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By: Yaakov Lappin
In the history of armed conflict, there is no known precedent for the scale and effort involved in the Israel Defense Force’s civilian evacuation program in the Gaza Strip.
Since the war began, the IDF has evacuated some 1.5 million Gazan civilians in an effort to get them out of harm’s way, using an array of means.
In recent days, a senior official from IDF Southern Command shed additional light on this effort. The Southern Command’s Population Evacuation Unit leads these efforts, and it has become a core part of the IDF’s operational language, he said.
The unit plays the unique role of connecting the civilian situation picture to the IDF’s operational array, fulfilling a role no other unit is able to.
“The goal is to move the population to protect it. This war is with terrorists, not with the population,” he said.
The second goal, he added, is to grant the IDF freedom of action in Gaza while minimizing collateral damage.
“There has never been an effort on this scale in history for population evacuation, and no country has the ability to do what we are doing,” he stated.
“One needs to understand the complexity of this effort. It’s a capability that has been built up. We have an operational tool that serves a strategic purpose. We don’t start the situation assessment without seeing where the population is located,” he said, adding, “This is true even at the political echelon.”
The unit uses an advanced digital map that divides Gaza into over 600 polygons, enabling evacuations from very specific areas, which are similar to municipalities.
The IDF employs phones calls, text messages, flyers, loudspeakers and media platforms to get the message through—and it is getting through, the official said.
Using various tools, the Population Evacuation Unit can keep tabs on how many residents have left a given area.
This real-time data has become a common a language not only within the IDF, distributed to ground, air and naval units, but also among Palestinian civilians, he said. Gazans post the evacuation orders on buildings and discuss them, including on social media when possible.
“A very high degree of credibility has been established, meaning that if we say an evacuation is needed of a certain bloc, this is complied with,” said the official.
Hamas, unsurprisingly, takes a dim view of the Gazan population complying with IDF evacuation calls, since this strips it of its human shields. The IDF has seen many cases of Hamas trying to stop these evacuations, and of the most cynical use of human shielding imaginable, such as finding terrorists operating out of the living room of a family, he said.
The IDF also works closely with its legal officers to ensure compliance with international law.
Now, as the fighting focuses on southern Gaza, especially Khan Yunis, the IDF has created a humanitarian corridor through which it has called on Gazans to evacuate.
In northern Gaza, around 300,000 people have remained in place for a variety of reasons, including medical and economic. Some have gone to local shelters based on their understanding that the IDF will not strike there, he explained.
Already by December, the IDF had evacuated over a million people from northern Gaza, including 850,000 from Gaza City and nearly the entire population of areas like Shejaiya.
(JNS.org)
