Daniel DePetris: By winging it in Gaza, Benjamin Netanyahu is taking a big risk

Chicago Tribune

2 days ago

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's longest-serving premier, is no stranger to making tough decisions. But the decision he made last week to expand Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza, to the vocal opposition of some of the Israeli military's most senior officers, was perhaps his most controversial one to date.
After intense debate in the security cabinet, Netanyahu ordered the Israel Defense Forces to accelerate ground operations in the roughly 25% of Gaza outside of Israel's control. According to the plan, the IDF will move into Gaza City and the camps in central Gaza, push the roughly 1 million Palestinians who reside there farther south and root out the remaining Hamas units operating in the area.
The operation seems straightforward from a military standpoint: get the civilians out, isolate the hardened fighters and kill them. But for many in the IDF, including chief of staff Gen. Eyal Zamir, Netanyahu's plan runs the risk of plunging Israeli troops into an occupation of the Palestinian enclave that Netanyahu's predecessors came to regret.
Netanyahu remains defiant. 'Given Hamas' refusal to lay down its arms, Israel has no choice but to finish the job and complete the defeat of Hamas,' he told foreign journalists over the weekend. He has gone to great pains to stress that Israel won't keep Gaza indefinitely; the goal is simply to free Gaza of Hamas. The problem is that Netanyahu often seems like he's winging it, is often unsure of the next steps and arrogantly refuses to acknowledge the consequences of his own actions.
This latest decision is no different.
First, Netanyahu continues to assume that tightening the squeeze on Hamas will eventually pressure the organization to wave the white flag, demobilize and agree to exile itself into irrelevance. Whether he actually believes in these assumptions or is doing so to keep his far-right coalition afloat is not important because the end product is the same: a longer war.
And the result is the same too: Hamas continues to fight and enlist additional members into its ranks, using Israel's bombardment of Gaza as the perfect recruiting tool. Israel has killed thousands of Hamas militants in the nearly two-year-long war, yet according to U.S. intelligence assessments, the group has offset a significant chunk of those losses with another 15,000 or so recruits.
When all is said and done, Netanyahu is plunging Israel into a war of attrition with an insurgency that has shown no signs of submitting to Israel's maximalist objectives.
Second, the renewed Israeli offensive will add more strain on the IDF, which despite being the Middle East's most capable force is also experiencing readiness issues. The Israeli reservists who form the backbone of the army have already been fighting in Gaza nonstop for close to two years, all the while continuing the military campaign in Lebanon and conducting occasional operations in Syria.
A growing number of Israeli reservists aren't reporting for duty, either, because they want to spend time with their families, hope to get back to their jobs or are increasingly disillusioned about what Israel is doing in Gaza. Indeed, the IDF's top brass has cited the strain on the army as a reason why freeing the hostages through negotiations should be a bigger priority than defeating Hamas militarily.
The most glaring omission in Netanyahu's plan is what happens over the long term. If by some miraculous act Israel does manage to kill every single Hamas fighter on earth, what happens next?
The Israelis have insisted they have clear goals and a sophisticated strategy to achieve them. Israel, Netanyahu says, will retain security control over Gaza. The moderate Arab states will step into the void to administer the enclave on a temporary basis until a viable Palestinian administration is established. And the international community will organize reconstruction while deradicalizing the territory.
If that all sounds too good to be true, that's because it is. In effect, Israel is trying to have its cake and eat it too: keep Gaza under its de facto control but hand over the time-consuming and frustrating governance portfolio to the Arab states.
But let's be perfectly blunt: This isn't going to happen. The Arab states have no intention of fixing a mess Israel helped create, and it's virtually inconceivable to envision regional leaders like Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman or Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi deploying their own troops to Gaza, which their publics would grossly oppose considering how much damage Israel has inflicted there.
The Saudis, Egyptians, Jordanians and Emiratis have no intention of being portrayed as helping Israel in any way, shape or form, particularly when there's no prospects for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations over a two-state solution.
If Netanyahu allowed such a process to take place, perhaps minds would change. However, back on the planet Earth, the Israeli government's firm opposition to the establishment of a Palestinian state makes the odds of this occurring beyond steep.
Finally, doubling down in Gaza will further torpedo Israel's international reputation, which is already in the cellar. Perhaps Netanyahu doesn't care about this or views international public opinion as secondary to Israel's war goals. Either way, there's no disputing that Israel's is alienating many of its closest partners for the sake of a phantom military victory in Gaza.
Outside of the United States, most of the West is on record rejecting Israel's latest war plans. U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Netanyahu's course of action 'will only bring more bloodshed' and do nothing to rescue the hostages. The foreign ministers of Britain, Australia, Germany, Italy and France (among others) released a joint statement saying much the same thing. Germany, the most pro-Israel state in Europe, is even cutting off offensive arms to the IDF.
If Netanyahu is worried about any of this, he isn't showing it.