Israel laying groundwork for full occupation of Gaza, officials say

Israel controls more of Gaza than at any point during the war, part of a plan that officials increasingly describe as leading to a full military occupation.

Israel calculates this new strategy would improve its chances of definitively uprooting Iranian-backed Hamas. But taking control of the Palestinian enclave for the first time in two decades would be a high-stakes gamble.

Plans were drawn up last month by the new military chief Eyal Zamir and approved by Defense Minister Israel Katz, said senior officials familiar with the road map who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Full implementation hasn’t been approved by the Cabinet, but plans are advancing step by step with Israel ramping up pressure on Hamas to return hostages while limiting the likelihood of harming them in the process. According to accounts by four Israeli officials as well as former officials close to the government’s thinking, the direction appears increasingly clear.

“The only way to eradicate Hamas is to conquer Gaza,” said Amir Avivi, a retired brigadier general in close touch with military leaders and the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Asked about the army’s plan, a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces said it’s operating within international law on goals set by the government.

The return of Netanyahu’s longtime ally Donald Trump to the White House has added to the calculus.

“The former (Israeli) chief of staff and defense minister opposed this, as did the Biden administration,” Avivi said. “The current ones believe it’s the right thing to do, and we have the backing of the Trump administration now.”

On Monday at a White House press conference with Netanyahu, Trump said he couldn’t understand why Israel “gave up” Gaza in 2005 as part of a peace plan with the Palestinians.

Evidence of the plan is in plain sight. Returning to war last month after a nearly two-month truce, Israel expanded the buffer zone around the coastal enclave and officials including Netanyahu said troops are increasing their control of the strip and keeping it.

During the first 15 months of the war, Israeli troops took control of cities but mostly retreated. Now, there are no plans to leave.

“Large areas are being seized and added to Israel’s security zones, leaving Gaza smaller and more isolated,” Katz said Wednesday in a visit to the newly announced Morag Corridor, a strip of land running parallel to the Egyptian border that will cut off the southern city of Rafah. “All of Rafah will be evacuated and turned into a security area.”

Netanyahu and his closest aides say their model is the multi-year Allied occupations of Germany and Japan after World War II. Political systems there were dismantled under foreign control and democracies put in their place. The goal, they say, is to have unaffiliated Gazan technocrats alongside outside Arab help running civilian affairs while Israel controls the strip’s security, similar to what happens in the Palestinian West Bank.

Northern border concerns cited

Some experts in and outside Israel, however, say the new approach to Gaza is the result of a failure to eradicate Hamas so far. And they point to numerous foreign occupations — Israel’s in Lebanon, the U.S. in Vietnam and Afghanistan — as blood-stained calamities.

Yossi Kuperwasser, a retired brigadier general who now heads the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, says abating concerns along Israel’s northern borders are partly behind the shift.

After the attack of October 2023 — when thousands of terrorist operatives crossed into Israel, killing 1,200 people and abducting 250 — Israel was wary of committing too many forces to Gaza and leaving its northern front exposed to Iranian-sponsored militias, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, rallying in support of Hamas.

Last fall, Israel eliminated the leadership of Hezbollah — which like Hamas is designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. and many other countries — and weakened Iran’s offensive and defensive capabilities. The Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad, a key Iranian ally, has collapsed.

Hostages remain a big barrier to military intervention. A full-scale attack risks killing the two dozen thought to be alive in Gaza.

Moreover, hundreds of days of reserve duty have taken a heavy toll on companies, careers and families.

Netanyahu and his closest aides, however, firmly believe that there can be only one result of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel: the disarming and elimination of Hamas from Gaza, even at the cost of a limited number of hostages.

Uprooting the terrorist group is no easy task. Hamas has long had military and financial backing from Iran and is deeply embedded in the native population as the governing body of Gaza for nearly two decades.

Trying to topple it will likely come at a heavy human cost. More than 50,000 Gazans have been killed already, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry, and vast portions of the strip, where 2.2 million people live, have been damaged or destroyed.

Placing Israeli troops among the population will pose risks to both. As Ilan Goldenberg, who was a senior Mideast adviser in the Joe Biden White House wrote, “the local population will never trust the IDF, and so Hamas will be able to continue to recruit, hide amongst the population, and fight a prolonged and costly insurgency for Israel.”

Avivi, the former general, isn’t worried. He says when the ground is prepared and the IDF calls up tens of thousands for a full-scale attack on Gaza, “99 percent of reservists will come.”

Meanwhile, Turkey and Israel have held “technical talks” aimed at preventing conflict between their troops in Syria, a Turkish official said Thursday.

The first discussions were held in Azerbaijan on Wednesday to establish a “de-escalation mechanism to prevent undesirable incidents in Syria,” the Defense Ministry official said on condition of anonymity as part of a policy to discuss the issue. “Work will continue to establish the conflict-free mechanism.”

Since the fall of President Bashar Assad in Syria late last year, Israel and Turkey have been competing over their separate interests there. Syria’s Foreign Ministry has said Israeli jets have struck a Syrian airbase. Turkey purportedly hopes to use the base to extend its influence.

Israel also fears that Syria’s new Islamist leadership will pose a new threat along its border and has set up a buffer zone inside Syrian territory. Turkey’s emergence as a key player in Syria, meanwhile, has prompted Israeli concerns over a larger Turkish military presence.