Israel’s decision to expand military operations inside Gaza is a significant development with perhaps permanent consequences for the future of the Strip and the two million Palestinians who live there.
Firstly, it illustrates a failure by Israel to achieve its goals so far. Renewed fighting hasn’t forced Hamas to surrender, nor has it resulted in the release of more hostages.
The cabinet has decided that the most likely way to succeed, is to increase the military pressure.
One Israeli official explained the shift in strategy to me as away from “clear and leave” to one of “clear and hold”.
That is a military tactic used by Western forces in the past, by the US and British in parts of Iraq and Afghanistan for example.
Much can be said in criticism of those wars, but the allied intention was never to permanently occupy either of those countries. We cannot confidently say the same in respect to Gaza.
Israeli commentators today are divided in their opinion of whether the plan is to conquer and hold all of Gaza or just large swathes of it.
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Also unclear is how long the “hold” element will be: until the hostages are released? Until Hamas is no longer able to fight? Or permanent.
Sources have told me that’s yet to be defined, but the latter – a permanent Israeli occupation of Gaza – is no longer an unrealistic or unthinkable prospect.
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President Trump’s announcement in February that America should “own” and redevelop Gaza, with all Palestinians forced to leave was extraordinary but could, to some extent, be dismissed coming from a President that doesn’t have the patience or time span to achieve something so complex and controversial.
What it did do, however, was legitimise a dream that some in the Israeli government hold. Discussions are reportedly taking place with a number of countries to rehouse Gazans.
The Israeli government says it intends to push Gazans into the south of the strip, to give it freedom to operate elsewhere. It’s not too much of a stretch to envisage a situation where the population is moved into the Rafah area on the border with Egypt, Rafah would then effectively become an enclave within Gaza and the responsibility of aid distribution becomes Cairo’s problem.
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Benjamin Netanyahu’s announcement last week, that the goal of “supreme victory” is now the defeat of Hamas, not the return the hostages, effectively ends any hope for a permanent ceasefire in the short term.
The implication is that even were Hamas to release all the remaining 59 hostages tomorrow, Israel’s war in Gaza would not be over.
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Furthermore, if Israel is committed to the total defeat of Hamas, as opposed to a political solution that sees Hamas leaders leave Gaza and the group disarmed for example, then that is an ambition that could take many more years of fighting to realise, if ever; just imagine how many young Gazans have been radicalised as a result of the last eighteen months of war.
We cannot, confidently, say where this will all go. There remains some small hope that Donald Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar later this month will push the sides towards a new agreement but the ‘day after’ in Gaza has retreated over an ever-retreating horizon and the only certainty now seems to be increased fighting for many months to come.
