Defense Forces, at his office in Tel Aviv this week.
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“This idea that people are fantasizing about, that we are going to stop the fighting and that we are going to allow Hamas to continue governing Gaza, is not going to happen,” he said. To do so, he said, would be akin to allowing “a sword of terror to hang over the throats of Israeli civilians.”
To do this, he says that the Israeli military will be targeting the major cities of southern Gaza, where over 1 million people have fled, with a ferocity equal to its assault in the north. To protect civilians, the Israelis have said they have designated a “safe zone” in the small coastal strip of Al-Mawasi, previously the site of the Gush Khatif Israeli settlement.
Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus
Tom Mutch“If they [Palestinian civilians] stay in Khan Younis or Rafah, a similar fate awaits to what happened in Gaza City,” Conricus said.
Despite an increase in aid that was delivered during the relative safety of the truce, the south of Gaza still suffers severe shortages of food, water, and medicine. The only way to get further humanitarian supplies to these people during the fighting will be through the Rafah crossing with Egypt, which is contained in an area that Israel has declared it will strike.
“Will it provide adequate solutions for all the Gazans? Perhaps not, it is a confined area. There will be around 2 million people in need of shelter and services, so I don’t think that anybody could say it is perfect. There are limitations on space and infrastructure, but it is the best available solution,” Conricus admits.
Firing up
“Tseva Adom, Tseva Adom,” (Color Red, Color Red) a woman’s voice rings out on the sirens that are blaring throughout Sderot and other towns in south Israel as explosions from Hamas rockets and Israeli air defenses crack in the air.
According to Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy, at 5:43 a.m. on Friday, Hamas militants broke the truce and began firing rockets back into Israeli territory—and will now take “the mother of all thumpings.” Hamas claimed that negotiations over hostage releases had collapsed.
The IDF has responded with renewed air strikes. Reuters reporters in the southern city of Khan Younis saw huge airstrikes level buildings in the eastern districts, and smoke can be seen rising from Gaza in Israeli towns throughout the border. The Hamas-controlled health ministry has said that at least 100 Palestinians have been killed by the renewed bombing, and if the airstrikes look anything like the first weeks of the war, that number will surely soar.
Shops, cafes, and bars in big Israeli cities have mostly reopened after the Oct. 7 attacks, and the streets are again thronged with pedestrians. There are still signs of the conflict: posters with faces of Israeli hostages in Hamas captivity are plastered everywhere, and many men and women carry assault rifles everywhere. Before the truce, the air raid siren would ring almost daily, yet many people have started to ignore them and continue with their day, confident that the Iron Dome defense system will protect them.
Young people in Tel Aviv carrying weapons.
Tom MutchGaza City, on the other hand, has been effectively destroyed. The Israeli assault that was concentrated on Gaza’s north killed around 15,000 people according to the Hamas-run health ministry. Witnesses have described apocalyptic scenes, and Conricus acknowledges heavy destruction. “The infrastructure there has been severely damaged. Houses have been severely damaged. Many people won’t have a place to go back to, until that is rebuilt.”
Insisting that Israel is “trying to avoid killing civilians,” Conricus offered a robust defense of Israel’s bombing campaign—even its most controversial military strikes.
Shortly before the truce, Israel struck the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, striking it with what was likely a 2,000-pound bomb that killed at least 50 people.
Picture taken on Oct. 11, 2023, shows an aerial view of buildings destroyed by Israeli air strikes in the Jabalia camp for Palestinian refugees in Gaza City.
Yahya Hassouna/Getty“In the example of Jabaliya the commander and dozens of Hamas operatives were killed in a strike from the air. It is sad in a sense that there were civilians who were killed, but it is the example of Hamas hiding under a layer of soil, and a layer of Palestinian civilians, which they thought would protect them. Hamas was buried deep underground, thinking that having a neighborhood of civilians in Jabaliya would protect them. That is a false and faulty premise.”
‘Completely absurd’
Now, this bombardment will intensify in the regions Gazans were originally told to flee. The Israelis say they will be safe if they stay in the safe zone of Al-Mawasi, but this presents extreme challenges. It is a tiny stretch, around one kilometer wide and 14 kilometers long, and the Israeli settlements that were removed during the 2005 disengagement held around 9,000 settlers.
When the initial evacuation order from north to south was first floated several weeks into the fighting, the United Nations and World Health Organization reacted with horror.
“The idea that that is feasible on a very practical level is completely absurd. The idea that the UN could be seen to support something like that could have implications for UN principles,” Samuel Rose, director of planning at UNRWA, a UN agency formed to help Palestinian refugees, including the descendants of those who were expelled or fled during the 1948 war, told the Wall Street Journal.
According to Conricus, the agency is a part of the problem rather than the solution, calling them “sinister accomplices” of Hamas.
“I think they have failed the Palestinians… instead of saving the Palestinians and caring for their humanitarian needs… if they really care about the safety of civilians… not trying to obstruct us, telling people, ‘Come and shelter in our schools in Gaza,’ because those are dangerous places! Not telling Israel: ‘No, this can’t be done.’”
On Thursday, The Daily Beast viewed a film about the massacres that took place on Oct. 7. It showed scenes of extraordinary carnage and brutality. Scores of civilians were murdered in cold blood. Some were shot, burned, blown up with grenades, and several corpses were mutilated and beheaded by gleeful Hamas militants in what can only be described as acts of terror. Rescue workers arrived to see fields, living rooms, and bars covered in corpses of innocent civilians. Soldiers in IDF bases who surrendered were executed.
It is because of these scenes that Israel says it must destroy Hamas for good. Yet its spokespeople say that the only way to do so is to destroy the homes and infrastructure of roughly two million people, civilians who have been told to stay confined to a so-called “safe zone,” on a tiny sliver of land within a tiny strip of an enclave—half of which has already been destroyed.
