4 min read
ByAnshel Pfeffer, Analysis
International and domestic pressure is building to bring an end to the conflict
December 21, 2023 13:27v In the coming days, perhaps as early as next week, the war cabinet will have to make what is likely to be the most important decision since it was formed on 10 October the timing and the manner of the scaling-down of the military campaign in Gaza.
Despite all talk to the contrary from politicians, such as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s oft-repeated promise that “we’re continuing with all strength for as long as it takes, until the victory”, the consensus in the government and the IDF is growing over the need for a change of strategy in January.
It’s not just the international pressure for a ceasefire and the urgings of the Biden administration. There are domestic pressures as well. “Israeli society has been wonderful, mobilising all its resources, hundreds of thousands of reservists turning up without even needed to be called up, but we have to be prepared for the public to get tired as well,” says one senior aide to a war cabinet minister. “Soon the reservists will have been in uniform for three months. Many of them are students who have to go back to university and small-business owners who are fighting off bankruptcy while fighting in Gaza. And there’s a limit to how long the public can wake up each day to the names of more soldiers killed in action without any change in sight.”
And then there are the hostages, around 130 of whom are still being held in Gaza, though at least ten are presumed dead. The tragic killing of three hostages in Gaza City last week due to their misidentification by an IDF marksman was a reminder of how difficult it to locate and rescue hostages on the battlefield. In 11 weeks of war, only one hostage has been successfully rescued in a military operation, and that was just at the start of the ground offensive before four divisions were operating in Gaza. On the other hand, 110 hostages were released alive in the week of the truce with Hamas. The hope is that any change in strategy on the ground in Gaza can also serve up a new agreement.
Before the previous hostage release with Hamas, there was opposition from the IDF General Staff and the Shin Bet, backed by Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, to the idea of a truce at a point they considered crucial to continuing the push against Hamas on the ground. There was concern that it would give Hamas too much breathing space and too few hostages would be released. It took weeks for the two war cabinet members Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot to convince their colleague Gallant and the generals while Netanyahu remained on the fence.
This time round, the generals seem to be more on board. The fear for the remaining hostages, especially the women and elderly men, has intensified. There is also an increasing realisation that the end of Hamas’s leadership and control structure, despite the major damage caused to it, is not as close to collapsing as the IDF thought and hoped. The tunnel network Hamas dug under Gaza will take more time to locate and destroy. If the strategy is about to change anyway, away from the entire divisions inside Gaza City and Khan Younis and towards more mobile raids by smaller units that will take place over months, it would make sense to try and also push for another round of hostage releases, even if it gives Hamas a second breather.
What remains less clear is Netanyahu’s position, if he has one. Last week he vetoed a trip by Mossad chief David Barnea to Doha to explore the possibility of resuming the talks with Hamas through Qatar. Two days later, he allowed Barnea to fly to Europe instead, where he met the Qatari prime minister. Senior officials who have been in meetings with him in recent days sensehe is open to a truce, but in public he has emphatically denied any prospect of slowing down the offensive.
Part of Netanyahu’s indecision is due to the fact that any decision on scaling-down, truce or pause will almost certainly have political implications as well. Several members of the coalition, both the original one and the enlarged emergency coalition, are eyeing the door with a view to timing their exit.
Gantz has repeatedly stressed that his presence in war cabinet is temporary, as long as he feels that he is needed to help the decision-making. He won’t commit to when that no longer necessary, but once the IDF transitions to a lower-intensity strategy, the moment for his departure will be much closer. When that happens, Netanyahu hopes to still have his original coalition of 64 MKs, but that is looking less and less certain.
His partners are looking at the polls as closely as he is and can see that despite a large proportion of Israelis saying in the surveys that they have moved rightwards since the October 7 massacre, this hasn’t translated to any rise in popularity for the right-wing parties in coalition. o far, Netanyahu’s defiant statements in public against the return of the long-dead Oslo rocess and the prospect of the Palestinian Authority resuming control of Gaza have failed to result in any uptick for Likud’s vote, which is still 40 per cent lower in all the polls than in the election last year.
The obvious conclusion for the other right-wing parties is to start distancing themselves from Netanyahu. Religious Zionism leader and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, whose party has also plummeted in the polls, said on Wednesday that instead of sending Barnea for meetings with the Qataris “the war cabinet should send the Mossad chief to assassinate the leaders of Hamas wherever they are, not to talk and negotiate with them”.
This was a direct challenge to the prime minister, who is in charge of Mossad and accepted Gantz’s demand at the start of the war that Smotrich would not be a member of the war cabinet. Jewish Power leader and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who was likewise excluded from the war cabinet, has been making even more overt threats to resign if the ground campaign is paused again. Both party leaders are anxious to portray themselves as “the real right wing” and are concerned that if they don’t jump ship first, other coalition members may preempt them by joining an opposition motion to dissolve the Knesset, leading to early elections. Either way, the decision on ending this stage of the war could also signal the end of the government.