Just how far is Israel willing to go in reoccupying Gaza?

JERUSALEM – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet voted unanimously Sunday night to begin seizing and holding swaths of Gaza, clarifying a decision about a new direction in military strategy but sharpening the looming, unresolved question of whether Israel is inching toward the long-term reoccupation of the Gaza Strip.

The newly authorized plan, which requires tens of thousands of reservists to be called up in the coming weeks, would see the Israel Defense Forces gradually enter tracts of northern and southern Gaza and stay there indefinitely, Israeli officials said Monday. Civilians in those areas would be evacuated to other areas secured by the IDF, while Israeli forces would remain long-term to root out Hamas fighters and destroy their tunnels.

The IDF “will not enter and then withdraw,” only returning to carry out commando raids as in the past, Netanyahu said in a video statement Monday. “We’re not doing that anymore – that’s not the intention. The intention is the opposite.”

But Netanyahu left open the issue of whether the plan set Israel on a course to conquer outright or administer the entire strip. That has been a long-standing demand of not just Netanyahu’s far-right political allies, who hope to expel 1.7 million Palestinian residents to other countries and reintroduce Jewish settlement, but also an idea favored by military hard-liners, who argue a complete takeover of Gaza and an extended counterinsurgency operation is needed to eliminate Hamas.

“The implications could be a drift, without any formal decision, into a de facto situation of occupying the Gaza Strip and taking responsibility for the fate of 2 million Palestinians, with all the consequences that entails, both for Israel’s international standing, its economic situation, and for the IDF,” said Ofer Shelah, a former lawmaker and researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. “The IDF can always withdraw – as has happened before – but the chances of such an agreement are decreasing.”

For months, Israeli leaders have debated the option of launching a full-scale conquest of Gaza that would require at least 60,000 troops, according to a former official directly involved in the planning. But some military commanders resisted that scenario, saying the IDF lacks the personnel to conquer and control all of Gaza, and a full-scale invasion would risk the lives of the 21 remaining Israeli hostages, the ex-official said.

The plan approved Sunday was more limited and represents a gradual approach that would require far fewer than 60,000 soldiers and stop short of seizing the entire strip, said current and former Israeli officials familiar with the plan. Officials in Netanyahu’s government argued the new strategy would steadily ramp up pressure on Hamas without foreclosing on the possibility of further negotiations to release additional hostages – a politically explosive issue in Israel.

But Netanyahu’s powerful finance minister, the settler leader Bezalel Smotrich, said there would be no turning back even if Hamas returned hostages. One aim of the war, he added, should be annexing Gaza.

There will be “no retreat from the territories we have conquered, not even in exchange for hostages,” he told a conference Monday. “Once we stay in Gaza, we can talk about (declaring) sovereignty.”

Immediately, opposition leaders warned that the new strategy was paving the way for the annexation of Gaza advocated by Smotrich and his far-right ally, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, whose support Netanyahu needs to prevent his coalition from collapsing.

“This is no longer a temporary operation but a move that prepares for a permanent presence in the area, part of making Ben Gvir and Smotrich’s fantasies into reality,” said Yair Golan, the leader of the left-leaning Democrats party and a retired IDF general. “The de facto occupation of the Gaza Strip in the name of ‘survival of the government’ will cost us blood – in the lives of the hostages, in soldiers’ lives, through exhaustion and most importantly through losing our way.”