Israel at war: What happened on day 439?

The IDF’s Arabic media spokesperson issued evacuation warnings on Wednesday for residents of the El-Bureij area of central Gaza.

“Terrorist organizations are once again firing rockets from this area that has been warned several times in the past,” Col. Avichai Adraee posted on X/Twitter, requesting that residents of the area move to the nearby humanitarian zone.

Despite Adraee’s warnings, the Home Front Command showed that no rockets or warning sirens have had an impact within Israeli territory this week.

Typically, in those rare cases where the IDF has taken the extreme option of evacuating whole neighborhoods as opposed to merely sending forces in to confront an attacker, it has been after Gazan terror groups fired rockets at Israeli villages or if there was a major new attempt by Hamas to reconstitute its forces.

The idea is usually to get local Gazans to pressure Hamas not to fire at Israeli civilians lest it lead to their neighborhood being evacuated.

'Post' confirms details

The Jerusalem Post has confirmed that neither of those conditions were present.

Rather, though it has not been publicized by the IDF, the Post confirmed with the IDF Spokesperson’s Office that Gazan groups fired mortars or rockets on the IDF position at Netzarim.

Evacuating Palestinian civilians from a neighborhood to deter such attacks on Israeli soldiers – without even any threat to Israeli civilians – may be a new development in the IDF trying to assert more complete security control over larger weapons use in Gaza.

In the North, troops removed a small far-right group of Israeli civilians who had crossed into Lebanon, appearing to put up a tent, in what the military said on Wednesday was a serious incident now under investigation.

The civilians held up a sign on the border that read “Our Lebanon.”

“Any attempt to approach or cross the border into Lebanese territory without coordination is life-threatening and harms the IDF’s ability to operate in the area and complete its mission,” the military stated.

This incident occurred on the same day that another group of extremists tried, on a bus, to penetrate into the Nablus-Joseph’s Tomb area, which is controlled by the Palestinian Authority, without coordination or authorization from the IDF, which generally facilitates pre-coordinated visits to the tomb itself.

The military reported that after the passengers on the bus had gotten off at the tomb and the bus was leaving, Palestinian terrorists fired on the bus.

While the IDF only said the bus driver was wounded, other reports that several of the unauthorized visitors were wounded as well.

Further, the IDF said that due to the incident, it evacuated all of the Israeli civilians at the tomb, and many of them were questioned by police.

Despite the military’s guarantee that the incident would be probed, this is the second time in a short period that Israelis have succeeded in penetrating the area.

A spokeswoman could not explain what additional actions had been taken after the last recent incident to prevent a recurrence and merely reiterated that everything was being probed.

Both incidents occurring in one day highlights a general increase in extremist Israelis taking the law into their own hands in the West Bank and other areas, with Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) Director Ronen Bar recently explaining that National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir is ordering the police to tread lightly on anti-Palestinian Jewish civilian actions.

Separately, there were reports that military officials from the IDF, the US, France, and Lebanon met in Nakura, Lebanon, to confer about violations of the November 26 ceasefire deal.

Although there were no specific mentions of IDF withdrawals, the subject was likely discussed as the IDF has already started to withdraw from specific areas deeper into southern Lebanon.

Regarding Syria, while it had already been reported on Tuesday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had visited the Syrian side of Mount Hermon and said the military would remain there until “another arrangement is found that ensures Israel’s security,” it was leaked late Tuesday night that he told the IDF to be prepared to remain there until 2025.

The new Syrian rulers, Ha’yat Tahrir al-Sham, have said multiple times in recent days that they will not attack Israel and are committed to the 1974 armistice.

IDF forces created a buffer zone in Syria in the days after the Assad regime fell on December 7-8 to avoid such an attack on Israeli border villages.

The Post inquired from the Prime Minister’s Office, the defense minister, and the IDF regarding what conditions Israel expects Syria to meet for the military to withdraw its forces from the Syrian buffer zone.

The sources did not respond to the Post’s queries by press time.

Jerusalem Post Staff contributed to this report.