Netanyahu’s plan to occupy Gaza – is this really what Israelis want?

Had the historian Barbara Tuchman written a sequel to her 1984 Pulitzer-winning opus The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam, she surely would have devoted an extensive chapter to Israel’s continuing war in Gaza – and Benjamin Netanyahu’s mismanagement of it.

Alas, Tuchman died in 1989, leaving Israel to write the chapter itself. Which it is diligently doing.

Before examining what might transpire from “Operation Gideon’s Chariots” – the implausible name that the Israel Defence Forces have affixed to the planned large-scale “conquest of the Gaza Strip, and the holding of the territories” – let us be clear about the inevitable end result: it will lead to a full Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip and its 2.3 million desolate, hopeless inhabitants.

History is replete with reckless, course-changing decisions, counterproductive policies and destructive strategies, but it is rare to see a government embark on something so clearly against its own long-term interests. That Netanyahu’s commitment to the military offensive in Gaza is a monumental folly is a belief shared by a consistent 70 per cent of Israelis.

Netanyahu’s latest plan for “conquering” Gaza is to establish a “sustained presence” there, displacing the population to the south. Israel will resent anyone describing it as military occupation, claim that, in its war against Hamas terrorists, it had no choice, and pledge “temporariness”, with all sorts of stipulations, conditions and caveats that would end it.

But it will be de facto occupation, plain and simple. And when you occupy, you own. Humanitarian aid, food, potable water, medical services, law and order, employment, education, garbage collection. The full monty.

Is this what Israel wants? If so, Netanyahu should come out and declare that much, rather than hide behind the incendiary rhetoric of his extreme right-wing messianic ministers who call for occupation and expulsion. Unlike him, they at least truthfully present what they think and who they are.

A few short months after the catastrophe of 7 October 2023, there was a consensus that Israel’s retaliatory war was just, and that Hamas needed to be annihilated as a military force or degraded as much as possible. That consensus evaporated gradually as it became clear that the military means were not aligned with any discernible, coherent political objective or exit strategy.

Ostensibly, the first objective of the new operation is to pressure Hamas into a new deal, following the collapse of January’s hostage-ceasefire agreement, which was violated in March, having held for 58 days. Stage two of that agreement would have required the IDF’s complete withdrawal from Gaza, a permanent ceasefire and the end of the war – something Netanyahu has long resisted because it would deny him “total victory” and the “eradication of Hamas”, two of his most hubris-infused slogan-cliches.

That leads us to the second objective of the operation: “destroying Hamas’s military capabilities” and residual political power. That may be a justifiable goal, but it is even stranger than the first. Isn’t that what Israel has been trying to do, with vastly superior firepower and military capabilities, for the last 19 months, since 7 October 2023?

Historical analogies are always misleading, but it took the Western Allies nine months after the invasion of Normandy in June 1944 to reach Berlin, in March 1945. So what Israel couldn’t do in 19 months it now believes it can do with another inventive, creative military operation?

The third objective is to drive the entire population of Gaza into a southern enclave around the city of Rafah, which Israel claims has been “sterilised” in terms of the presence of Hamas. That means that 75 per cent of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million will be concentrated in makeshift refugee camps in the south. There, Israel claims, they will receive humanitarian aid distributed by private US contractors under Israeli supervision. Israel will establish a permanent military presence and checkpoints along all roads leading to the Rafah area.

What do you call a reality in which there is a military presence, checkpoints and supervised funnelling of aid? That’s right: occupation.

This could all change, subject to Donald Trump’s visits to Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and what he’ll hear from them that may impel him or re-engage the Gaza issue. But as things stand now, the trajectory seems set.

Alon Pinkas is a former Israeli consul general to the US and was a political adviser to two former prime ministers, Shimon Peres and Ehud Barak