The reality of conquer and hold

Outrage always was certain to follow the announcement by Israel’s security cabinet on Monday local time of a dramatically changed strategy for Gaza, which has been summed up by a senior official as being to “conquer the Strip and hold the territory”. That is, effectively, to occupy it. But with Hamas obdurate in its unrelenting pursuit of terrorism and the destruction of the Jewish state and its people, and unwilling to release the 24 surviving hostages and 35 bodies of other hostages it is still holding, what alternative does Israel have but to pursue a different strategy in Gaza?

Hamas may be on its last legs in the war it launched with its October 7, 2023 slaughter of 1200 Jews. Its vile Iranian paymasters may be in no less trouble. But the reality is that the strategy Israel has used so far – of attacking Hamas strongholds and, to minimise casualties, then retreating – is not achieving the definitive annihilation of the terrorists that is needed to end the war and the suffering of Gaza’s people.

Hamas, as The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, is continuing to reinfiltrate and rebuild in areas of Gaza as soon as Israeli forces move on. The new “conquer and hold” strategy is aimed at putting an end to that. A major new offensive, for which tens of thousands of army reservists have been called up, will be aimed at taking and fully occupying most parts of Gaza for the foreseeable future – thereby overturning Israel’s longstanding strategy that followed its disengagement from the Strip in 2005 when Ariel Sharon was prime minister. The new strategy will entail moving most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people to areas in the south of the Strip cleared of Hamas terrorists and held by Israeli forces. Importantly, it also will involve Israel taking full control of the distribution of aid for Gaza’s people that currently is prey to Hamas hijackers who divert it for their own use. Unsurprisingly, the UN and non-government organisations operating in Gaza have been quick to condemn the new Israeli strategy. “It is dangerous, driving civilians into military zones to collect rations, threatening lives, including those of humanitarian workers, while further entrenching the forced displacement (of Gazans),” they said in a joint statement on Monday.

Such apprehensions are understandable and there can be no doubt about the scale of the military and humanitarian challenges that face Israel as it launches its new strategy ahead of Donald Trump’s much anticipated visit to the Middle East, beginning in Saudi Arabia on May 13. But Hamas’s intransigence and unwillingness to agree a ceasefire, much less to free the hostages, have left Israel with no alternative but to seek new ways to destroy the terrorist organisation. Blaming the Netanyahu government for the impasse over a ceasefire and the failure to gain the release of the hostages, as pressure groups in Israel do, is all very well. But it ignores the reality of Hamas’s unrelenting terrorism and the existential threat that poses to the Jewish state and its people.

It also fails to take into account the impact that the continuing war is having on remaining hopes for an eventual two-state solution to the crisis that will ensure Israel’s security as well as fulfil Palestinian ambitions for statehood. It is imperative that in launching its new occupation strategy in Gaza, the Netanyahu government does not lose sight of the importance of achieving an eventual political solution to the crisis. A spokesman for Mr Trump’s National Security Council got it right on Monday when he blamed Hamas for the continuing conflict and Israel’s resort to occupation as a strategy. No less responsible, however, are supine Arab states that have failed to put the pressure needed on Hamas to release the hostages and end the war. Mr Trump, when he meets leaders of the Arab world in Saudi Arabia, must remind them of that failure.