The consensus in the defense establishment over the progress of the war is surprisingly broad. All senior officials, from Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on down, have been speaking in near-unison for a week. After a dizzying series of military and intelligence successes in the past three months, the war in the Gaza Strip and in Lebanon has just about exhausted itself, with only a few necessary measures remaining. Once these are completed, it would be best to try to reach agreements that will end the fighting in the north and south and include the release of all hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza.
Military officials argue that if the war continues for much longer, it will be difficult to achieve much more than what has already been accomplished, and that a prolonged stay in the territory that has been conquered increases the risk of large troop losses and other complications. The intensity of the damage inflicted on Hezbollah and Hamas, and recently Iran as well, creates a reasonable opportunity to reach a settlement. This, however, will necessitate painful concessions from Israel.
This optimistic interpretation is based on the hope that Israel's enemies will behave in accordance with the country's intelligence assessment; this has not really been the case for the past 13 months, since the October 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attack on Gaza border communities. It also depends on the will of one key person, Benjamin Netanyahu. The military's top brass claim that it's hard to judge the intentions of the prime minister, whose public statements and closed-door discussions are peppered with contradictory cues.
Perhaps the mystery is easier to solve than it appears. On Monday, Channel 12 News aired a recording of remarks made by Netanyahu in that day's Likud Knesset caucus about a hostage deal. The modus operandi has been consistent since the start of the calendar year: Whenever there is even the slightest shadow of a chance to advance a deal (in this case, the trips by the Mossad and Shin Bet security service directors to Egypt and Qatar and a vague Egyptian proposal for the release of a handful of hostages in exchange for a brief cease-fire), the prime minister makes sure to shoot it down immediately, by means of a leak or a recording. This time he said he would reject any deal that doesn't let the IDF return to fighting in the Gaza Strip. Army brass say this is a superfluous disagreement: In any event Hamas will eventually violate the agreements in such a way as to require a resumption of the warfare.
Still, a few things have changed since Netanyahu last employed similar methods, in July. First, fear for the lives of the hostages has greatly increased. Every 10 days on average, one hostage dies, an official who is involved in the issue warned the cabinet. There are also hostages who were officially declared dead but whose precise burial location is not known, in some cases because the Hamas members who buried them were subsequently killed in battles with the IDF.
Officials in the IDF's Kidnapped and Missing Persons Task Force have already stopped talking about the first, "humanitarian" phase of the deal, which was supposed to include women, the sick and the wounded. They now assume that after such a long period in captivity, in such difficult conditions, all of the hostages are in fragile health. The condition of the bodies of the six hostages who were murdered by Hamas in Rafah testified to this. The probability of additional successful rescue operations has also declined greatly, after Hamas ordered captors to execute hostages immediately whenever they detect movement by Israeli forces nearby.
People take part in a protest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government in front of the Knesset on Monday.Credit: Violeta Santos Moura/ REUTERS
Second, something about the status of the military has changed, this time for the better, finally. The successes of the IDF and the intelligence community in Lebanon, Iran and Gaza brought some color back to the cheeks of the General Staff's officers. The General Staff, which is the main culprit in the failures on October 7 itself, can also take credit for the significant damage to the capabilities of Hezbollah and Hamas and the success of the airstrikes on Iran early Saturday morning. (Netanyahu, who disavows all responsibility for the failure, demands full credit for the successes.) The militaries and the intelligence agencies of friendly countries in the West and in our region, who were shocked by the Israeli failure a year ago, shower praise on the IDF for its accomplishments in recent months. They marvel at the quality of the intelligence, the precision of the airstrikes, the ability to operate at a great distance from Israel and also in densely populated urban areas nearby. It's hard to talk about regional deterrence after such a great disaster, but it is clear that Israel's situation has improved recently.
This also affects the bargaining power of the top brass in discussions and in their frequent disagreements with Netanyahu. If the prime minister considered firing IDF Chief of Staff Herzl Halevi and Shin Bet head Ronen Bar so as to pin the blame for October 7 on them, he will have a hard time dismissing them now. Gallant's situation is more complicated. Netanyahu made sure to add the four Knesset members of Gideon Sa'ar's party to the coalition, and continues to dangle the threat of replacing Gallant with Sa'ar or, as it emerged Tuesday, even with Foreign Minister Israel Katz. However, the chance of the defense minister being dismissed may decline if a compromise on the continued draft exemption of Haredim is reached. That would prevent the need for the coalition to urgently pass a new draft exemption law – something Gallant opposes.
The gap between rhetoric and facts on the ground
The IDF operation in Jabalya, in the northern Strip, serves as a good example of the gap between the resolute Israeli rhetoric and facts on the ground. The army entered the refugee camp in early October to uproot the terrorist infrastructure that Hamas had re-established there, which comprised several hundred terrorists. There was an attempt to promote the implementation of the so-called generals' plan, calling for heavy pressure on the local population with the aim of forcing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the northern Strip to move to the southern part of the enclave. The publication of the plan, which has not been officially adopted, drew fierce reactions in the West and a demand from the Biden administration for clarifications from Israel.
In practice, although tens of thousands of civilians were temporarily removed from the camp, they did not head south. According to IDF figures, during three days last week, between 12 and 29 people a day passed south through the Netzarim corridor. And after Israel deliberately disrupted the entry of humanitarian aid convoys into the northern Strip, it was forced to back down. Recently the political leadership, under American pressure, ordered the army to see to it that 250 aid trucks enter Gaza daily. This, of course, was not told to people on the far right who demand the starvation and expulsion of the residents.
Palestinians walk past damaged buildings in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on Monday.Credit: AFP/BASHAR TALEB
This week the IDF reduced the scope of the operation, removing one of the three brigades operating in the camp. And while the army says that hundreds of terrorists have been killed in the campaign, there are also Israeli fatalities. An officer and three soldiers from the Multidimensional Unit were killed there when a booby-trapped home exploded. Last week Col. Ehsan Daqsa, the commander of the 401st Armored Brigade, was killed by an improvised bomb. In another incident, an anti-tank missile was fired at a house in the area the IDF was using, shortly after the chief of staff visited the building.
Netanyahu convened a small forum of defense officials and cabinet ministers Tuesday evening to discuss the American proposal for a cease-fire in Lebanon. In a move led by envoy Amos Hochstein, the Biden administration is trying to push through a deal before the November 5 election. The agreement calls for the withdrawal of Hezbollah forces to north of the Litani River, bolstering the Lebanese Army with international aid (in part with British training), strengthening the failed United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon and establishing an effective international enforcement mechanism. Senior IDF officials told Haaretz that the proposal is "much better than United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the Second Lebanon War, but everything depends on the force of the enforcement options."