With Israel embarking, again, on a major offensive in Gaza to achieve “total victory” over Hamas and secure the return of the remaining Israeli hostages, the operation’s true aims are regarded as a mystery even as opposition to the war builds.
Even within Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s fractured and squabbling ruling coalition, it is unclear if the assault is focused on territorial conquest or on pressuring Hamas to capitulate in negotiations seeking to halt or possibly end the war.
The offensive is reportedly at odds with the wishes of the Trump administration and may have contributed to Vice President JD Vance canceling a visit to Israel. It has also elicited a new wave of opposition and warnings from countries that Israel has regarded as friendly, including Britain, France, and Canada.
Why We Wrote This
Israel’s military operation in Gaza is facing increased opposition, abroad and at home. Yet even within the Netanyahu government, it’s unclear if the assault is focused on territorial conquest or on pressuring Hamas to capitulate in negotiations.
At home, the assault is encountering more resistance not only from the Israeli public, but from some among the military brass as well.
Since Israel’s ground war began in Gaza over a year and a half ago, it has followed a consistent pattern of raiding key militant strongholds and then withdrawing forces, alongside periodic stymieing of food aid. But those tactics failed to win back more Israeli hostages or fully topple Hamas – the country’s most urgent goals.
Against the backdrop of intensified bombing, which has killed hundreds of Palestinians in recent days, Israel began a methodical buildup of its forces in Gaza, but has yet to unleash them fully, adding to the sense of uncertainty.
“The Israeli public does not know fully what the true intentions are,” says Lianne Pollak-David, co-founder of the centrist Coalition of Regional Security. But there are concerns, she says, that the most-far-right members of Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition are “using security excuses to normalize their own extremist ideas,” she says, referring to their goal of resettling Gaza and what they term the “voluntary emigration” of Gaza Palestinians.
Room to maneuver
Yet Yossi Kuperwasser, a former head of the Research Division of the Israeli army’s Intelligence Corps, says Israel, while taking a bold new step, seems to be acting pragmatically and leaving room to maneuver. He says the expanded operation, which he describes as being on a “medium flame,” is “being conducted in a way that it can be stopped if there is an agreement with Hamas. It will not mean an end of the war, but a temporary ceasefire.”
Reservist Brigadier General Kuperwasser, research director at the Israel Defense and Security Forum, a hawkish think tank, says Israel cannot accept Hamas remaining in Gaza. If it is not demilitarized and its leaders exiled abroad, he says, Israel has no other choice but to “remove them by force, slowly and consistently.”
Israel Ziv, former commander of the army’s Gaza division, says Israel’s intention is to push out an already weakened Hamas by taking over the territory it operates from. That would ensure it has “much less room to maneuver and in effect [pushes] it backwards … into more of a guerrilla force.”
“But will this end the terror? In my opinion, no,” he said Tuesday in a briefing to journalists. “From our experience in Lebanon and America’s in Vietnam and Afghanistan, you don’t end terror without a political solution. So even if Hamas is weak enough to make a deal, our government is not strong enough to make such a decision.”
Reservist Brigadier General Ziv was referring to not just a temporary ceasefire – reportedly on the negotiating table in Qatar in exchange for half the hostages still alive – but also an Egyptian plan that could help end the war. The Egyptian formula lays out plans for a postwar Gaza in which moderate Arab players would replace Hamas as a governing entity. A key stumbling block, a mechanism for demilitarizing Hamas and Gaza itself and exiling its leaders, would still need to be addressed.
Warnings of starvation
Meanwhile, Mr. Netanyahu’s orders to resume delivery of food aid, an abrupt about-face under intense U.S. and international pressure, came as warnings of mass starvation intensify, including from within Israel’s own security establishment.
Some critics say the government misplayed its hand in halting food and humanitarian aid into Gaza more than two months ago, thinking incorrectly that a Trump administration it perceived as especially sympathetic, even pliable, would support such an extreme tactic without pushback.
“The government’s handling of humanitarian aid to Gaza has been a textbook case of charlatanism colliding with sheer incompetence: zero strategy resulting in maximum damage, followed by a grand retreat,” writes Yossi Verter, a political analyst at the left-wing Haaretz newspaper.
There’s also the question of how much aid Israel is even allowing into Gaza since Mr. Netanyahu announced Israel will allow entry of “a basic amount of food for the population.” In the past Hamas reportedly has hijacked food aid, retaining some for its own forces and selling what remains to the public.
A United Nations spokesperson said Israel had given permission for about 100 more aid trucks to enter Gaza Tuesday after five trucks, including with baby food, were allowed in Monday.
Mr. Netanyahu, in a video released Monday, said of the food aid: “This is part of defeating Hamas, in parallel with tremendous military pressure, our massive entry to essentially take over all of Gaza and strip Hamas of the ability to plunder humanitarian aid.”
Opposition to war
While many calls from outside Israel to stop the fighting focus on the death and hunger in Gaza, the Israeli public’s calls to end the war consistently have focused on bringing home the remaining 58 hostages, both living and dead.
Arbel Yehoud, who was taken hostage in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack that triggered the war and who was released in January, told Israeli lawmakers Monday she endured torture and starvation as punishment for increased military action when she was held captive. She pleaded for a deal to end the war, invoking the risk to hostages and Israeli soldiers: “As someone who was there, I know negotiations are the only way.”
Adding to the anti-war voices in Israel was a warning causing controversy Tuesday by Yair Golan, a retired general who heads a left-wing party. Israels’ actions in Gaza have crossed a moral line, he said, and are only increasing its international isolation.
“Israel is on the path to becoming a pariah state among the nations, like the South Africa of old, if it does not return to behaving like a sane country,” he said.
In the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s Mideast visit last week, which reaped political and business gains for the countries he visited, Ms. Pollak-David cautions that Israel’s reluctance to end the war is increasingly sidelining it from regional changes that could transform its future. The much-hoped-for prize of normalization with Saudi Arabia is considered the biggest possible missed opportunity.
Mr. Trump’s visit to the region was a signal to Israel, she says, “that history won’t wait.”
