Israel’s New Gaza Strategy, Incorrectly Termed an Occupation, Aims To Pressure Hamas To Negotiate an End to the War

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new Gaza strategy, as articulated after a 10-hour cabinet meeting, is widely misunderstood as an escalation, rather than an ultimatum for Hamas and, for the first time, a listing of Israeli demands for ending the war. For days, the cabinet meeting that ended Friday morning has been built up as a major step toward “occupation” of Gaza. That word, though, is absent from the decision. Its omission is one of the reasons that the top advocate of occupation, Betzalel Smotrich, the finance minister, was the sole cabinet member to vote against the decision.“We are not going to occupy Gaza — we are going to free Gaza from Hamas,” Mr. Netanyahu wrote on X Friday. The cabinet-approved strategy, he adds, “will help free our hostages and ensure Gaza does not pose a threat to Israel in the future.” The strategy calls for a slow, two-month process of separating Gaza City’s nearly one million civilians from the Hamas terrorist leaders who hole up there, as a means to pressure Hamas to negotiate an end of the war, including a surrender and the release of 50 hostages. That strategy, though, is far from guaranteed to push the Gaza City hardliners. “If Hamas is convinced that we are willing to go all in, it might change its stance, but the more we talk of a gradual operation, the less of a chance that Hamas will relent,” a former top Israel Defense Forces intelligence commander, Yossi Kuperwasser of the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, tells the Sun. The new strategy was immediately panned by Europeans. Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced at Berlin an embargo of weapons that could be used in Gaza until further notice. Some 30 percent of the IDF’s imported arms come from Germany. Israel’s decision “to further escalate its offensive in Gaza is wrong,” Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain said in a statement. “We need a ceasefire now.”For now, all attempts at reaching a cease-fire via diplomatic means have failed. The two most senior military Hamas leaders in Gaza, Izz al-Din al-Haddad and Raad Saad, are widely seen as hardliners in failed diplomatic attempts at Doha to release the hostages in exchange for a months-long cease-fire. Will pressuring these commanders in their Gaza City lairs push them to soften their stance? Mr. Netanyahu’s political opponents were out on the streets during the 10-hour cabinet meeting and all day Friday after the decision was approved. Many demand an immediate end to the war and the release of all hostages, including 20 who are known to be alive. Mr. Netanayahu, in contrast, insists that his plan would achieve that goal, but he also wants to fully defeat Hamas. The cabinet spelled out five demands to end the war, as articulated in a statement from the prime minister’s office: “The disarming of Hamas; the return of all the hostages — the living and the deceased; the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip; Israeli security control in the Gaza Strip; the establishment of an alternative civil administration that is neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority.”For now, the statement said, “the IDF will prepare for taking control of Gaza City while distributing humanitarian assistance to the civilian population outside the combat zones.” Notably, the statement avoided mentioning Hamas-controlled towns in Gaza’s center, where the hostages are known to be held. According to the plan, the evacuation of civilians from Gaza City would be completed by the symbolic date of October 7, marking two years since the horrific Hamas attacks that launched the war. The IDF chief of staff, Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, is widely reported to have opposed plans that would further endanger soldiers and overtax the already exhausted troops. He also opposed any plan that would lead Hamas to murder the living hostages.The prime minister’s office hinted that General Zamir’s ideas were rejected. “A decisive majority of Security Cabinet ministers believed that the alternative plan that had been submitted to the Security Cabinet would neither achieve the defeat of Hamas nor the return of the hostages,” the statement said. Yet, despite earlier leaks from the prime minister’s office that Mr. Netanyahu’s plan was for “complete occupation” of Gaza, the Friday decision seems closer to General Zamir’s ideas of a slow siege of Gaza City and avoidance of harming the hostages. “It is in effect what the chief of staff recommended,” a veteran military analyst, Ron Ben Yishai, writes on the Ynet website. The cabinet’s decision, Mr. Ben Yishai adds, amounts to a gradual increasing of pressure on Hamas to return to the negotiation table. While European leaders misunderstand the true meaning of the cabinet decision, he writes, comments from Hamas’s leaders abroad indicate that “they grasp exactly what Israel is planning to do.”

Israel’s New Gaza Strategy, Incorrectly Termed an Occupation, Aims To Pressure Hamas To Negotiate an End to the War

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