As war in Gaza resumes, where does it go from here?
Daniel DePetris
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Regrettably for the people of Gaza, it was always a matter of when, not if, the war would resume. On Friday, that time arrived as Israeli aircraft continued bombing operations against Hamas infrastructure in the enclave after talks to extend a weeklong humanitarian truce broke down over a dispute about additional prisoner exchanges. Secretary of State Antony Blinken blamed Hamas for the breakdown, arguing that the terrorist group started sending rockets into Israel even before the pause was scheduled to expire. After it ended, the Israel Defense Forces didn’t miss a beat, hitting 200 terrorist targets in Gaza. The Hamas-run Health Ministry reports that approximately 100 people have been killed thus far.
For those who believed the short-lived truce would snowball into a broader ceasefire leading to a termination of the war, the resumption of the fighting comes as a significant disappointment. There was a hope, particularly in the minds of Qatari mediators, that a few days of calm would be able to whet the appetites of Israel and Hamas for more serious discussions about cutting the conflict short and perhaps even produce momentum for comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. There haven’t been any peace talks on a two-state solution in nearly a decade.
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Yet, while you couldn’t blame anybody for hoping for such an idealistic scenario, the ideal was delusional, grossly underestimating the pervasive difficulties of establishing such a dialogue in the current environment and ignoring what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has emphasized repeatedly over the last week: Once the truce expired, Israel would continue military operations in Gaza as if the previous week didn’t even happen. Indeed, Netanyahu probably wouldn’t be capable of stopping the war even if he wanted to; his coalition, which leans on extremist ministers who believe every Palestinian on the face of the Earth is a terrorist sympathizer, would bolt the government if the campaign to eradicate Hamas wasn’t renewed. Netanyahu was only able to sell the truce to his Cabinet after pledging that the war would eventually go on.
The collapse of the truce doesn’t mean the truce itself was ineffective. A few hiccups aside, both sides stuck with the terms. Hamas released 105 people from captivity, including 81 Israelis, while Israel released 210 Palestinian women and minors in return. There wasn’t any Israeli bombing in Gaza during the duration of the truce, and Israeli ground operations ceased. Hamas rocket fire into southern Israel was virtually nonexistent. Aid trucks into Gaza increased, and toward the end of the pause, about 200 trucks were crossing the Egypt-Gaza border daily (granted, the supply was still woefully inadequate to the demand). The biggest beneficiaries were the more than 2 million Gazans who would otherwise be stuck in the middle of a combat zone.
Alas, the respite is now over. The question now is: What comes next?
The answer to this is self-evident. The IDF will likely spend the next days and weeks consolidating its control over northern Gaza before it moves forces toward the south, where the bulk of Hamas’s leadership resides. Unfortunately for the IDF, this is also where the bulk of Gaza’s people are living (in large part due to Israel’s own evacuation orders). The Israelis will have to contend with an extremely difficult operating environment, made even more difficult by the fact that Palestinians who previously fled to the south on Israel’s own instructions are still being prevented from returning to the north.
Washington is watching very closely as to how Israel proceeds. Notwithstanding President Joe Biden’s public declarations of unconditional support for Israel, there’s no question the administration’s tone has shifted on how Israel is prosecuting the war. And for good reason: Far too many Palestinian civilians have been killed, entire neighborhoods in northern Gaza have been rendered uninhabitable, and the drip-drip-drip of humanitarian aid into the enclave simply isn’t enough given the immense need.
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Blinken delivered his most emphatic public statement on the need to take better care of civilians as Israel proceeds with its campaign. “I underscored the imperative to the United States that the massive loss of civilian life and displacement of the scale we saw in northern Gaza not be repeated in the south,” Blinken told a press conference after his meetings this week with the Israeli war Cabinet. “As I told the prime minister, intent matters, but so does the result.”
In short: The war is going to get a lot worse before it gets any better. And the longer the war goes on, the more likely the Biden administration’s position on the war will grate on the Israelis — and vice versa.
Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. His opinions are his own.