NEW YORK, December 25. /TASS/. It may take months for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to take control over the city of Khan Yunis in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, the Wall Street Journal said, citing sources.

A high-ranking Israeli military officer commanding troops in Khan Younis told the newspaper that "it could take months before [the Israelis] have control over the city." This is due to the fact that the presence of the radical Palestinian movement Hamas in southern Gaza is much more substantial than the IDF anticipated. "Their modus operandi now is to harass our soldiers and then go back into the tunnels," the officer said.

He added that the IDF is delivering "less widespread airstrikes" in the south of Gaza to avoid harming its own troops. That said, according to the officer, Israeli troops often enter buildings to gather intelligence and only then deliver strikes. However, according to the Wall Street Journal, some representatives of the military community think that the reduced use of airstrikes only increases the number of fatalities among Israeli troops.

The newspaper notes that in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, Israel’s forces are not evacuating all residents at once as they did in the enclave’s north but only those civilians located in the immediate vicinity of those districts that they plan to attack. The newspaper’s sources insist that this led to fewer civilian casualties.

That said, Ashraf Al Qedra, spokesman for the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, pointed out that the situation in Khan Yunis does not differ from the situation in the entire enclave where, according to him, 70% of the people killed are women and children. "If the [Israeli] army says the ones killed are militants, let them give us a single name," he asserted.

The Wall Street Journal notes that Israel is getting ready to transition soon to the third phase of its operation in Gaza. According to the newspaper, Israeli security analysts say that Israel will redeploy most of its troops along the border with Gaza and attempt to thwart any Hamas attacks from the enclave.

According to Giora Eiland, who used to head Israel’s National Security Council, as "part of its transition to lower-intensity fighting while retaining security control over Gaza, Israel is weighing the creation of a slightly more than half-mile-wide buffer zone within the Strip, running along the length of its Israeli border."