After 22 months of full-scale war, killing more than 60,000 Palestinians and forcing Gaza to the brink of famine, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly preparing to defy international, domestic and military opinion by escalating the war on Gaza still further and ordering its full occupation.
“The die is cast – we are going for a full occupation of the Gaza Strip,” Israeli media cited an anonymous official, supposedly quoting Netanyahu, as saying.
Meeting with senior security officials on Tuesday, Netanyahu was said to have come out in support of the military taking complete control of Gaza, even if it meant that the remaining Israeli captives there might be harmed or killed.
The fate of the captives taken during the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, has been a constant theme throughout Israel’s war on Gaza and rescuing them was one of the war aims Netanyahu claimed at its outset.
However, despite the destruction of much of Gaza and the displacement and starvation of much of its population, many captives remain and the territory where they are thought to now be is outside Israeli military control.
“Netanyahu wants to continue the war,” Ahron Bregman, a political scientist at King’s College London and former Israeli officer, said, echoing a widespread criticism of the prime minister.
“He wants time. He wants time to maintain his coalition and time to drag out his corruption trial,” he said of the criminal charges that have dogged Netanyahu since 2019.
Motivation
The specific reason for this latest potential offensive remains unclear. Some have suggested that talk of occupation is a tactic to bring Hamas back to the negotiating table.
The siege Israel imposed on Gaza after breaking the last ceasefire in March has caused international outrage because of the starvation it has caused. Others have suggested it may also be a genuine attempt to eradicate Hamas and finally break whatever spirit remains in Gaza’s population and force them into “concentration zone” camps.
“It could be any of them,” Israeli political analyst Nimrod Flaschenberg said. “Netanyahu has proven in the past that he doesn’t care about popular opinion or mass protest, as long as his right-wing base is happy.
“We saw that in Rafah, which he destroyed, and we saw that with Iran, which he attacked. It doesn’t matter what most people think. He just needs to keep the base on side and worry about elections later. This has been the strategy for much of the last two years.”
The real question is whether the army is capable of occupying all of Gaza, Flaschenberg added.
“There’s huge fatigue within the military, extensive PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] and massive numbers of both overt and grey [private] refusals,” he said of what was estimated by the Israeli magazine +972 in April to be a shortfall in troops of more than 100,000.
“This is not realistic at all,” former US Special Forces commander Colonel Seth Krummrich of international security firm Global Guardian said of Netanyahu’s plans to occupy Gaza.
“To capture and hold terrain takes an enormous number of soldiers and resources. The Israeli population is divided on this issue, so there are domestic headwinds that will not support this level of mobilisation,” he said of widespread protests in Israel calling for an end to the war.
Refuseniks
Irrespective of the politics, many in the Israeli army and security services have opposed Netanyahu’s and his right-wing allies’ plans to occupy Gaza, as well as continuing with the war on the enclave more generally.
Several senior Israeli military officers, including Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, are understood to oppose any further escalation in Gaza at all.
On Tuesday, more than 600 former Israeli senior security officials signed an open letter calling on US President Donald Trump to use his influence to help bring the war to a close.
“It is our professional judgement that Hamas no longer poses a strategic threat to Israel,” the Commanders for Israel’s Security (CIS) group said in a post on X, where it shared the open letter to President Donald Trump
CIS describes itself as “Israel’s largest group of former [Israeli military] generals and Mossad, Shin Bet, Police, and Diplomatic Corps equivalents”.
“From the military point of view, [Hamas] is totally destroyed. On the other hand, as an ideology, it is getting more and more power among the Palestinian people, within the Arab street around us, and also in the world of Islam,” Ami Ayolon, the former head of Israel’s Shin Bet internal intelligence agency and one of the letter’s signatories, told the BBC.
“The lack of support from the upper echelons of the military would also prove vital,” Colonel Krummrich added. “The military leadership has to ‘own’ this operation. If it fails, the military leadership gets blamed. They have to convince their soldiers that it is worth the cost, especially over the long term – potentially stretching into years,” he said.
Why would Netanyahu push for the occupation of Gaza?
Any further escalation in Gaza is also certain to prove unpopular with the public, which is already tired of the endless war, analysts said.
Some polls show widespread public opposition in Israel to the war, with frustration over Netanyahu’s repeated excuses for his government’s failure to reach a ceasefire deal, which could bring the remaining captives home, tangible.
Critically, in May, a poll for Israel’s Channel 12 showed that most Israelis thought Netanyahu cared more about clinging to power than he did winning the war.
“When you look at the list of people who’ve come out against this, including Zamir, it begs the question why,” Yossi Mekelberg of Chatham House said. “Are Hamas really so great a threat that you’d sacrifice the hostages, sacrifice soldiers’ lives and sacrifice what’s left of the country’s reputation?” he asked.
