Since the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reluctantly signed up for a multi-phase ceasefire with Hamas in January, he did not hide his disgust for his conditions. In the early hours of Tuesday, he brought the fragile peace it had allowed to end.
While Gazans slept, the Israeli soldiers have launched massive strikes on the coastal enclave, kill more than 400 Palestinians in one of the deadliest days in the territory since the first weeks of the 17 -month war.
The renewed offensive was praised by the extreme right allies Netanyahu It depends on his survival, strengthening his coalition when he faces the growing pressure on scandals and security failures that allowed the attack on the Palestinian militant group of Hamas on October 7, 2023.
But that also attracted the anger of hostage families who were still held in Gaza, deepen the humanitarian disaster in the enclave and caused accusations of his opponents that he acted by political rather than national considerations.
“Netanyahu has a personal interest that war continues,” said Itamar Yaar, former deputy chief of the Israeli National Security Council. “He has no sense of urgency to stop him.”
The initial agreement that Israel recorded in January in January envisaged a three -step process. Hamas would gradually release the Israeli hostages which it holds in Gaza, in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners and a truce which would ultimately lead to a complete Israeli withdrawal from the enclave and a permanent end to hostilities.
But in recent weeks, Netanyahu, embarked by the support of US President Donald Trump, has rejected the end of the war and withdrawing the enclave troops, seeking to design a new arrangement instead. Under the terms proposed, a significant number of hostages would be published earlier than expected in exchange for an extension of the truce of several weeks, but without guarantee of a permanent end in the war – terms Hamas rejected.
Israeli officials said on Tuesday that they could stop the new offensive in Gaza if Hamas accepted their requests, and people familiar with the situation said that the mediators were committed to both the hope of preventing a resumption of large -scale hostilities.
But Israeli officials clearly indicated that they were prepared for this if the militant group refused to concede to their requests. “If Hamas really returns to the negotiating table, it will stop. Otherwise, it will continue,” said one.
The initial assault of Israel against Gaza, which he launched in response to the attack on Hamas, on October 7, 2023 – during which activists killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials, and took 250 hostages – was his most intensive in the history of the Israeli -Palestinian conflict.
But despite the extent of the offensive – which killed more than 48,000 people, according to Palestinian officials, and has reduced most Gaza to uninhabitable rubble – Israel has not yet achieved one of its war objectives: the release of all hostages and destruction of Hamas.
Yaakov Amidror, a former national security adviser from Netanyahu, argued that if Israel was embarking on a renewed offensive on the ground, he was now able to deploy more forces in Gaza longer than at the start of the war, because he had succeeded in weakening other enemies such as the militant Lebulais, Hizbollah group.
“Previously, we did not have enough forces to take control and eliminate the areas [we took in Gaza]”Said Amidror, a member of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America in Washington.” We killed those who were there. But we retired later. Here we have to opt for an operation in which we will stay longer. »»
However, the criticisms of Netanyahu argued that the moment of the renewed offensive concerned less the military considerations, and more on domestic policy.
For months, the Prime Minister was under pressure from his extreme right allies to resume the fighting. Former Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir withdrew his ultralationalist party from the Jewish power of the coalition to protest against the ceasefire agreement in January, and the Minister of Finance, Bezalel Smotrich, threatened to follow.
But the renewed aggression changed the political equation, Ben-Gvir announcing on Tuesday that he joined Netanyahu’s coalition. Analysts also argued that smotrich threats were now unlikely to materialize.
Opposition politicians affirmed that strikes were an effort to distract the attention of a growing storm in Netanyahu to dismiss the head of Israel national intelligence agency. “Soldiers on the front line and the hostages in Gaza are only cards [Netanyahu’s] Game of Survival, ”wrote Yair Golan, leader of the leftist Labor Party on X.
The renewed operations of Israel attracted a fierce reaction to the old hostages and relatives of those who are always detained in Gaza, who warned that the offensive endangered the lives of about 25 captives that were still alive.
“And those who were left behind?” Liri Albag, one of the hostages released earlier this year, wrote on Instagram.
“Again, their fate is played with it,” she wrote. “Once again, their life is risky instead of being saved. Again, their hopes are erased. Again, their life has become a tool for a game instead of something that must be protected at all costs.”
Analysts said there was also a risk that the renewed offensive could ignite the occupied West Bank tensions, which, despite the war in Gaza, remained relatively calm during the fighting. Following the strikes of Israel on Tuesday, Hamas called the Palestinians on the territory to get up in response to the Israeli assault on Gaza.
“At least for the moment, the IDF controls the situation [in the West Bank]”Said Yaar.” But no insurance company would be [guarantee you] That this will be exactly the case in the near future. »»
