Israel to withdraw some troops from Gaza

Israel is withdrawing some forces from Gaza to shift to more targeted operations against Hamas, and is partially returning reservists to civilian life to help the economy as the country enters the new year set for a prolonged war, an Israeli official said.

The official said the war will continue in the Palestinian enclave adding that some of the troops withdrawn will prepare for a possible second front in Lebanon.

Since launching the Gaza offensive, Israeli officials have said they planned to wage it in three main stages. The first was intense shelling to clear access routes for ground forces and encourage civilians to evacuate. The second was the invasion that began on October 27.

With tanks and troops having now over-run much of the Gaza Strip, the military is moving to the third stage of the war, said the official, who could not be identified by name given the sensitivity of the issue.

"This will take six months at least, and involve intense mopping-up missions against the terrorists. No one is talking about doves of peace being flown from Shajaia," the official told Reuters, referring to a Gaza district ravaged by fighting.

But the official said some of the troops pulled out of Gaza in the south would be prepared for rotation to the northern border with Lebanon, with Hezbollah exchanging fire with Israel in solidarity with the Palestinians.

"The situation on the Lebanese front will not be allowed to continue. This coming six-month period is a critical moment," the official said, adding that Israel would convey a similar message to a US envoy conducting shuttle missions to Beirut.

In Gaza, the Israel-Hamas war has inflicted unprecedented devastation, with the health ministry reporting almost 22,000 fatalities, many of them civilian. Israel says it has killed more than 8,000 Palestinian fighters - suggesting that, by its own accounting, Hamas retains core personnel. Pre-war Israeli assessment were that the group had around 30,000 fighters.

The Israeli military announced on Saturday it was sending some reservists home as part of what top commander Lieutenant-General Herzi Halevi has deemed a "reconfiguration" of forces.

"From the first moments of this war, we said it would take long," Halevi told troops on Tuesday. "Will we ultimately be able to say there are no more foes around the State of Israel? I think that is overly ambitious. But we will deliver a different security situation - safe and, as much as possible, stable too."

Israel has listed 174 soldiers - many of them reservists - as killed in Gaza fighting and nine on the Lebanese border.