Israeli Forces Back in Old Gaza Battlegrounds as Doubts Over War Aims Grow 

Israeli tanks maneuver, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas, near the Israel-Gaza Border May 14, 2024. (Reuters)
Israeli tanks maneuver, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas, near the Israel-Gaza Border May 14, 2024. (Reuters)
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Israeli Forces Back in Old Gaza Battlegrounds as Doubts Over War Aims Grow 

Israeli tanks maneuver, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas, near the Israel-Gaza Border May 14, 2024. (Reuters)
Israeli tanks maneuver, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas, near the Israel-Gaza Border May 14, 2024. (Reuters)

Seven months into the war, Israeli troops are back fighting in the north of the Gaza Strip, in areas that were supposed to have been cleared months ago, highlighting growing questions about the government's declared goal of eliminating Hamas.

As tanks have started pushing into the southern city of Rafah, where the military says the last four intact battalions of Hamas are dug in, there has been fierce fighting in the Zeitoun area of Gaza City and around Jabalia, to the north, both of which the army took control of last year before moving on.

The renewed fighting there - amid international pressure for a ceasefire - has underscored concern in Israel that the lack of a clear strategic plan for Gaza will leave Hamas in effective control of the enclave it has ruled since 2007.

A clear end to the war appears as far off as ever.

Hunkered in the extensive tunnel network that runs beneath the ruins of Gaza, Hamas appears to retain broad support among a population scarred by a campaign that has killed more than 35,000 Palestinians and forced most Gazans from their homes.

"If we rely on a strategy of ongoing attrition or surgical operations against Hamas, it won't achieve the goal of governmental or military collapse," said Michael Milshtein, a former military intelligence officer and one of Israel's most prominent experts on the Palestinian movement.

US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell declared on Monday that Washington doubted Israel would achieve "sweeping victory on the battlefield".

HARD-RIGHT ALLIES

For the past few weeks, cabinet officials have urged Netanyahu to formulate a clear "day after" policy for Gaza, according to two security officials.

However, Netanyahu has so far insisted on total victory, responding to pressure from hard-right allies such as Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, whose support he needs to hold his ruling coalition together.

Despite international calls for a revival of efforts to find a solution to the decades-long conflict, talk of a political settlement has been rejected repeatedly by a government that refuses to contemplate any steps towards an independent Palestinian state.

That has left it forced to seek a purely military solution that has complicated the task of the troops on the ground.

This week, Israel's Channel 13 news reported that army commander Herzi Halevi had told Netanyahu that without a serious drive to build an alternative Palestinian government in Gaza, the military faced a "Sisyphean effort" to defeat Hamas - a reference to the character in Greek mythology condemned to endlessly push a boulder uphill.

Israeli officials have previously talked about drawing on local civil or clan leaders not associated with Hamas or the Palestinian Authority, which exercises a limited form of sovereignty in the West Bank, to provide an alternative.

Such efforts had proved fruitless, however, according to Milshtein. "Hamas is still the dominant power in Gaza, including in northern parts of the Strip," he said.

‘WHAT COMES AFTER RAFAH?’

In contrast, the strategic goals of Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza, appear clear - to survive the war in sufficient strength to rebuild, reflected in his insistence on a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces as a condition for any ceasefire deal.

"They are survival tactics for Hamas and soon Israel will find itself forced to answer the question, 'what comes after Rafah?'" said a Palestinian official not allied to Hamas who is close to stalled talks brokered by Egypt and Qatar.

How many fighters from Hamas and the other armed militant groups in Gaza have been killed remains unclear. Casualty figures published by Gaza's health ministry do not differentiate between civilians and combatants.

Netanyahu himself offered a figure of around 14,000 this week, which would be roughly half the total number of Hamas fighters the Israeli military estimated at the start of the war.

Hamas has said that Israeli estimates exaggerate the numbers of dead and in any case the fighters have adapted their tactics as their organized units have been broken down.

Despite heavy US pressure not to launch an assault on Rafah, its population swollen by hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians, Israeli commanders have begun probing deeper into the city. It remains far from clear what they will face in its narrow streets if they launch a full-scale assault.

"Our fighters choose their battles, they don't allow the occupation to impose the battle time or ground for us because we don't have equal military capabilities," said a fighter from one of the armed factions.

"We don't have to clash face-to-face, but the occupiers and the invaders will lose soldiers and vehicles almost every day, here and there inside Gaza. They will never settle."

How far Israel is ready to go is unclear. Surveys continue to show broad support for the war among a population still traumatized by the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7 that killed some 1,200 people and saw more than 250 taken into Gaza as hostages.

But weekly protests by the hostages' families over the failure to bring those still in captivity home have shown that such support is matched by anger at a government most Israelis blame for the security failures that preceded the attack.

Heckling of Netanyahu and some of his ministers at Monday's Memorial Day ceremonies for Israel's war dead show how unhappy the general mood in the country appears to be, said Yossi Mekelberg, an associate fellow with the Middle East and North Africa Program at Chatham House in London.

"You see some representatives of the government coming to the cemeteries, and some of them, quite a few of them, are facing very angry families and others who blame them for what has happened in the last seven months," he said.



Iran-Israel War: A Lifeline for Netanyahu?

FILE - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a ceremony on the eve of Israel's Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers at the Yad LaBanim Memorial in Jerusalem, on April 29, 2025. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP, File)
FILE - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a ceremony on the eve of Israel's Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers at the Yad LaBanim Memorial in Jerusalem, on April 29, 2025. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP, File)
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Iran-Israel War: A Lifeline for Netanyahu?

FILE - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a ceremony on the eve of Israel's Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers at the Yad LaBanim Memorial in Jerusalem, on April 29, 2025. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP, File)
FILE - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a ceremony on the eve of Israel's Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers at the Yad LaBanim Memorial in Jerusalem, on April 29, 2025. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP, File)

The Iran-Israel war has helped strengthen Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu domestically and overseas, just as his grip on power looked vulnerable.

On the eve of launching strikes on Iran, his government looked to be on the verge of collapse, with a drive to conscript ultra-Orthodox Jews threatening to scupper his fragile coalition.

Nearly two years on from Hamas's unprecedented attack in 2023, Netanyahu was under growing domestic criticism for his handling of the war in Gaza, where dozens of hostages remain unaccounted for, said AFP.

Internationally too, he was coming under pressure including from longstanding allies, who since the war with Iran began have gone back to expressing support.

Just days ago, polls were predicting Netanyahu would lose his majority if new elections were held, but now, his fortunes appear to have reversed, and Israelis are seeing in "Bibi" the man of the moment.

– 'Reshape the Middle East' –

For decades, Netanyahu has warned of the risk of a nuclear attack on Israel by Iran -- a fear shared by most Israelis.

Yonatan Freeman, a geopolitics expert at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said Netanyahu's argument that the pre-emptive strike on Iran was necessary draws "a lot of public support" and that the prime minister has been "greatly strengthened".

Even the opposition has rallied behind him.

"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is my political rival, but his decision to strike Iran at this moment in time is the right one," opposition leader Yair Lapid wrote in a Jerusalem Post op-ed.

A poll published Saturday by a conservative Israeli channel showed that 54 percent of respondents expressed confidence in the prime minister.

The public had had time to prepare for the possibility of an offensive against Iran, with Netanyahu repeatedly warning that Israel was fighting for its survival and had an opportunity to "reshape the Middle East."

During tit-for-tat military exchanges last year, Israel launched air raids on targets in Iran in October that are thought to have severely damaged Iranian air defenses.

Israel's then-defense minister Yoav Gallant said the strikes had shifted "the balance of power" and had "weakened" Iran.

"In fact, for the past 20 months, Israelis have been thinking about this (a war with Iran)," said Denis Charbit, a political scientist at Israel's Open University.

Since Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, Netanyahu has ordered military action in Gaza, against the Iran-backed Hezbollah group in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, as well as targets in Syria where long-time leader Bashar al-Assad fell in December last year.

"Netanyahu always wants to dominate the agenda, to be the one who reshuffles the deck himself -- not the one who reacts -- and here he is clearly asserting his Churchillian side, which is, incidentally, his model," Charbit said.

"But depending on the outcome and the duration (of the war), everything could change, and Israelis might turn against Bibi and demand answers."

– Silencing critics –

For now, however, people in Israel see the conflict with Iran as a "necessary war," according to Nitzan Perelman, a researcher specialized in Israel at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France.

"Public opinion supports this war, just as it has supported previous ones," she added.

"It's very useful for Netanyahu because it silences criticism, both inside the country and abroad."

In the weeks ahead of the Iran strikes, international criticism of Netanyahu and Israel's military had reached unprecedented levels.

After more than 55,000 deaths in Gaza, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, and a blockade that has produced famine-like conditions there, Israel has faced growing isolation and the risk of sanctions, while Netanyahu himself is the subject of an international arrest warrant for alleged war crimes.

But on Sunday, two days into the war with Iran, the Israeli leader received a phone call from European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, while Foreign Minister Gideon Saar has held talks with numerous counterparts.

"There's more consensus in Europe in how they see Iran, which is more equal to how Israel sees Iran," explained Freeman from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Tuesday that Israel was doing "the dirty work... for all of us."

The idea that a weakened Iran could lead to regional peace and the emergence of a new Middle East is appealing to the United States and some European countries, according to Freeman.

But for Perelman, "Netanyahu is exploiting the Iranian threat, as he always has."