Israel’s Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, led military leaders in a pivotal operational assessment and field visit Tuesday in the Morag Axis area of southern Gaza, where Israeli Defense Forces are pressing their offensive against Hamas’s remaining strongholds. Joined by Southern Command chief Major General Yaron Finkelman and commanders from Division 36, the visit underscored the IDF’s strategic focus on dismantling the Rafah Brigade—Hamas’s last major tactical formation—and guaranteeing the safe return of Israeli hostages.
The field tour, which included elite Golani infantry and the 188th Armored Brigade, coincided with ongoing ground maneuvers. Troops on the Morag Axis are fighting in an area where IDF forces have not operated since Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza. In the past weeks, IDF units initiated surprise advances into the corridor, overcoming entrenched resistance and seizing significant caches of enemy weaponry and intelligence. Israeli defense officials report that dozens of Hamas combatants have been neutralized, and control over the route is impeding smuggling and resupply operations from Egypt.
The current campaign’s objectives remain clear: disabling Hamas’s operational capacity, eliminating its Rafah Brigade, safeguarding Israel’s southern frontier, and recovering hostages still held in Gaza following the October 7, 2023 terrorist onslaught. That massacre—widely recognized as the worst anti-Jewish atrocity since the Holocaust—saw over 1,200 Israelis murdered and hundreds abducted in an Iranian-backed operation. Many hostages remain in captivity amid documented abuse and mounting international concern for their welfare.
During the visit, IDF leadership authorized updated operational plans based on intelligence and field reports. The military’s approach seeks to maximize operational momentum while minimizing civilian risk. Israeli units have disseminated warnings and established evacuation corridors to help Gaza’s residents move from active combat zones. However, Hamas has systematically impeded civilian passage, exploiting its own population as shields for leadership bunkers and arms depots, according to Israeli and allied intelligence findings.
The struggle unfolding in Rafah is not only local, but part of Israel’s wider war against Iran’s network of regional terror proxies, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Islamic Jihad in Gaza, and the Houthis in Yemen. Hamas’s strategy, Israeli military sources confirm, is rooted in exploiting Gaza’s urban landscape and population density to prolong fighting and amplify international pressure on Israel. These tactics include embedding HQs in civilian sites, booby-trapping aid facilities, and seizing humanitarian convoys for terrorist use.
For IDF soldiers, the timing of this push—on the eve of Passover, a festival symbolizing freedom—intensifies the mission’s moral stakes. Securing the release of the hostages and preventing further atrocities are cast as collective imperatives, with the fate of those kidnapped standing at the heart of the war’s justification.
The broader operational picture also involves coordination with U.S., Egyptian, and other partners, whose diplomatic mediation remains focused on hostage release mechanisms and post-conflict stabilization. In practice, the IDF views sustained battlefield pressure in Rafah as the crucial means to force concessions from Hamas and fracture its last organizational backbone.
Throughout months of fighting in Gaza and along the northern border, Israeli forces have adapted to a shifting threat landscape. IDF combat teams rotate through intensive urban operations, rooting out tunnels, capturing arms, and confronting suicide squads inside civilian structures. Engineering units, intelligence gatherers, and electronic warfare teams work in concert for hostage recovery and force protection. Senior commanders report high discipline and morale, but also caution that Hamas’s desperation may prompt escalated resistance or mass-casualty attacks as battlefield losses mount.
In the public sphere, debate continues over the humanitarian costs of further operations in Rafah. Israeli officials stress their unprecedented efforts to distinguish combatants from residents, in contrast to Hamas’s deliberate targeting of Israeli civilians and prevention of safe evacuation routes. The IDF accuses Hamas leadership of ordering militants to fire on civilians attempting to leave, manipulating international agencies, and hiding war crimes behind coerced media narratives—a claim echoed by several independent military observers.
Regionally, the Gaza war reflects a larger confrontation with Iran’s expanding influence and the weaponization of its proxy groups across the Middle East. While Israeli forces wrestle with complex combat realities, the political leadership insists that eliminating Hamas’s military capacity and ending the hostage ordeal are prerequisites for any future settlement.
As Passover approaches, the symbolism of liberation and survival sharpens Israel’s resolve. The IDF leadership’s message on the front lines is clear: victory in Rafah is crucial not only for Israeli security, but also for the restoration of freedom to those still in terrorist captivity, and for ensuring that the atrocities of October 7 can never be repeated. Israel faces critical days ahead, but its objectives remain unchanged—defeating Hamas militarily, rescuing its citizens, and reaffirming its right to self-defense in an increasingly volatile regional environment.
