Israel is already laying the ground for next phase of its war in Gaza

They were delivered by Netanyahu just ahead of the hostage deal and pause in hostilities that marked the most significant diplomatic breakthrough in over 50 days of conflict in Gaza.

On Friday, the first rewards of that breakthrough came with the release of 24 hostages who crossed into Egypt under a truce between Israel and their Hamas captors brokered by the Gulf state of Qatar.

In exchange, a total of 39 Palestinian detainees were released from Israeli jails that included 24 women and 15 teenage boys aged under 18.

If all goes according to plan, the other hostages in Gaza will be released in phases of about a dozen a day, sent from Gaza to Egypt and then to Israel.

Under the terms of the deal a total of 50 Israeli hostages and 150 Palestinian detainees are meant to be released over four days during a temporary pause in the fighting.

The International Red Cross confirmed on Friday that its teams had started carrying out a multi-day operation to facilitate the release and transfer of the hostages held in Gaza and of Palestinian detainees.

“The deep pain that family members separated from their loved ones feel is indescribable. We are relieved that some will be reunited after long agony,” said Fabrizio Carboni, the International Committee of the Red Cross’s (ICRC) regional director for the Near and Middle East.

As the hostage and detainee exchange got under way, the truce also brought a small respite for the 2.2 million Palestinians trapped in Gaza, offering a momentary calm of sorts and a promised influx of humanitarian aid.

Their ultimate fate, however, remains uncertain in a conflict that has reached a crossroads whereby what lies ahead becomes either a continuation of fighting or an impetus to find a permanent resolution.

Palestinians leaving the north walk through the Salaheddine road in the Zeitoun district on the southern outskirts of Gaza City on November 25, 2023, on the second day of a truce between Israel and Hamas. 

An uneasy truce

Working on the assumption that the truce holds and the exchange goes smoothly, what does this moment mean for the course of the war?

Could this pause in hostilities mark the beginning of a lengthier ceasefire and possible exit route from the conflict, or as Netanyahu’s remarks suggest, is Israel simply readying itself for the next phase of its war?

In considering this question several key factors come into play. To begin with, while the relief among the families of those hostages and detainees released is palpable, not all Israelis appear to agree with the hostage exchange scheme and pause in hostilities.

According to one poll conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute, an independent research think tank and cited by the Economist magazine, some 45% of Israeli Jews opposed a prisoner swap, while 40% supported it.

There is also predictable criticism from Israel’s far right with national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir among others calling it a “very, very big mistake”.

Even the Israeli war cabinet appears split on the move with some wanting to continue negotiating while others thought Israel should push on unhindered with its ground assault and wait for Hamas to soften its position. Netanyahu, it seems, failed to come down on either side, another indication perhaps of the fine line he treads within his coalition government that depends on the support of the far right.

It’s precisely this kind of perceived prevarication and passing the buck by the Israeli leader on which sections of the country’s press have pounced in their unrelenting and swingeing criticism of Netanyahu.

Writing in the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz last week following a press conference by Netanyahu’s war cabinet, columnist Anshel Pfeffer was among others pulling no punches.

“With their matching black shirts and grey faces, three tired men – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and lawmaker Benny Gantz

– looked like a particularly pathetic tribute band, unaware of their ironic performance,” observed Pfeffer.

“All three failed the audition. If there is a leader in Israel who can lead us from the abyss into broad, sunlit uplands, they were not on stage on Saturday night at the Israel Defence Forces’ headquarters in Tel Aviv,” Pfeffer concluded.

If the words coming from Netanyahu are anything to go by, then the next round of the military campaign is only a hostility pause and hostage detainee exchange away.

Next in the crosshairs of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) after their onslaught on the north of the enclave and Gaza city would appear to be south of the coastal strip.

For despite more than 13,000 Palestinian deaths and an escalating humanitarian crisis, Israel’s objectives of destroying Hamas and liberating hostages have yet to be achieved.

Primary objective

NETANYAHU knows he has a diminishing window of opportunity to “solve the Hamas problem” – his primary objective. With the IDF operation switching its focus to southern Gaza, it has warned Gazans not to treat the pause as a return to normal.

To make that very point, shortly before the truce began, the military dropped leaflets and sent voice texts saying that “the war is not over” and forbidding those who had fled south to try to return to their homes in the north.

Reports cited by the New York Times (NYT) described how some Palestinians who had fled northern Gaza tried to return on foot to their homes but were fired upon by Israeli forces on the ground, according to witnesses, an Egyptian official and some of those injured.

The Israeli military would not answer questions from the NYT about whether its forces shot and killed Palestinians trying to go back to their homes.

It said its forces were “stationed along the designated operational lines of the pause” in accordance with the agreement.

Meanwhile, statements from a number of senior Israeli officials appear to echo those of Netanyahu that a comprehensive military achievement will not be possible without addressing the south of Gaza.

It’s estimated that more than one million desperate Gazans have fled to the south, with more than half packed into teeming shelters run by the UN, where 160 people share each toilet and 700 people must use each shower.

Skin diseases, diarrhoea and dysentery are rife.

It is most likely the IDF will repeat the strategy it adopted in the north, carving up the area into military targets especially around Khan Younis where some Israeli military officials believe senior Hamas leaders are hiding, including top political leader Yahya Sinwar, who was born in the area.

Such an operation, however, could take weeks or even months and faces two main challenges. The first of these is that what remains of Hamas’s military infrastructure is concentrated here and second, nearly two million people are crammed into the south of Gaza.

Israel’s plans for those Palestinians who have fled the battle zones of the north include creating a vast tent city for the displaced among the sandy fields of Al-Mawasi, on the coast just north of the Gazan border with Egypt.

If such a scenario unfolds it will resonate powerfully with many Palestinians conscious of the fact that much of Gaza’s present-day population is descended from refugees who lived in tents after their expulsion from Israel in 1948.

Crammed as they have been into the whole of Gaza itself, the prospect of a vast swathe of the population now being forced into an even smaller area defined by Israel as about 1.6 miles wide at its widest and 2.5 miles long has appalled many international officials.

“It’s a tiny piece of land,” Juliette Touma, director of communications for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNWRA) told the BBC.

“There’s nothing there. It’s just sand dunes and palm trees.”

Many other UN agencies and humanitarian organisations involved in aiding Palestinian civilians are also unhappy with Israel’s proposals for such a “safe zone”.

Without mentioning Al-Mawasi by name, a November 16 joint statement by a number of such bodies warned that Israel’s unilateral proposals could put many lives at risk.

“A recipe for disaster,” was how one of the signatories, Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organisation, described the plans.

Faced with such images of yet more Palestinian suffering making the headlines, Netanyahu and his government will doubtless be conscious of the time constraints on how long the international community might tolerate such a scenario before pressure is brought to bear on Israel.

Yahya Sinwar, head of Hamas

Timing crucial

Writing in the Washington Post last week, reporter and columnist David Ignatius highlighted how time is a crucial factor here for all concerned.

“Israeli commanders view this war as a series of clocks, all running at different speeds.

“The Israeli military has its clock to destroy Hamas, which has several months to run but might need to be adjusted; Hamas has a survival clock, which it would like to extend as long as possible; and the United States and Western allies have a clock of patience that appeared this week to have nearly run out,” Ignatius opined.

In short, the more the international community, especially the Biden administration, objects to the kind of scenario looming in southern Gaza along with Netanyahu’s refusal to lay out any post-conflict thinking, the more a showdown between Israel and Washington looks likely.

Biden, of course, also has one eye on his domestic political stage with a presidential election looming next year in America.

As Amos Harel of the Israeli daily Haaretz put it bluntly a few days ago, in the background is “Washington’s growing unease in the face of the criticism from young, progressive Democratic voters over Biden’s support for Israel … among the radical left he’s being dubbed Genocide Joe”.

Harel, who is one of Israel’s leading media experts on military and defence issues, also highlighted another problem “unnerving” Washington, this time in the West Bank.

He points to the fact that the reassignment of Israel’ 900th “Kfir” Brigade, the youngest and largest infantry brigade to Gaza, leaves mainly reservists in the West Bank, along with the Border Police.

In many of these reserve units, says Harel, there is a prominent presence of settlers, joining a reinforced system of territorial defence drawn almost entirely from Israelis in the West Bank who have been issued with weapons by the National Security Ministry. “The result now is that far-right activists from the settler outposts are in possession of IDF-issue firearms, are ostensibly becoming part of the defence structure and are dragging the army into demonstrating a tough line, to the point of abuse, toward Palestinians,” says Harel.

He adds that the number of checkpoints and road barriers in the West Bank is the highest since Operation Defensive Shield in 2002 which was carried out amid the Second Intifada. Lasting for just over a month, Defensive Shield was the largest combat operation in the West Bank since the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.

Now, today, at many of these West Bank checkpoints, Israeli soldiers are reportedly systematically harassing members of the Palestinian Authority (PA) security units who pass through, which frequently takes the form of beatings and other abuse.

Not listening?

WASHINGTON, it seems, has called on Israel to rein in such activities, including violence from the settlers. Little heed has been taken, however, in part because among Netanyahu’s far-right government members are many settlers and their supporters.

The dangers of such a combustible mix are obvious, giving rise to fears of a potential “second front” in the West Bank alongside what is happening in Gaza.

This weekend, with the glimmer of good news that hostages and detainees are being released, a few days of comparative calm will likely give the world a more detailed picture of the humanitarian disaster in Gaza, which will only add to the brewing international outcry. Over time it’s possible that the result will be more concentrated pressure on Israel to refrain from a sweeping move in the south.

But for the moment, though, given the overtures coming from Netanyahu and those egging him on from Israel’s far right, the prospect of a lasting truce is overshadowed by what many analysts believe will be the next intensive phase of this war.

With both Israel and Gaza having suffered agonising events these past weeks, the signs sadly point to the bloodletting being far from over.

This weekend’s brief respite from war is more than welcome not least for those hostages on their way home and the millions of Gazans still living under its shadow.

But waging the struggle for a lasting ceasefire and peace is only just beginning and it remains a long way off yet.