What on Earth is Israel Up to?

I don’t understand what the Israeli government is up to. Last week, IDF Special Forces triumphantly trumpeted the rescue of two Israeli hostages. That is, indeed, good news for the hostages and their families.  But, in the process, an entire hospital was put out of action for the foreseeable future and hundreds of patients had to be evacuated. The total number of hostages rescued by the IDF is 3. If I remember correctly, in the whole of this period since the Hamas atrocity, the IDF has managed to kill 3 Israeli hostages by accident, and 2 others (if we believe Hamas sources) died as collateral damage from one of their own bombing attacks (apparently, a total of 11 bodies have been returned¹) . Rather crudely put, that seems like a score line of 3 rescues and 16 killed (at worst) or 3 rescues and 5 killed (at best) by IDF action. Regardless, it seems that we are dealing with bottom line negative numbers in terms of freeing hostages! And that’s after reducing most of Gaza to rubble and killing tens of thousands of Palestinians. In contrast, negotiation has managed to repatriate a total of 78 Israelis, 23 Thais and 1 Filipino² – 102 people. It seems that further negotiations in Paris are close to seeing a further 30 – 40 hostages being released³. The IDF appears to be hopelessly inefficient at repatriating hostages, so why bother?

Of course, the Israeli government has never stated (I think) that the deployment of the IDF was to rescue the hostages – a fact that the hostage families seemed to have quickly realised when they marched on the Knesset to demand the rescue of their loved ones. The deployment was to ensure the eradication of Hamas. Even so, comprehension struggles. How, exactly, does reducing most of Gaza to rubble, killing tens of thousands of Palestinians and generating worldwide opprobrium against Israel eradicate something as nebulous as Hamas? As I understand it, its main organs lie outside of Gaza in any case! And even if the IDF were able to kill every single Hamas “operative” currently in Gaza, the actions of the IDF has already sown the seeds of the next generation of Hamas fighters. In the next generation, there will still be no peace for Israel.

But there is one explanation that makes a kind of sense. In an early BBC interview⁴, a member of the Israeli Knesset candidly affirmed that the aim was to “encourage” the Palestinians to leave Gaza. This makes sense of the mass destruction, the mass killing, the throttling of energy and supplies, and the forced migration within Gaza. If the aim is that the Palestinians leave Gaza en masse so that it can be occupied by Israel then the IDF appear to be doing an effective job. Of course, they would be committing  a few war crimes and, perhaps, genocide along the way, but no one really cares about that, do they?

¹ https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog-february-24-2024/#liveblog-entry-3231521 acc. 15.40 24/2/24

² https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67477240 acc. 15:49 24/2/24

³ https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/hamas-source-deal-sees-6-week-truce-200-300-prisoners-in-exchange-for-35-40-hostages/ acc. 15:55 24/2/24

⁴ https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001t18r/hardtalk-simcha-rothman-member-of-the-israeli-knesset-religious-zionism-party +13:23 mins ;  acc. 17:41 24/2/24