For more than two months, Israel has massively bombed Gaza by land, sea and air (at a rate not seen since World War II), reduced much of it to rubble and killed nearly 20,000 Palestinians, mostly children and women, plus thousands more who are estimated under the rubble and have not yet been counted as corpses. These were the first two phases in the objective he set himself on October 7: to "completely eradicate" Hamas, both politically (it has ruled there since 2007) and militarily, for the surprise attack in which it killed 1,200 people and kidnapped more than 200.
The United States has been financing, arming and diplomatically shielding the campaign with its veto in the UN Security Council, but it is already pressuring Israel to move soon to a "third phase" that will leave fewer victims and reduce international pressure. On Monday, his Secretary of Defence, Lloyd Austin, discussed in Tel Aviv with his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, "how to make the transition from high-intensity operations to low-intensity and more surgical ones", as he said at a joint press conference.
After last week's public clash between U.S. President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Austin didn't want to sound like a big brother. "This is Israel's operation. I'm not here to dictate deadlines or terms," he said, before alluding to talks with Gallant about "how to reduce civilian deaths" and the "status and objectives" of the war. He also called for "urgent action" to stabilise the West Bank (where an average of three Palestinians have been killed every day by Israeli army or settler fire since the start of the war) and stressed that "both Israelis and Palestinians deserve a horizon of peace", based on the two-state solution. "We know how difficult it is, particularly after October 7, but the ongoing instability and insecurity only benefits Hamas," he said on his second visit to the country since then.
The two allies are moving around a consensus to change phases in January. Israel is also losing more and more soldiers, as hand-to-hand combat increases, and not just massive long-range bombardment and armored fire, which reduces the risk of casualties of its own. Israel announced on Monday that five more people had been killed in combat, bringing the death toll to 129. The trickle has been increasing in recent days.
At the press conference, Gallant said the war "takes time" but suggested to Austin that he will abide by the tacit pact to fully control northern Gaza next month. "I can tell you that we will soon be able to distinguish between different areas of Gaza," which would open the door to the gradual return of displaced Palestinians (85% of Gaza's 2.3 million people), "perhaps earlier in the north." There are few habitable homes there, so some will probably end up in shelters or tents. Some 60 percent of Gaza's buildings are damaged or destroyed by shelling, mostly in the north, according to United Nations estimates.
It is estimated that nearly one million residents in the north (almost all of them) have been forcibly displaced from their homes since October, on the orders of the Israeli Armed Forces. Today they live huddled together in the south, where Israel has focused and where water and food are scarce, as could be seen in Sunday's assault on a humanitarian aid truck in Rafah and in the development of a black market. The US human rights NGO Human Rights Watch on Monday accused Netanyahu's government of "deliberately" using starvation as a weapon of war against Gaza's civilians. The strip has also been in a telecommunications blackout for five days, the longest of the war.
Second Redemption
Washington didn't just dispatch Austin to Tel Aviv on Monday. He also called CIA Director William Burns to Warsaw to mediate a second hostage swap in Gaza for Palestinian prisoners. He met with the Prime Minister of Qatar, Mohamed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani (the main mediator); and with the head of the Mossad (Israel's intelligence services abroad), David Barnea.
The dialogue has regained momentum after Israeli soldiers mistakenly killed three of their compatriots hostage, despite the fact that they were waving a white flag, were not wearing T-shirts – to show that they were unarmed – and had hung messages in Hebrew from two windows (which they managed to make with leftover food) in which they asked for help and warned of their presence. The military interpreted it as a trap by Hamas. The only Israeli hostage to survive the first attack escaped to another building and shouted at the soldiers in Hebrew. They also thought it was a trap. He was shot down the stairs.
An unnamed Israeli political leader, quoted by Channel 12 of national television, has pointed out the need to present a proposal "that breaks the impasse" reached in the negotiations after December 1, when the first and only exchange of hostages and prisoners of the war concluded, during which there was a week-long truce and the amount of humanitarian aid entering Gaza from Egypt.
With the army already acting intensively in both the north and south of the Strip, Netanyahu ordered Barnea to withdraw from the negotiating table, considering it impossible to bring positions closer together. Now, the tone has changed. "If we're going to put a new proposal on the table, it has to be something that agitates [Yahia] Sinwar," [Hamas leader in Gaza]. It has to be a creative proposal in terms of the equation of what Israel is asking for and what it is willing to give in return," he said on condition of anonymity.
The previous swap included only women and minors, both among the 80 Israeli hostages and among the 240 Palestinian prisoners, a much lower proportion than previous swaps. During the week-long ceasefire, Israel imprisoned more Palestinians than it released.
Now, Hamas — considered a terrorist by the United States and the European Union — wants to choose the names of the prisoners to release and raise the price per hostage. There is also a partial withdrawal of Israeli troops, sources in the security forces of Egypt, the third mediating country, told Reuters.
Israel seems poised to include on the list prisoners whose release would be more difficult for its far-right coalition partners to digest. They are those "with blood on their hands": convicted of murder or for having participated in the planning of attacks. In addition, it opened its Kerem Shalom crossing with Gaza on Sunday to allow humanitarian aid to flow in more smoothly. It was one of the demands of Qatar and Egypt, because the Rafah crossing – designed for people, not goods – could not cope.
In the previous exchange, most of those released had not been tried and were mainly serving minor crimes, such as throwing stones or Molotov cocktails at soldiers and settlers, or vagrants, such as "endangering the security of the area" or "exalting nationalism." A few dozen were serving sentences for attempted murder.
Genesis? Loop? Netanyahu Seeks Name for War
An Israeli soldier plays the violin in an armored vehicle near the Gaza border on Monday. Leo Correa (AP)
A few hours after Hamas' attack on October 7, when Israel was still trying to recompose itself and did not fully control its territory (it took several days), the Netanyahu government began bombing Gaza and, as usual, gave the offensive a name: Iron Swords.
Two-and-a-half months later, Netanyahu is looking for a name in line with the historical relevance of the war, according to local media. Their main argument is that Iron Swords is just the operation (like others Israel has launched in Gaza that have lasted several days), but not the war. "He wants a name that is understood both nationally and internationally, and that people can remember the war as a significant one, and not just an operation," sources close to the prime minister told the Walla news portal.
Netanyahu floated three possibilities on Sunday, at the weekly meeting of the council of ministers, according to state television. Two are religious and refer to the beginning of the conflict. One is the Simhat Torah War, the holiday in the Jewish calendar that ties in with the end of Sukkot, the date Hamas chose for its attack. Simhat Torah marks the beginning of the annual Bible reading cycle in Judaism, which explains the second option: Genesis War, the first book of the Bible. According to the TV channel, Netanyahu believes it would resonate both within the country and among Christian audiences abroad. The evangelical movement, which attaches great importance to the reading of the sacred texts, is for example a fervent supporter of Israel in general and Netanyahu in particular. And Genesis belongs to both traditions, as it inaugurates both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament.
A third option would be the Gaza War. It is a similar choice to the two in Lebanon, which began as an operation (Peace for Galilee, in 1982, and Just Reward, in 2006) to end up taking the name of the territory.
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