Why Israel must change its strategy soon

For the past two days, Israel has also been massively attacking southern Gaza - and is facing a headwind from the USA. Netanyahu cannot be indifferent to this. But he is finding it difficult to scale back his military forces.

Seven days of respite are over. Hamas has been firing rockets at Israel again since Saturday and the Gaza Strip is once again under attack, from the air and on the ground. Once again, films of shattered buildings, people buried under rubble, injured people in panic are circulating on the internet - only this time, and this shocks many, the images are from southern Gaza.

The southern Gaza Strip, from the center of the territory down to the border with Egypt, was previously considered the part of Gaza where the two million civilians could find refuge. This is where the Israeli military sent people via messenger messages and leaflets, and where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians moved, mostly on foot, in large refugee trains. Now, bystanders are also dying there as a result of Israeli bombs.

The Gaza Strip offers no real security anywhere

In the meantime, the army has extended its ground offensive to "the entire Gaza Strip", according to its own statements. Palestinian refugees report how they are now setting off for the second, some for the third or fourth time in search of protection, which at the end of the day may not really exist anywhere. After all, a coastal strip just 40 kilometers long, which has been tunneled under by one of the warring parties, cannot offer any real security anywhere as long as the fighting continues.

"Nevertheless, a distinction is made between sectors where the security risk is supposed to be relatively higher or lower," says Stephan Stetter, Middle East expert at the University of the Federal Armed Forces in Munich. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) are currently distributing flyers with a QR code that redirects to a website in Arabic. Here, the entire area of the coastal strip is visually divided into more than 620 sectors. However, the cell phone network in the Gaza Strip does not always work, so the site is not always accessible to everyone.

The IDF today named 27 areas to be evacuated, all of which are located in the south around the city of Khan Yunes, which is now coming under increased fire. Israel has designated a small coastal area around the town of Al-Mawasi as a "humanitarian zone" where people are to go from there. According to army spokesman Jonathan Conricus, the armed forces are "well aware that space and access are limited". This makes it all the more important that "international aid organizations help with the infrastructure of Al-Mawasi".

Internationally, more and more voices are calling on Israel to protect the population of Gaza more effectively than is currently the case. These include French President Emmanuel Macron and, today, US Vice President Kamala Harris. "Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed," she said in Dubai on the sidelines of the climate conference. Lloyd Austin, the US Secretary of Defense, warned that a war in "urban areas" can only be won by protecting civilians.

Two critical voices that are very important for Israel, as the United States is by far its most important international partner. In Washington, the clock is ticking, measuring how much time Israel's armed forces have left to weaken Hamas' military strength and dismantle its command structures to such an extent that it would no longer be able to act. If the USA were to say "stop" at some point, Israel would almost certainly have to end its defensive strike.

Where should the people from the south flee to?

No stop signal has yet come from the White House, but statements like those from Harris and Austin must be taken very seriously by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "They will make it more difficult for Israel to act in the south of the Gaza Strip in the coming days in the same way as the troops did in the north," says Stetter. And where should the population flee from there?

Cairo still categorically rules out taking in Palestinian refugees. Stetter also sees such a step as a "major potential threat to the international situation". A movement of refugees from Gaza across the border to Egypt would immediately be interpreted by Arab states as a permanent expulsion of the Palestinians. "Against the backdrop of Palestinian history, especially the "Nakba" - as the Palestinians call the expulsion during the 1948 war - that would be very dangerous."

If civilian buildings in the south of the Gaza Strip were destroyed as badly as in the northern areas, reconstruction would be even more difficult. Stetter sees the international statements as a "warning at the tactical level". Israel can still continue its defensive strike after the one-week ceasefire with the approval of the USA. Arab countries such as Egypt and the United Arab Emirates are maintaining their diplomatic relations with Israel. Qatar and Saudi Arabia have also maintained their contacts to date. Israel therefore still has room for maneuver.

But the signal from Washington is clear: you can continue, but it has to be done in a different way militarily than in the north, namely in a more targeted and systematic way, with fewer civilian casualties. The humanitarian situation must not get completely out of control.

This puts the government and armed forces in a dilemma, because meeting the expectations of key partners would mean switching from massive bombardments to ground troops and special forces. And while massive bombing can be carried out without heavy casualties, "more targeted and systematic" means exposing Israeli soldiers in the field to greater risk. If the IDF had to report significantly more casualties in the coming weeks, this could become a domestic political problem. However, the greater the destruction and the higher the number of casualties in Gaza, the more difficult it could be to find a political solution after the war.

Deterrence to survive between enemies

From Israel's point of view, there is another point that speaks against Israel limiting the massiveness of its counter-attack, and that is its deterrent effect: surrounded by many enemies, deterrence is Israel's life insurance. The attack on October 7 showed the country to be weak and vulnerable in a way that hardly anyone thought possible. "That is why Israel is now very keen to rebuild its own deterrent force. From the point of view of many Israelis, the heavy destruction contributes to this," says Stetter. "At least that's what they hope for strategically".

In his view, the international warnings to Israel also focus on a second point. There is "a legitimate concern in many capitals that Israel is secretly pursuing war aims other than just the military destruction of Hamas". These goals could correspond to what the radical right-wing forces in the Israeli government want to achieve. In recent weeks, Netanyahu's coalition partners have been quoted as saying that one minister rejects any humanitarian aid for what he calls the "monsters from Gaza", while another would prefer to see the Gaza Strip depopulated - possibly with the use of a nuclear bomb.

Even if the radical right-wing party "Jewish Strength" is only a small partner in the governing coalition, nervousness is spreading internationally because the big partner, Netanyahu's Likud party, is not standing up to it and - despite pressure from the USA - has not even specified how it envisages the future of Gaza after the end of the war.

There has recently been talk of a "buffer zone" and, according to Stetter, this desire is certainly met with understanding in the West and, in secret, in some Arab states. But there is an urgent need to know how long this buffer zone would be intended for and how exactly it would function. When would the population, currently crammed together in the south, be able to return to their home areas? Who will build new homes from the rubble? "Israel's partners are asking themselves all these political questions, and the most important question is: what role will the Palestinian Authority play after the war?"

Does Israel see not only an economic but also a political perspective for Gaza and the West Bank? "There are many people in Israel who would be willing to provide answers to these questions," says Stetter. "It's just that most of them are not in the government right now."

The USA's patience is finite, even with Israel, even if it stands behind its right to self-defense without any ifs or buts. But if Netanyahu wants to secure the necessary support from Washington for his defensive strike, Israel's strategy will have to change visibly - in the government's statements and on the battlefield.