Open war between Iran and Israel after decades of shadow war

Retired Israeli general Giora Eiland believes that Israel faces months of fighting in Gaza unless Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seizes the opportunity provided by the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar to end the war.

Since Sinwar’s death this month, Eiland has been part of a chorus of former senior army officers questioning the government’s strategy in Gaza, where earlier this month troops returned to areas of the north that had already been cleared at least twice before.

For the past three weeks, Israeli troops have been operating around Jabaliya in the northern Gaza Strip, returning to the city and its historic refugee camp for the third time since the war began in October 2023.

Instead of the Israeli military’s preferred approach of quick, decisive action, many former security officials say the army is at risk of being bogged down in an all-out campaign requiring a constant troop presence.

“The Israeli government is acting in complete opposition to the Israeli security concept,” Kan Yom-Tov Samia, former head of the army’s Southern Command, told public radio.

Part of the operation included the evacuation of thousands of people from the area to separate civilians from Hamas fighters. The military says it relocated about 45,000 civilians from the Jabalia area and killed hundreds of militants during the operation. However, the country has faced heavy criticism due to the high number of civilian casualties and has faced widespread calls for more aid supplies to ease the humanitarian crisis in the area.

Eiland, a former head of Israel’s National Security Council, was the main author of a much-discussed proposal dubbed the “Generals’ Plan,” which assumed that Israel would quickly clear northern Gaza of civilians and then starve the surviving Hamas fighters by cutting off their water and supplies. food.

Israeli moves this month have raised Palestinian accusations that the military has adopted the Eiland Plan, which it envisioned as a short-term measure against Hamas in the north but which Palestinians say is aimed at permanently clearing the area to create a buffer zone for the military after the war.

The military denies that it is implementing such a plan, and Eiland himself believes that the adopted strategy is neither his plan nor a classic occupation.

“I don’t know exactly what’s going on in Jabalia,” Eiland told Reuters. “But I think the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) are doing something that lies between two alternatives, a regular military attack and my plan,” he said.

THERE IS NO STAY PLAN

Since the beginning of the war, Netanyahu has stated that Israel will bring the hostages home and disband Hamas as a military and ruling power, and has no intention of remaining in Gaza.

However, his government has never provided a clear policy on the aftermath of the campaign launched after an attack by Hamas gunmen on communities in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, which left approximately 1,200 people dead and more than 250 hostages.

According to Gaza health officials, nearly 43,000 Palestinians were killed in the Israeli attack and the enclave was largely reduced to a wasteland that will require billions of dollars in international aid to rebuild.

There have been open disputes for months between Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, reflecting a broader divide between the ruling coalition and the military, which has long advocated reaching an agreement to end the fighting and bring the hostages home.

Without an agreed strategy, Israel risks being stuck in Gaza for the foreseeable future, said Ofer Shelah, director of the Israel National Security Policy Research Program at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.

“Israel’s situation is currently very precarious. “We are approaching a situation where Israel will be considered the de facto ruler of Gaza,” he said.

The Israeli government did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the suggestion that the military is bogged down in Gaza.

HIT AND RUN MEETINGS

With Israel’s military attention now directed against the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement in Lebanon, the number of army divisions engaged in Gaza has dropped to two from five at the beginning of the war. According to estimates by Israeli security sources, there are 10,000–15,000 soldiers in each IDF division.

The Israeli military estimates that the 25 Hamas battalions it believed Hamas had at the beginning of the war were destroyed long ago, and about half of the force, or approximately 17,000–18,000 fighters, were killed. However, militant bands continue to carry out attacks on Israeli troops.

“We don’t interact with the tanks on the ground, we choose our targets,” said one Hamas fighter contacted via the chat app. “We operate in a way that allows us to fight as long as possible.”

While such tactics will not prevent the Israeli military from moving through Gaza as it wishes, it could still impose significant costs on Israel.

The commander of Israel’s 401st Armored Brigade was killed this week in Gaza when he emerged from his tank to talk to other commanders at an observation point where militants had set up a booby trap. He was one of the highest-ranking officers killed in Gaza during the war. Three soldiers were killed on Friday.

“After Sinwar was killed, there is no logic in staying in Gaza,” said a former top military official with direct experience in the enclave, who asked not to be named. If Hamas regroups and resumes any war with Israel, “methodical” specific operations must be carried out in the future, but the risk of leaving troops permanently in Gaza poses a serious danger, a former official said, arguing for the hostages to be secured and released.

Netanyahu’s office said Thursday that Israeli negotiators would fly to Qatar this weekend to join long-stalled talks on a ceasefire and hostage release agreement. However, it is unclear what Hamas’s position will be and who Israel will allow to rule the enclave when the fighting stops.

Netanyahu has denied any plans to stay in Gaza or allow Israeli settlers to return, something many Palestinians fear.

But the hard-line pro-settlement parties in his coalition and many in his own Likud party would like nothing more than for a reversal of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s 2005 unilateral removal of Israeli settlers.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who heads one of the pro-settlement parties, said on Thursday – at the end of the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah – that he hopes to celebrate the holiday next year in Gush Katif, an old settlement bloc in Gaza.