After killing more than 42,000 Palestinians in just over 12 months of fighting in Gaza, many of the reasons Israel gave for starting the conflict remain unfulfilled, analysts tell Al Jazeera.
Its internal security appears even more precarious than when it began fighting on October 7, the day of a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel during which 1,139 people were killed and some 250 taken captive.
Israel claimed Thursday that it had killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, accused of planning the Oct. 7 attack, a man it had long said was the root of all evil. But instead of talking about a ceasefire and negotiating the return of captives, Israel appeared to become even more belligerent.
הרמטכ״ל: ״לא נעצור עד שנתפוס את כל המחבלים שהיו מעורבים ב-7/10 ת כל החטופים הביתה״ pic.twitter.com/40aG1MnUqF
— צבא ההגנה לישראל (@idfonline) October 17, 2024
Translation: The chief of staff: “We will not stop until we catch all the terrorists who were involved in July 10 and return all those kidnapped home.”
the fronts
Israel launched military strikes on one and then a second front after the October 7, 2023 attacks.
It began with Gaza, launching a war in the besieged enclave that, after more than 12 months of fighting, has achieved little more than the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians.
Increasingly, he finds himself returning to areas he had previously declared clear, claiming that Hamas fighters he had declared eliminated had regrouped.
On October 8, 2023, the Lebanese group Hezbollah began an exchange of cross-border fire with Israel, targeting Israeli military targets to pressure it to stop the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza.
Israel responded to Hezbollah attacks with airstrikes against civilian areas, often claiming after the attack that it had “targeted hidden Hezbollah assets,” an excuse it has often used in Gaza after it killed hundreds of people in attacks. which, according to what he declared, were aimed at one of them. “Hamas Commander.”
While fighting, Israel seemed strangely in thrall to war as a concept.
For many Israelis, Ori Goldberg, a Tel Aviv-based analyst, said that over the past 12 months, war had become part of Israel's existence.
“People believe war is necessary,” he said. “We believe it with passion, although we no longer know why or for what purpose. We simply know that, whatever the problem, war is the solution.”
Meanwhile, 12 months of bloody attacks on Gaza and, more recently, Lebanon have led to deeper social changes in Israel, exacerbating long-standing divisions and creating chasms in a society that Israeli academics say may be on the brink of collapse.
rising tides
Last year upended Israeli politics with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's formation of a coalition cabinet in the wake of October 7, 2023, exacerbating the rise of right-wing elements in Israeli politics. These factions were already emboldened by the leading role they had played in a campaign to push for judicial reform that would limit legal oversight of government policy and parliamentary legislation.
In the new body, relative political newcomers such as far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and ultra-Zionist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich acted in tandem, giving themselves an effective veto over Israeli policy and, as a result, a huge voice in the national conversation.
Under the pretext of the need to recover captives in Gaza, the objectives of both ministers and their growing electorate – which leans more towards expansionism in Palestinian lands – have progressed significantly.
In the past year, Israel's internal security apparatus, which has responsibility for policing the entire country, has become almost a direct extension of its minister, Ben-Gvir.
Appointing hardline Deputy Commissioner Daniel Levy as police chief in August, Ben-Gvir praised him as someone “with a Zionist and Jewish agenda” who “will lead the police according to the policy that I have set for him.”
These policies are understood to include Ben-Gvir's plan to establish a voluntary “national guard” to be deployed in the face of Palestinian unrest resulting from land grabs, armed incursions and the general subjugation of Palestinians in their own country by of Israel.
In the occupied West Bank, Ben-Gvir's ideological brother and fellow settler, Smotrich, now has unparalleled power over construction, with the right to seize Palestinian land for Israeli settlements, in contravention of international law, and equal power to veto the Palestinian construction.
“Unbridled right” alienates Israelis
In response to both the Hamas attacks and the human and financial costs of waging war in Gaza, divisions have grown between what many Israelis consider their “rationalist” secular majority and what the Israeli newspaper Haaretz described as their “right-wing.” unbridled.” One analyst told Al Jazeera that Israel is closer than ever to civil conflict.
The implications of this are increasingly clear for many members of Israel's traditional secular elite, who, spurred by the rise of the far right, are quietly leaving the country, according to a report by two prominent Israeli academics.
Without citing specific figures, the authors suggested that the scale of the exodus was such that, due to the resulting loss of state revenue and the growing chasm in Israeli society, “there is an appreciable probability that Israel cannot exist as a sovereign Jewish state.” in Israel.” the coming decades,” said the document published in May by economist and professor Eugene Kandel and Ron Tzur, an authority on government administration.
'Great national scar'
Throughout the past year, the Hamas-led attacks of October 7 and the fate of the captives have been the dividing line. Recapturing the captives continues to worry Israelis and provoke the largest demonstrations of the war so far.
“I don't think the pain, humiliation and anger of October 7 has really gone away,” former Israeli ambassador and government adviser Alon Pinkas told Al Jazeera.
“There have been brief pauses, such as the one that followed the murder of [Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah, but… October 7 and the absence of the hostages have created a great national scar, the extent of which we still do not really understand.
“It will last. “I don’t know how long, but it will last,” he said.
The cause has been co-opted by politicians from all shades of Israel's political spectrum, and the pain left by the captives' absence has been used to support the administration's ferocious military assault on Gaza.
And yet, despite an Israeli attack that defense analyst Hamze Attar says has reduced much of Hamas's capabilities, Hamas fighters continue to have an active military presence on the ground.
“Hamas's ability to organize another October 7th has been eliminated,” Attar said. “However, Hamas still has many fighters.”
Senior Hamas officials dismissed Israeli claims that the group has been destroyed as a military force and instead spoke of “new generations” recruited following Israeli attacks on Gaza camps, hospitals and residential areas.
“I know Israel claims to have killed between 14,000 and 22,000 of them, but they don't really know,” Attar said.
“The group is still carrying out well-coordinated and well-timed attacks against the Netzarim corridor. [the heavily fortified strip of land established by the Israeli military that bifurcates Gaza] as well as quickly retake areas that Israel has previously cleared,” he said.
Despite the assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in July – which international observers and captives' families said made the prospect of his return less likely – Hamas has strengths that Israel cannot overcome, Attar explained.
“Hamas's greatest strength lies in its capacity for civil government. Every time he takes out his bulldozers [to clear damage from Israeli assaults]; introduces the police, who restore stability; and produces all the infrastructure of the local government, they are contradicting an Israeli line and, I would say, undermining Israel's plans to separate Gaza into controllable islands,” he said.
Future
As Netanyahu continues to wage wars in Gaza and Lebanon, observers in Israel point with concern to what they describe as the increasingly “messianic” tilt of the hostilities.
“There is no plan, no strategy, nothing,” Pinkas said of his interactions with officials.
“Since the assassination of Nasrallah, Netanyahu has become full-blown messianic. On the one hand, it's really strange, but it also fits how he wants to see things… like a war of civilizations.
“He is in the UN [in September,] telling them that he is fighting his war. Before that, he was in [the United States Congress in July,] saying that he is fighting for his values.
“He sees himself as a kind of Churchill, fighting against Iran's ring of fire. This is not a man who is going to sue for peace, not until his failures of October 7 are eclipsed and he feels vindicated.
“It's completely crazy.”