On April 7, six months after Hamas’s surprise invasion of southern Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the public that the country was only “a step away” from the long-promised “total victory” over Hamas.
That step seemed to be the IDF conquest of Rafah, which Netanyahu had also long guaranteed would occur.
- On the operation in the southern Gaza city at least, the premier was true to his word. On May 6, Israeli tanks and infantry began pushing into Rafah, taking on the bulk of Hamas’s remaining battalions.
That fight has gone far better than Israel’s friends in the world predicted. Within two weeks, Israel managed to get almost a million civilians to evacuate, despite warnings from US experts that it would take months to do so.
The United Nations humanitarian aid agency cautioned days before the incursion that hundreds of thousands of people would be “at imminent risk of death” if Israel moved forward with the Rafah offensive. Despite a precision Israeli strike near a tent encampment that led to the deaths of dozens of civilians, the overall toll has been limited, and the dire predictions have not materialized.
Over 550 terrorists were killed, and dozens of tunnels were found, according to the military.
- But the much-touted Rafah operation is nearing its end. Givati Brigade commander Liron Betito said last week that it would be over within a month.
- “Hamas in Gaza will be defeated soon,” proclaimed Air Force commander Tomer Bar on Thursday.
Early next week, the IDF is expected to announce that Hamas has been seriously damaged as a fighting organization. The military will then move to the next phase — intelligence-based raids on Hamas as it tries to regroup in areas where the IDF has already fought.
But it’s not clear how Israel gets from the end of the major operations to the “total victory” Netanyahu has promised — the elimination of Hamas as a governing and military force, the return of all hostages, and ensuring that Gaza won’t pose a threat to Israel in the future.
Hamas, still kicking
There is no question that Hamas’s army has been battered. Well over half of its fighters have been killed, wounded, or captured. It has lost much of its main strategic asset, the tunnel network, and its rocket array is a shadow of what it was. What’s more, Israel now controls the border with Egypt, across and under which most of Hamas’s arsenal flowed.
Yet it is still not defeated. Most of its senior leaders, including Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif, remain alive and in command somewhere under southern Gaza.
It remains the only force capable of retaking the Strip once Israel pulls back. The minute IDF troops redeploy out of built-up areas, Hamas shows up to reassert control.
Israel expects many years of fighting in Gaza, and constant IDF raids will continue to reduce Hamas’s ability, as has been the case across the West Bank.
That scenario, however, leaves two major problems.
- First, it means that there will not be a deal that brings the remaining 116 hostages — many of them believed to be dead — back to Israel.
The US — along with Qatar and Egypt — has been applying concerted pressure on Hamas since it rejected US President Joe Biden’s May 31 presentation of Israel’s latest offer. Washington’s rhetoric has changed noticeably as its frustration with Hamas grows.
US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller characterized Hamas’s response to Israel’s ceasefire proposal as a rejection of that offer for the first time on Tuesday.
- “At some point in a negotiation,” said US Secretary of State Antony Blinken two weeks ago, “and this has gone back and forth for a long time, you get to a point where if one side continues to change its demands, including making demands and insisting on changes for things that it already accepted, you have to question whether they’re proceeding in good faith or not.”
According to The Wall Street Journal, Egypt and Qatar threatened Hamas’s leaders with sanctions, including the freezing of their assets, expulsion from the Qatari capital and arrests.
- But none of that has worked, nor is it likely to in the future.
Hamas has core interests at stake that are not going to change — namely, the survival of its organization and senior leaders. The hostages are its insurance that it will emerge from the war as a coherent organization, and therefore victorious. There is no reason for Hamas to give up a large number of hostages for anything short of that victory.
Eyes to the north
- Second, that Israeli scenario means the escalating fight against Hezbollah in the north isn’t going to be solved via a Gaza ceasefire deal — and therefore, over 60,000 Israelis will remain refugees within their own country for the foreseeable future.
Hezbollah began firing at northern Israel on October 8, aiming to put pressure on Israel in support of Hamas, but has indicated that the attacks will stop if the combat in Gaza ends.
- “The link between the supportive Lebanese front and Gaza is definitive, final and conclusive,” Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah stressed in May.
- “No one can de-link them.”
The Biden administration has thrown significant effort behind a diplomatic effort led by special envoy Amos Hochstein, who has made four trips to Beirut and Jerusalem in a fruitless attempt to wind down the fighting.
Both Washington and Jerusalem are now banking on the hope that the conclusion of intensive fighting in Gaza will give the Shi’a terror group the “off-ramp” it needs to end its attacks.
Hezbollah certainly has reasons to look to wind this round down. With the possibility of surprising Israel with a special forces raid gone after Hamas pulled off its October 7 attack, the fight against Israel is an intelligence-strike contest in which Israel has many advantages. It knows where Hezbollah commanders and weapons depots are, and has the ability to attack them with precision.
- The casualty rate is tilted in Israel’s favor by a 20:1 ratio.
Hezbollah Radwan special forces units and infrastructure near the border — the core of its plan to invade the Galilee — have been forced back. Senior field commanders have been eliminated.
IDF strikes in southern Lebanon have created a “dead zone” around 5 kilometers (3 miles) deep along the border with Israel, according to The Financial Times.
- Yet Hezbollah is not about to fold. It has enjoyed an influx of weaponry, especially advanced drones, from Iran. It is using them increasingly to attack troop concentrations and, most worryingly, to test and study Israel’s air defenses.
More importantly, it gets to show its supporters and its Iranian patrons that it is a crucial element in the effort to destroy the Jewish state, which Iran seems to think is increasingly possible.
Given that reality, there are growing calls — and expectations — for an Israeli-initiated war in Lebanon. US intelligence expects a major escalation between Israel and Hezbollah in the next few weeks in the absence of a ceasefire with Hamas.
If so, however, there is no guarantee it will solve all the issues some are expecting.
Israel will hammer Lebanon and Hezbollah from the air, and Hezbollah will rain down more damage on Israeli cities than any enemy ever has. Israeli ground forces will get the better of Hezbollah defenders in every major engagement, but the IDF chief of staff recognized in 2019 that the army wasn’t set up to defeat Hezbollah decisively in the field. Not only was the military transformation process not completed by October 7, but nine months of combat in Gaza have left the IDF depleted.
The war will end in another ceasefire with international guarantees, as the previous one did. There is no reason evacuees or anybody else would put more stock in a potential new UN Security Council Resolution than in UNSCR 1701, which has proved utterly useless in keeping Hezbollah north of the Litani River.
End of the road?
As both Biden and Netanyahu face worsening options for achieving their goals in the Middle East, they also stare at uncertain political futures.
After National Unity leader Benny Gantz took his party’s eight MKs out of the emergency coalition on June 9, Netanyahu was left with his core 64-member right-wing/Haredi coalition.
- The strains on that alliance are growing. Netanyahu’s late-night decision last week to remove a highly contentious bill bolstering the state-backed rabbinate from the Knesset agenda shattered the ultra-Orthodox Shas and United Torah Judaism parties’ faith in his ability to advance their interests.
The premier’s inability to advance the so-called Rabbis Bill has led to concerns among his Haredi allies that he will be similarly unable to usher through a bill on mandatory military enlistment.
To compound Netanyahu’s headache over the issue, the High Court of Justice ruled unanimously this week that the government must draft ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students.
- Netanyahu’s far-right partners — National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich — have threatened to leave the coalition if he agrees to a hostage deal that ends the war and leaves Hamas in power.
The premier is still a master of shoring up coalitions, but it’s a growing challenge to keep this one intact, and his ability to make the right policy decisions is increasingly constrained.
- A hostage deal, even if it were somehow possible, would threaten his political survival. The same goes for a Haredi draft law that gives the IDF a needed boost of fighting-age males while relieving some of the burden on the reservists.
Even Israel’s remaining card is a difficult one for Netanyahu to play. At this stage, the most effective lever with which to pressure Hamas is slowly replacing it as the ruling power while it hides underground.
But his fear of the reaction of the right is keeping Netanyahu from laying out a coherent plan for the “day after” Hamas, one that would include some form of Palestinian Authority presence and the backing of Arab powers.
Instead, Israel is hinting at some undeclared IDF plan in the works. That plan will start to be implemented in northern Gaza in the coming days, said National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi on Tuesday. But without explaining what that vision is in some form, it will be next to impossible to get Arab partners on board.
Meanwhile, after Biden’s disastrous debate performance on Thursday night, Democrats are increasingly waking up to the fact that the president is perceived as a tired, wounded duck who may need to be replaced if they want to keep Donald Trump in Florida.
If that unprecedented step does happen, it is unclear how it will affect the remaining half-year Biden has in office. Will he ignore prior worries about winning over progressive voters, and act out of the concern he feels deep in his kishkes for Israel’s welfare? Or will the White House staffers who expect to remain at the core of any new Democrat’s presidency — Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom have been touted as possible candidates — assert their worldview more forcefully, and slowly cut Biden out of the decision-making process?
A shared strategy?
The two veteran leaders do still have a chance to put partisan political needs and personal disagreements aside and agree on a shared strategy to deal with the crucial but opaque next stage in the fight against Iran in the form of Hamas and Hezbollah.
Netanyahu will be in Washington to address a joint session of Congress in less than a month. The Israeli premier can offer a vision for the future of the war and the Palestinian issue that Biden and the Democrats can get behind.
If Biden’s fate is clear by then, Netanyahu will also not have to worry about a second Biden term. He can focus on lauding the long-time Zionist for his decades of support (but not so effusively that Trump gets annoyed) and building some goodwill among Democrats.
Biden, for his part, can urge his Congressional allies to respectfully attend the speech, and more importantly, finally invite Netanyahu to the White House for an important show of unity and a chance to talk at length about strategy.
If they decline to pursue that path, their ability to reach the outcomes they have been working towards since October 7 will be severely curtailed. And Iran will double down on its military strategy to dominate the region, one that makes more bloodshed in the coming years far more likely.
Source: Lazar Berman – TOI