Deadly Israeli barrage shatters Gaza ceasefire, but Israel divided on war
| Tel Aviv, Israel
Tomas Visok, like many Israelis a reservist with long service in Gaza, awoke Tuesday to the news that Israel had launched surprise airstrikes across the Gaza Strip just hours earlier.
The attack shattered 42 days of a ceasefire he had hoped would hold.
On the radio, a steady stream of updates was coming through. More than 300 Palestinians had been killed, including many women and children, as well as a few Hamas leaders. The number later rose to over 400. Israel was reopening public bomb shelters, bracing for possible reprisals.
Why We Wrote This
After Hamas’ horrific Oct. 7 attack, Israelis mobilized almost without reservation for war, and sacrifice. But the airstrikes that killed hundreds in Gaza find many in Israel exhausted by the war and suspicious of their leaders’ motivations.
Mr. Visok, who immigrated to Israel from Argentina five years ago, has done 150 days of military reserve duty during the war, most of them fighting inside Gaza. He wonders aloud if all Israel’s reservists would show up to fight again if the airstrikes broaden into a ground invasion.
When Hamas-led forces broke through Israel’s border with Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, in a surprise attack that killed 1,200 people, Israelis rushed in a unified front to defend the country.
Nothing less than national survival was at stake, they said. Sacrifice was warranted to defeat Hamas and free the 251 hostages.
But almost a year and a half later, mentally and emotionally exhausted and fearful for the lives of the some 24 remaining hostages believed to still be alive in Gaza, Israelis are much less unified in support of returning to war. Many openly question Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s motivations in breaking the truce.
“I think there are many reservists who won’t come,” says Mr. Visok. “After 200 or more days of reserve duty, it’s hard to go, especially if you have children.
“At the beginning everyone understood the situation, and we showed up with all of our hearts. ... I personally would go if needed, but the situation is really hard, especially for those with families. There are children who barely know their fathers after this past year.”
By the time Mr. Netanyahu ordered the renewed airstrikes late Monday, ceasefire and hostage deal negotiations had been in crisis for weeks.
The talks were stalled over Hamas’ refusal to hand over more live hostages in the near term beyond the one remaining live U.S. citizen, and Israel’s refusal to withdraw its troops from Gaza, as it committed itself to doing, including from the Philadelphi route along Gaza’s border with Egypt.
“Israel will, from now on, act against Hamas with increasing military strength,” Mr. Netanyahu’s office said in a statement. The attacks reportedly were given a green light from the White House, perhaps also informed by a statement Monday night from Defense Minister Israel Katz accusing Hamas of planning new raids into Israel’s border communities.
“No real public consensus”
The massive airstrikes made Tuesday one of the deadliest days in Gaza since the war began, a war in which tens of thousands of Gazans have been killed. It’s not clear what will follow, but Israel’s newly appointed military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, is considered a more hawkish partner to Mr. Netanyahu than his predecessor and has been vocal about plans for a broader assault if needed.
“This would again require a large-scale reserve call-up – for the first time under conditions where there is no real public consensus on the justification for returning to war,” wrote Amos Harel in the left-wing Haaretz newspaper Tuesday.
The decision to strike Gaza follows Mr. Netanyahu’s announcement of his dramatic and highly controversial plan to fire Ronen Bar, the head of the Shin Bet, Israel’s vaunted internal security service. The move, seen as another Netanyahu maneuver to ensure his political survival, sent shock waves across Israel. About 40,000 protested noisily against it Tuesday night in Tel Aviv, while calling to stop the war.
Amotz Asa-El, a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, a Jerusalem think tank, is among those who suspect Mr. Netanyahu is trying to fire Mr. Bar as a way to avoid taking responsibility for the government’s failure to prevent the Oct. 7 attack. The timing of the airstrikes, he suspects, is tied to trying to change the domestic political conversation.
“I think a critical mass of the public, certainly all of Netanyahu’s opponents, but many among his supporters, suspect he is acting out of personal considerations, out of fear [of losing power should the war end], and paranoia. It’s not a purely strategic set of considerations,” says Mr. Asa-El.
Among Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing base and some former military officials, there was enthusiasm for a return to using military pressure to reach the long-hoped-for goal of “total victory” over Hamas.
“The main issue is to break the negotiations deadlock,” Amos Yadlin, a retired general and former head of Military Intelligence, told journalists in a briefing.
He said there had been earnest efforts to push forward with talks, but said proposals by U.S. President Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, to break the impasse were rejected by Hamas.
“Israeli society will split along very expected political lines,” Mr. Asa-El observed, “and that alone is a big problem for Israel because Israel is fighting at its best when fully consensus-minded, and [average] Israelis have no doubt about their leaders’ impartiality. Until now the war was consensual, but now Netanyahu is tinkering with that concept.”
Noorit Felsenthal Berger, a Jerusalem psychologist, belongs to an organization of combat soldiers’ parents against the war. They sent an open letter Tuesday to the new chief of staff, urging him not to expand the fighting.
“We cannot go back to war after a year and a half when there is a ceasefire agreement to abide,” she says. “We cannot go back to war with the hostages still there in Gaza, abandoning all those young men, the soldiers and citizens.
“It is a death sentence for them and we cannot let our sons be part of it. We can’t let them get killed for this cause. The cause is the survival of the government.”
Fear for hostages
In Israel’s small, interconnected society, Oct. 7 continues to cause anguish while the hostages remain in Gaza. The first 50 were handed over in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners two months into the war, but only in January did more slowly begin to return. Some reported being starved and tortured in captivity, telling of others still alive and in the same conditions.
On Tuesday night, three recently returned hostages addressed a rally in Tel Aviv, pleading for the lives of those they left behind while demanding renewed negotiations.
But another group of hostage families aligned with the Netanyahu government said they supported resumed fighting. “The past weeks have proven what we have been saying all along – Hamas will never return all the hostages willingly,” they said in a statement. “Only massive military pressure, a complete blockade including cutting off electricity and water, and occupation of territories that will lead to Hamas’ collapse ... will return ALL the hostages together, in one stage.”
David, who asked to use only his first name, is a biotech worker in Tel Aviv who did 232 days of reserve duty during the war. He’s getting married Friday, and he and his fiancée are expecting their first child in June.
“If I trusted the leadership more, I could say we could know all other possibilities were exhausted and this is our last option,” he says by phone.
Yet, despite his misgivings about the government and preference to focus on his personal and professional life, he does see a role for force in pressuring Hamas.
“Everyone in my army unit would say that we are exhausted, and in many ways we feel we have had enough,” he says, “but I am pretty sure if we were called, we will come.”
