Yesterday evening, it was reported that Jonathan Hazot, a 36-year-old reserve soldier from Ashdod, was killed in an explosion in the center of the Gaza Strip. In the incident in which he was killed, another reserve soldier was seriously injured. This is not the first activity in which soldiers have been killed and wounded in the central Gaza Strip in recent times; only two days ago, three soldiers were killed in the explosion – Abitar Attwar, Danil Pachaniuk, and Nitai Mittudi. In a separate encounter with terrorists, Yaniv Yitzhak Oren was also killed.
Naturally, this raises questions about the operational activity carried out by IDF forces at this stage in the center of the Gaza Strip, in an area known as the ‘Netzarim corridor’ that cuts the Gaza Strip into two parts, north and south. Satellite images published in the last days of the combat zone reveal that the IDF has been expanding its control over the area recently, and the corridor is already becoming a permanently controlled territory.
The Netzarim corridor was created in the first week of November, at the beginning of the first and central maneuver of the war, when the 36th Division breached the Gaza border slightly south of the Karni crossing and advanced in a straight line toward the sea. At the point where the path of their advance crossed the main Saladin route in the Gaza Strip, the settlement of Netzarim was resided in the past (so-called because of its proximity to the Nusirat refugee camp), where IDF forces established a checkpoint for the population crossing, controlling the movement of the population from north to south and preventing the passage of terrorists and the return of population to the northern Gaza Strip.
In the months that followed, the IDF used its path of progress as a logistical axis, soon paved as a real road, and the IDF expanded its control to several hundred meters in each direction. At the same time, the forces began operations against long tunnels found in the underground area below the axis, which was called the corridor. IDF forces used the corridor as a springboard for lightning maneuvers into Gaza City or the center camps, which was reflected in Operation Local surgery (in which hundreds of terrorists were trapped in Shifa Hospital) and Operation Arnon (rescuing the four hostages from Nusirat).
In recent months, IDF forces have begun to expand the control area in the Netzarim corridor: From the south, IDF forces reach Wadi Gaza (the Besor River), which is the natural border in the area, and delineates the urban areas of the Nuseirat and al-Bureij camps. And from the north, IDF forces advanced to the outskirts of Gaza, to the area of the Zitun and Tel-Alhua neighborhoods. Now, the corridor is nearly 5 kilometers wide, and the ability of the terrorists to infiltrate along it has become almost impossible. A quick calculation indicates that this is permanent operational control of about one-eighth of the Gaza Strip. The future of control is a little uncertain in light of Hamas’s removal of a threshold requirement for a hostage deal; but for now, it is a significant strategic asset for Israel.
