Can Israel's plan to ‘conquer' Gaza finally defeat Hamas?

Telegraph

06-05-2025

It is easy to lose count of the number of times Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened an escalation of the war in Gaza in the 19 months since it started.
Monday's announcement, however, was different.
By promising to seize and hold territory, Mr Netanyahu and his military chiefs are adopting a significant shift in strategy that sets both the inhabitants of the embattled strip, and Israel itself, on an uncertain course.
Despite the colossal destruction it has wrought in its mission to defeat Hamas, Israel did not set out to occupy the enclave.
This was for two reasons. Firstly, the practical necessity of keeping troops available for the war against Hezbollah in the north.
Secondly, Israel's interest was in annihilating the terrorist group, not in gaining land for its own sake, which would then have to be policed, as in the West Bank.
Therefore, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) took the approach of pulverising the area from the air and with artillery, before moving in ground troops and killing any Hamas fighters that they could see. They would then dismantle what they could of the group's infrastructure and tunnels before moving on to the next zone.
The problem was, this did not work – at least not in the comprehensive way that Mr Netanyahu's bellicose language appeared to promise.
Although significantly degraded, Hamas fought on, regrouping and popping up in neighbourhoods that had been declared cleansed.
The orderly and disciplined sight of their neatly dressed fighters at the weekly hostage handover ceremonies in January and February was a stinging rebuke to that strategy, and one we know Mr Netayahu felt personally.
However, the authors of that initial playbook, Yoav Gallant, the former defence minister, and Herzi Halevi, the former IDF chief of staff, have now gone; the threat from Lebanon has been neutered; and a new administration in Washington has more or less given Israel the green light to proceed however it wants.
Named Gideon's Chariots, the new operation will use four or five armoured and infantry divisions to seize and then occupy territory in Gaza.
All civilians will be sent south, to a so-called humanitarian zone near what is left of the city of Rafah, which the IDF currently controls.
They will receive aid in, it is hoped, a controlled manner that prevents Hamas profiting from it, although there are significant questions over how this can be achieved.
Meanwhile, the army will use bulldozers and explosives to flatten any building it considers linked to Hamas, or posing a threat to advancing troops from booby traps or snipers.
On the evidence of Rafah, these are broad definitions and the destruction will be extensive.
The operation will not start immediately. Officials have let it be known that they will wait until after Donald Trump has finished his visit to the Gulf at the end of next week.
It is hoped that Hamas will offer up a palatable hostage deal in the meantime; although Israel also needs at least that long to prepare for the new offensive.
Can it work?
Amir Avivi, a retired IDF brigadier general and the now chair of the Israel Defense and Security Forum, said he believed that the operation could technically be achieved in two or three months, but that the military would likely go at a slower pace to give Hamas the chance to request a ceasefire in return for hostage releases.
He said: 'You can't defeat Hamas unless you control the ground. You have to separate the terrorists from the population.
'The operation can work and it has to work.'
Others are far less certain, not least the Israeli public.
Poll after poll shows that citizens value securing the release of the hostages above the defeat of Hamas in the short term, and that 60 to 70 per cent oppose a major operation to occupy Gaza.
The main hostage families group believes that the strategy is a disaster for the hope of returning their loved-ones. Eyal Zamir, the new IDF chief of staff, reportedly warned his political masters on Sunday that Israel could 'lose' the detainees as a result.
Reliance on reservists
Moreover, by promising to hold the territory, Gideon's Chariot threatens to become an open-ended commitment. The IDF, with its structural reliance on reservists who need to get back to their families and jobs, is at its best in quick, kinetic wars.
Of the roughly 70,000 reservists who will be required for the mission, most have already served 300 or more days since Oct 7, which has battered morale and, to an extent, Israel's economy.
IDF chiefs are reportedly concerned that as many as 50 per cent will not turn up for duty.
Then there are the civilians, the ordinary Gazans, hundreds of thousands of whom have lived through one of the most intense bombing campaigns of anywhere in the world this century.
By ordering them into the new southern zone, Israel will, in the eyes of the world, be responsible for every detail of their welfare in a way that it has not been until now. This comes just as the lack of aid, which was cut off in early March, really begins to bite.
France and China have led the chorus of concern about the wider operation, whose endgame is, as yet, unclear.
The suspicion among the Israeli commentariat is that the army, and most of the security cabinet, would much rather not go ahead with the operation and are hoping for a deal.
'Hunger war' scenario
But on Tuesday the terror group said it would not negotiate while Israel touted its 'hunger war' scenario.
The ultra-nationalist members of the governing coalition, such as Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, believe that the military presence should be permanent.
He said: 'We won't stop even for the hostages.'
Mr Smotrich also urged Israelis to embrace the word 'occupation'.
For those of his way of thinking, the clearing of the population from the bulk of Gaza and the destruction of much of the property their sets the scene perfectly for the mass displacement of civilians envisaged in Donald Trump 's 'Middle East Riviera' vision.
Other voices have suggested that by comprehensively clearing neighbourhoods of Hamas, Israel can then set about rebuilding 'safe neighbourhoods' of the kind that US forces had some success with in Iraq following their surge.
As ever in contemporary Israel, all eyes are now on Mr Trump for a solution.