Israel Plunges Into Darkness

The Atlantic

09-05-2025

After 19 months of war in Gaza, the Israeli government has decided to march deeper into the quagmire.
Israel has announced its intention to take and retain a significant part of the Gaza Strip. Call-up orders are going out to tens of thousands of already exhausted reservists. The battered, hungry population of Gaza is to be forced into an even smaller part of the narrow enclave. The lives of the remaining Israeli hostages are in greater danger than ever.
The plan came with a caveat: The escalation will reportedly not start until the end of U.S. President Donald Trump's tour of the region next week, allowing for the possibility of a new hostage deal. But reports of an impending deal have become such a constant background murmur that few observers count on a diplomatic breakthrough to head off the new operation.
'We will achieve full, absolute victory in Gaza,' Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in Hebrew in a social-media clip just before the decision Sunday night by the security cabinet—the committee of senior ministers responsible for military affairs. 'We are in the stages of victory,' Netanyahu added. Or, to paraphrase in American English: We can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
For this Israeli, as for many others, the escalation is a promise to plunge deeper into darkness, militarily and morally.
The Israeli army will seek to take and hold more territory in Gaza and to 'destroy all terror infrastructure, above- and belowground,' a government spokesperson said Monday. 'Belowground' refers to Hamas's tunnel network, which has bedeviled the Israeli army since the war began. What will be left standing aboveground remains to be seen.
The spokesperson, David Mencer, said that the objective was both to 'return the hostages'—the 59 captives, alive and dead, still in Gaza—and to defeat Hamas. But Netanyahu made the order of his priorities clear in a controversial speech last week: Freeing the hostages was 'an important goal,' he said, but the 'supreme goal' was victory over Hamas. Or, as he put it in another clip for his social-media followers this week, to drive Hamas 'from the face of the Earth.'
Netanyahu has made this overambitious promise—of 'absolute' triumph over Hamas—since early in the war, and has repeatedly said that it is around the corner. But total victory is a chimera. Reoccupying larger chunks of Gaza is unlikely to eliminate Hamas. Instead, it will expose Israel's soldiers to a long war of attrition with the extreme Islamist organization. Hamas's losses will mount, but this will not make the deaths on the Israeli side any easier to bear.
Israel's military doctrine relies on mobilizing large numbers of civilians to fight short wars. This war is no longer short, and many reservists have spent more time in uniform than in civvies since October 7, 2023. They, their families, and their workplaces are very tired. Netanyahu's government promises more exhaustion.
The Palestinian civilians of Gaza, of course, are much more exhausted and traumatized. In the name of protecting them, the Israeli army intends to order yet another evacuation, reportedly to a single 'humanitarian zone' in the southern part of the Gaza Strip. Netanyahu said this week that the intention is for the army to continue to hold whatever territory it takes. Implicitly, then, Palestinian civilians won't be returning until the promised day when Hamas is erased—and maybe not even then.
If permanent displacement is the government's policy, the proper term for it is ethnic cleansing —a moral catastrophe.
And what will happen inside the 'humanitarian zone'? The government reportedly has a plan for providing food aid via a largely unknown foundation and private security firms. Nothing has been reported about who will govern the area, provide health services, or enforce public order. If Israel were to try to impose a military government, soldiers would be under constant attack. Netanyahu has been unwilling to discuss proposals for creating a new Palestinian government in Gaza. Hamas is likely to fill the vacuum.
The security cabinet apparently paid little attention to this problem in setting its policy. It also reportedly ignored an explicit warning from the military chief of staff, General Eyal Zamir. 'In the plan for a full-scale operation, we won't necessarily reach the hostages,' Zamir told ministers in a preparatory session before Sunday's decision, according to Israel's Channel 13. 'Keep in mind that we could lose them.'
As of now, Israel's official count is that 21 hostages are still alive, the fate of three is unknown, and Hamas is holding the bodies of 35. Netanyahu insists that military pressure is the only way to save the remaining living hostages. But no hostages have been found or released since fighting resumed in March. A New York Times investigation concluded that 41 hostages have died in captivity since the war began, including at least four who were killed in Israeli bombings and seven who were murdered by their captors to keep Israeli troops from rescuing them. Those dangers will only increase if the fighting intensifies.
The gap between the Israeli public and the government is most stark on the hostage issue. A recent poll found that more than two-thirds of Israelis see saving the hostages as the most important goal in the war, compared with one-quarter who say that toppling Hamas is most important. Last month, nearly 1,000 current and former Air Force reservists signed a public letter calling on the government to reach an agreement immediately with Hamas to release the hostages and end the war. That set off a wave of statements by reservists and veterans of other units.
So far, Netanyahu has refused to change course. To do so would mean admitting that his promise of absolute victory is hollow. It could spark a revolt by the two far-right parties in his coalition, and bring down his government.
It's just possible, nonetheless, that Netanyahu will change his mind and finally respond to the fury and despair of his own people. Or that during his stops in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar, the erratic American president will hear something to persuade him to tell Netanyahu to hold his fire. Or that Hamas and Israel will agree to one of the latest proposals for a renewed cease-fire and hostage deal.