War in Gaza, Israel’s vision | Israel-Palestine conflict news

As the war in Gaza approaches eight months of violence, Israel’s support for the campaign is waning.

Columns in The Jerusalem Post talk about compassion fatigue while on the outskirts of Gazareservists tell American journalists about the toll relentless violence has taken.

None of this concern, or compassion fatigue, extends to the more than 36,000 Palestinians killed so far.

“I believe the Israeli public’s support for the war may be waning,” Shai Parnes said by phone from Jerusalem, “but probably not for the reasons you are thinking.”

War fatigue for a divided people

Parnes, spokesperson for the Israeli NGO B’Tselemwhich documents human rights abuses in Palestine, spoke about an unstable connection about constant pain in Israeli society due to the absence of prisoners taken to Gaza on October 7, the economic cost of the war and the cost of reservists who interrupted their jobs or studies several times to wage war in a besieged enclave that is now largely rubble.

The total military and civil cost of the war for Israel is predicted to be 253 billion shekels ($67 billion) between the years 2023 and 2025, said Bank of Israel Governor Amir Yaron. warned at a conference at the end of May.

Among reservists, who have been denied any date for the end of the conflict, support for the war remains, even as the exhaustion of lives subject to endless interruptions begins to manifest itself.

“I really want to know what the end will be,” said Lia Golan, 24, a reserve tank instructor and student at Tel Aviv University. Washington Post this week. “And no one has told us what that point is.”

Golan described the emotional impact of the unknown fate of Israeli captives, dead soldiers and displaced Israeli citizens. At no point did she mention the dead and displaced Palestinians.

If the military does not govern Gaza, “everything will always come back,” Yechezkal Garmiza, 38, a reserve soldier in the Givati ​​Brigade, told the Post.

“We need to finish the job,” he said – a reflection of the broad yet carefully curated consensus that exists across Israeli media.

In Tel Aviv, the urgency of protests demanding the return of captives is growing.

This week, tens of thousands of people pressured Democracy Square and other locations across the country to demand the release of captives and the resignation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

However, calls for the return of captives and criticism of the government are not the same as a demand to stop the war. Public support for the conflict is strong, although sharply divided along political lines, voting conducted by the Pew Research Center from March to April showed.

The roots behind much of this division were recently highlighted in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which highlighted in two articles the strict controls imposed by Israeli censorship on the information that Israeli citizens are and are not allowed access to.

Any information deemed “sensitive,” including everything from the reasons behind the continued detention of Palestinians caught in Israeli police nets to the intimidation campaign against a former International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor, is withheld by law from the Israeli public. . .

In recent weeks, a request by the current ICC prosecutor for arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, was rejected by most Israeli politicians and media outlets as “new anti-Semitism,” according to Parnes.

Likewise, the decisions of Ireland, Norway and Spain to recognize Palestine can be dismissed as a rejection of Israel rather than its actions.

Apart from official protests that Israel is being singled out, the country has not influenced public opinion, particularly in favor of war.

“If you asked me what the mood was like two weeks ago, before all these things happened, my answer would be the same: support for the war may be decreasing… not for humanitarian reasons, but for personal and direct reasons,” Parnes said. .

More recent initiatives, such as a peace plan announced by US President Joe Biden after the Parnes interview – framed as an Israeli proposal – have also served to divide and undermine public enthusiasm for a war that appears to many to have no end. .

Israel launched its war against Gaza on October 7, after a Hamas-led incursion into its territory killed 1,139 people and took more than 200 captives.

Since then, Israeli attacks on the small strip of land have killed more than 36,000 Palestinians, injured more than 81,000 and destroyed any sense of normality among a battered and traumatized population.

“The Israeli government is leading its country to commit crimes of magnitudes that are difficult to [comprehend] and even continues to abandon his hostages,” said Parnes.

Last week, Israeli National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegbi told Kan public radio that he expected another seven months of war if Israel destroyed Hamas and the smaller Palestinian Islamic Jihad group in Gaza.

“The majority of Israelis want to see the hostages returned and do not support endless military operations in Gaza,” Eyal Lurie-Pardes of the Middle East Institute told Al Jazeera last week.

Divided politicians

Within Israel, seemingly irreconcilable views on the fate of the captives and the future of Gaza divide both politicians and the public, pushing an end to the fighting beyond reach.

The gulf between the two sides widened further on Friday when Biden announced the peace proposal he claimed came from Israel.

Instead of unifying, the proposal was divided.

Far-right cabinet members Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich threatened to rebel against any suggestion of stopping the fighting.

Netanyahu’s rival and supposed centrist Benny Gantz has spoken warmly of the deal and has already threatened to abandon the three-man war cabinet he sits in with Netanyahu and Gallant if no plan for Gaza outside the conflict is agreed.

“In mid-May, Gantz threatened to leave the cabinet by June 8 if no plan was presented,” Lurie-Pardes said. “However, that date is approaching and we are still waiting.”

While the current peace proposal may be reason to postpone that threat, it is unlikely that any plan for the future of Gaza will satisfy Gantz and his supporters or the Smotrich-Ben-Gvir camp, who are open in their ambitions to colonize the enclave.

In the short term, opposition leader Yair Lapid has promised to support Netanyahu in parliament on the peace plan, but it is not open support for the prime minister, as Lapid has also signaled his intention to form an alternative government.

Last week, Lapid met with politicians Avigdor Lieberman and Gideon Sa’ar to plan a rival government, which they urged Gantz to join.

All these maneuvers and divisions will have little or no impact on those who die in Gaza, said Mairav ​​Zonszein of the International Crisis Group.

“There is no political will to stop the fighting. Lieberman and Sa’ar are both far right. It is unlikely that they will stop the war.

“Gantz is unlikely to offer a real alternative to the current approach, other than to operate in a way that is more acceptable to the US,” she said.

“Public confidence in Israel’s war aims may be waning, but people still struggle to see an alternative to fighting,”

Endless war?

“At first glance, Israel’s war aims – to destroy Hamas, both as a military and government force, and to return the hostages – were simple,” Lurie-Pardes said.

However, he continued, those goals are not likely to come to fruition without a political solution for a Gaza administration, and Netanyahu cannot offer that without risking his coalition, which depends on the far right.

Netanyahu is also suspected by many analysts of prolonging the war for personal purposes, namely to remain in office while he is on trial on corruption charges.

“All Netanyahu needs to do,” said Lurie-Pardes, “is maintain his coalition through the next two months of the Knesset’s summer session. If he manages to do so, we will not have elections before March 2025 due to the different requirements of electoral laws in Israel.”

For those trapped in Gaza, March will be a long way off, if they survive.