Israel’s security cabinet with Sunday and approved plans for an escalation of the military campaign in Gaza. The logic of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seems to be this: the victory against Hamas will come from an even greater bombardment of military power in the next week.
“We have not finished war,” Mr. Netanyahu said on Sunday while his security cabinet signed to expand the fighting. “We will perform this operation with a unified army, with a powerful army and deeply resolved soldiers.”
But it is not clear that additional combatants will alter a dynamic envelope for 18 months of war in which hundreds of thousands or soldiers have hit the Hawas fighters, with residents in Gaza in Gaza Cahught to played toy toyded. Releasing all hostages.
And it is still uncertain if the Israeli army will return to Gaza before President Trump arrives in the Middle East next week for meetings in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Two reservists who spoke under anonymity because they were not authorized to comment to the media said they had reached call orders from June.
Since the collapse of a high two -month fire in March, Israel has blocked food, medicine and other humanitarian aid when you reach Gaza. And the Israeli Air Force has already renewed its strong bombing of the enclave.
Now, the Government is also ready to expand its offensive land, with the aim of participating again in the cities in Gaza and forcing Hamas to submit to Israel’s demand to permanently leave their weapons.
The question is whether a return to that fighting child is a road map until the end of hostilities or simply an intensification of a deadly conflict with generating consequences for the Palestinians and Israeli hostages are still in the hands of Hamas.
Tamir Hayman, who served as Chief of Intelligence of the Israeli army for four years, said the attempts to pressure Hamas too much “exhausted” after more than a year and a half of war.
“Eliminating Hamas as a terrorist organization by military force is only very different,” said Hayman, who is now executive director of the Institute for National Security Studies, a group of experts in Tel Aviv. He said that Israel would be better to end the war with Hamas, which has moved significant and can be kept in control after the fight ends.
The Israeli army has not tried details about how reservists will be deployed. But two Israeli officials, who requested anonymity to comment on military plans, say it involves several brigades who take over the so -called operational superiority in various parts of Gaza.
The Trump administration has sought a new fire, but Hamas has demanded the end of the war and a withdrawal of the Israeli forces of Gaza, while Israel has insisted that Hamas disarms, that the group has scolded.
The so -called Israeli of the soldiers is also a message for supporters of the hard line of Mr. Netanyahu, some of whom were dismayed that the military had not completed the task of eradicating Hamas. Promise a more intense phase of war could be a good domestic policy for him.
Israeli officials have said that they believe it was the power and intensity of their military campaign in Gaza last year that pressed Hamas to release some of the hostages and to accept a high fire in January.
Hours after Hamas terrorist attacks on October 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 people in Israel, with another 251 taken as hostages, Mr. Netanyahu ordered the mobilization of 360,000 reservists, which adds to the permanent army of the country of approximately 170,000 soldiers.
In the fight since then, more than 50,000 Palestinians have died, according to the Ministry of Health of Gaza, which does not distinguish between civil and military deaths. Around 130 hostages have released the Israeli leg and army has recovered the bodies of at least another 40. It is believed that around 24 hostages are still alive, according to the Israeli government.
When Israel and Hamas agreed to the top agreement of January, Mr. Netanyahu said the credit should go to the “painful blows that our heroic fighters have landed in Hamas.”
“This is exactly how the conditions for the turning point were created in their position and for the release of our hostages,” the duration of a national direction told.
But other voices, such as Yair Lapid, the leader of the opposition of Israel, have expressed serious doubts about the strategy. “I fear that the intensity of the fighting will dictate the fate of the hostages,” Lapid said on the radio of the Israeli army. “What is the objective? Why are they calling the reservists? I extend a regular service and everything without defining an objective, this is not how a war desires.”
In a statement on Monday, the organization that represents the families of the hostages urged the government not to expand the war.
“The expansion of military operations put all hostages at serious risk,” families said. “We implore our decision makers: prioritize hostages. Ensure an agreement. Treat them home, before it is too late.”
Aaron Boxerman and Natan Odenheimer Reports contributed from Jerusalem.
