The latest raid on al-Shifa hospital reveals that the Israeli military’s hold on the areas of Gaza supposedly cleared of Hamas militants is considerably more tenuous than the country’s political leaders have claimed – and suggests the region’s military superpower is facing its own “forever war” in the territory with enormous costs for everyone involved, particularly civilians.
The fighting around the Shifa hospital and its eventual seizure was the climactic moment of the first phase of Israel’s offensive in Gaza, launched last year after Hamas killed 1,200 and captured 250 people, mostly civilians, in a surprise raid on 7 October. There was bitter argument over whether the hospital’s buildings and basements had been used by Hamas as a covert command centre, as Israel claimed, but none over the strength of Israel’s control of the site when its soldiers moved in on 15 November.
Three months later, Monday’s raid is an implicit admission that this control seems to have slipped.
It is clear that Hamas is operating in parts of northern Gaza that were supposed to have been cleared by Israeli forces a long time ago. In February, there was fighting in Zeitoun, a neighbourhood of Gaza City, and al-Shati camp, further up the coast. There have even been clashes in Beit Hanoun, which was one of the first places overrun by Israeli forces at the very beginning of the war.
Three things are happening. One is that, though Hamas has sustained heavy casualties, it still has enough men under arms and sufficiently functional command systems to launch sporadic attacks on Israeli troops when circumstances are right. Its extensive tunnel system helps here. These cause little damage and few casualties but will add to pressure on Israel in any talks over a ceasefire and hostage for prisoner exchange. They will also help Hamas frame the conflict’s eventual outcome as a victory.
A second is that Israel has demobilised most of its reservists and transferred key regular units to its northern border or the occupied West Bank. The current phase of its offensive in Gaza involves targeted strikes and raids instead of massed confrontations. For economic and political reasons, Israel’s strategic planners had few options, but this means there are few troops permanently on the ground in northern Gaza. Most are confined to so-called ‘bastions’ on the outskirts of population centres or at strategic points such as road junctions.
The third is that war – like nature – abhors a vacuum. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has refused to discuss seriously any realistic plans for governing in Gaza after the war and is apparently content to allow swaths of the territory to slide into chaos in the weeks or months Israel achieves his stated war aim of “crushing” Hamas.
But others are filling the yawning governance gap. There are criminal gangs, major families with their own quasi-militia, informal neighbourhood committees set up by desperate civilians and, inevitably, Hamas. The militant Islamist organisation has run Gaza since 2007 and its structures, overt and covert, are deeply embedded. So too are its ideas.
This has not escaped even friends of Israel. The annual Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community, published last week, predicted that Israel “probably will face lingering armed resistance from Hamas for years to come, and the military will struggle to neutralise Hamas’s underground infrastructure, which allows insurgents to hide, regain strength, and surprise Israeli forces”.
There is now a situation of deadly stasis in Gaza. Neither the Israelis nor Hamas are likely to reach their ultimate objectives, however defined, anytime soon. A ceasefire could take many weeks or may not be possible at all. Meanwhile, more than 31,000 people have been killed in the Israeli offensive, mostly women and children, according to local health authorities, and famine looms.
Netanyahu has said that once Israel’s forces have destroyed their enemy’s forces in Rafah, the southernmost town in the territory and where more than a million displaced are sheltering, then the war will in effect be over. Benny Gantz, a member of Israel’s war cabinet, recently told US officials: “Ending the war without clearing out Rafah is like sending a firefighter to extinguish 80% of the fire.”
Monday’s raid on Shifa makes clear that, despite the grey ash and rubble across so much of the territory, the fire in Gaza is not fully extinguished anywhere.
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