Israel prepares for a long war in Gaza

As 2023 draws to a close, Israel’s forces in the Gaza Strip are deployed across the territory to their farthest extent. An armoured division of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) is operating in the quarter of Gaza city where Israeli intelligence believes the last intact battalion of Hamas’s armed force is holding out. Farther south, seven brigade combat teams have converged on Khan Younis, Gaza’s second city, where Hamas’s leadership and most of nearly 130 Israeli hostages are assumed to be. Other brigades are attacking Hamas strongholds in towns across central and southern Gaza. Israeli commanders acknowledge behind the scenes that these may be the last wide-scale offensives of the war.

In recent weeks the IDF has been taking journalists (including your correspondent) into tunnels dug by Hamas beneath Gaza. The main purpose of these organised trips is to reinforce the message that the Islamist movement that has ruled Gaza for over 16 years has built its military infrastructure under Gaza’s civilian population, including hospitals and schools. The IDF has sought to show that Hamas has wasted precious resources on a subterranean kingdom while the civilian population languishes in poverty.

Israel is fighting a war for global public opinion alongside its military campaign. Its central claim is that the main reason for the high death toll of Palestinians is the way Hamas shields its fighters by placing them among civilians. The Hamas-run health authorities reckon that over 21,500 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed by Israeli bombardments since the war began on October 7th. Israel estimates that between 8,000 and 9,000 of those killed are Hamas fighters.

The IDF is also trying to convey a more straightforward military message. It must destroy the entire tunnel network reckoned to stretch hundreds of kilometres under the territory. That will take many more months of a military occupation and a gruelling series of bloody skirmishes with the remaining Hamas fighters hiding there. So the IDF is preparing the Israeli people and their allies abroad for a long haul.

This will be difficult. For one thing, the war is already hurting Israel’s economy and causing deep disruption. Within hours of Hamas’s attack on October 7th, the IDF began a massive call-up of reservists. They were needed not only to launch a counter-offensive in Gaza but also to reinforce Israel’s northern border in case of an attack by Lebanon’s Iranian-supported Hizbullah militia. Around 360,000 were mobilised. Along with Israel’s standing army, this meant that over half a million in a population of just under 10m were in uniform.

In recent weeks tens of thousands of reservists, mainly in combat-support units, have been discharged. Many more have been given tentative dates for demobilisation in late January. They have also been warned that they will be recalled at some point in 2024. The IDF general staff has defined 2024 as “a year of warfare” while special forces conduct raids on remaining Hamas forces and engineering units destroy the tunnels and caches of weapons.

The other main source of pressure on Israel is the American administration. It wants the government of Binyamin Netanyahu to scale down offensive operations, begin focusing on Gaza’s humanitarian crisis and start creating a new local government in Gaza that would be based on the Palestinian Authority now administering parts of the West Bank under Israel’s eye. At least 1.6m Palestinian civilians in Gaza have been displaced from their homes and are now concentrated in the south.

Mission incomplete

Two months after Israel’s ground offensive began on October 27th the IDF has achieved mixed results. Of Hamas’s 24 battalions, 12 were based in and around Gaza city. The IDF reckons most of these have in effect been “dismantled”—meaning that most of Hamas’s commanders and fighters have been killed, badly wounded or captured. The IDF is battling against another nine of Hamas’s battalions (a further three have not yet been involved in the fighting).

“By now Hamas is no longer operating as a military organisation,” says an Israeli intelligence officer. “Most of its command structure is gone. But it still has a large number of fighters who have reverted to guerrilla mode. They emerge from the tunnels in small numbers, trying to ambush our forces.” The IDF has succeeded in ending most of Hamas’s rocket-launches at Israeli cities.

Hamas’s political leadership, which is based outside Gaza, is in neighbouring Egypt negotiating a second agreement to free the Israeli hostages. This may require a truce lasting several weeks and provide some vital respite for Gaza’s civilians. The movement’s overall leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, who ordered the October 7th massacre, is said to be vetoing some proposals his colleagues in Cairo have been prepared to discuss. He is insisting on stiffer terms for freeing the remaining Israeli hostages, who include women, elderly men and a small number of soldiers, than under the previous truce at the end of November. This time it would include freeing more Palestinian prisoners held in Israel, most of whom hail from the West Bank. But Hamas’s embattled leadership in Gaza may not be in sync with its counterpart there. Meanwhile Hamas’s iron grip over Gaza’s people may be weakening, as hungry civilians have begun to mob the supply convoys entering the strip.

However, the IDF has yet to achieve its two key aims: to kill or capture Hamas’s top leaders and to rescue the remaining Israeli hostages. And while a large majority of Israelis still support the war, signs of frustration are starting to creep in. “It was clear from the start that it would take a campaign of many months to achieve the war aims,” says Tamir Hayman, an influential former IDF general and military-intelligence commander who now heads Tel Aviv University’s Institute of National Security Studies. “But unrealistic expectations mean there’s now a feeling of disappointment.”

Mr Netanyahu, who has plummeted in the opinion polls since the war started, has been making bombastic statements intended to shore up his rattled nationalist base. On December 26th on a visit to a military-intelligence base he declared: “We are continuing the war and are intensifying the fighting in the southern Gaza Strip and other places. We will fight to the end.”

Yet his generals are quietly planning to scale down the campaign, while Mr Netanyahu’s emissaries have been in Washington and Cairo to discuss details of a possible truce and how to hand Gaza over to a new authority. Last week his national security adviser, writing in a Saudi-owned website based in London, called for “a moderate Palestinian governing body that enjoys broad support and legitimacy” to take control of Gaza.

America is worried that the war in Gaza is unsettling the wider Middle East. Hizbullah’s rocket-attacks on Israel’s northern border have increased. American forces in Iraq have been under fire from Iranian-backed militias. On December 24th an Iranian general was killed in Syria, probably in an Israeli air raid. The Houthi militia is still threatening international shipping from its bases in Yemen. President Joe Biden is said to be losing patience with Mr Netanyahu’s contradictory statements.

The shape of the war may soon shift. But its end—and any restoration of regional stability—are not in sight. ■