(The Age, 3/1/2024)
Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza is not yet ending, but it is moving into a new, and probably less intense, phase.
As 2024 began, the Israeli military announced it would start withdrawing thousands of soldiers from the Gaza Strip in the first significant drawdown of troops since the war began almost three months ago.
Five brigades will be taken out of the enclave for training and rest, with many of the returned troops set to return to civilian life in Israel.
One could assume the troop reduction is a response to mounting international condemnation of Israel as citizens around the world grow increasingly horrified by the sight of civilian deaths in Gaza.
Australia was among the 153 nations to vote in favour of an immediate humanitarian ceasefire at the United Nations General Assembly last month, with 10 voting against and 23 abstaining.
While Israel is especially isolated right now, it is used to being significantly outnumbered at the UN, which it believes is chronically biased against it. The most important factor influencing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is not international public opinion but Israeli public opinion – and most Israelis want Hamas removed as a military threat from Gaza after the October 7 massacre in southern Israel that killed 1200 people.
The exception to this rule is Israel’s closest security ally, the United States, which supplies the country with billions of dollars worth of military aid each year.
While the Biden administration has declined to call for a ceasefire, it has called for humanitarian pauses to allow more aid in, and has been publicly and privately urging Israel to take a more surgical approach to eliminating Hamas targets that minimises civilian casualties.
At the end of November, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Israel’s war cabinet that it had “weeks, not months,” to wrap up combat operations at the current level of intensity. Days later US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said Israel risked “strategic defeat” in its war with Hamas if it failed to heed warnings about the mounting civilian death toll. More than 20,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s campaign to eliminate the proscribed terror organisation.
While this pressure has likely played a role, the situation on the ground in Gaza and the sorry state of Israel’s economy are even more significant factors.
Israel now controls most of northern Gaza, meaning fewer ground troops will be needed there in the coming months. As well as allowing the reservists to reunite with their families, the military has emphasised they will be able to return to their normal jobs.
”This will significantly ease the burden on the economy and allow them to gather strength for the upcoming activities in the next year, as the fighting will continue and they will still be required,” Israel Defence Forces spokesman Daniel Hagari said in a statement issued on New Year’s Eve.
The 300,000 Israelis called up to serve after October 7 represent up to 15 per cent of the Israeli labour force, and many of them work in crucial fields such as technology and agriculture. A lack of workers, and the disappearance of large-scale tourism, has forced many businesses to stay closed since the war broke out.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has lowered its economic growth forecast for Israel for this year from 3.3 per cent to just 1.5 per cent as a result of the war.
Still, Israel’s goal of removing Hamas from power in Gaza and crippling its military capabilities remains. Reuters this week quoted a senior Israeli official saying they expected the hunt for senior Hamas leaders to take “six months at least, and involve intense mopping-up missions against the terrorists”.
Israel estimates it has killed more than 8000 Hamas fighters since October 7, including an important military figure this week: Adel Mesmah, who commanded brutal attacks on kibbutzes in southern Israel.
But Hamas’s most significant leaders in Gaza remain at large despite the heavy bombardments, including political leader Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif, the head of Hamas’s military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades.
More than 100 hostages taken from Israel into Gaza on October 7 also remain in captivity.
As for Netanyahu, who has been in power for most of the past two decades, he remains a beleaguered and deeply unpopular leader. A poll published this week by Israel’s Channel 13 found his Likud Party would win just 16 seats if an election was held today, down from 32 currently and putting it into opposition.
Adding to Netanyahu’s woes, the Supreme Court has struck down a controversial law passed by his government that would have weakened the court’s power to review or reject legislation passed by the parliament.
Netanyahu has put off a reckoning about the failures that led to the October 7 attack until after the war, which creates a perverse incentive structure: the longer the war goes on, the better his chances of remaining in power.
With a faltering economy and increasingly frustrated US, Netanyahu knows the war can’t go on as it has for the past three months. But with Hamas remaining a potent military force and his political future in peril, he can’t bring it to a close yet either.