This week, Israeli media reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had decided to order the army to fully occupy the Gaza Strip. According to reports, Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir is strongly opposed to such a move and has even threatened to resign.
If these reports are true, the importance of this moment is difficult to overstate.
Such a head-on clash between the government and the army puts Netanyahu and his government in a position that challenges not only the military but also the will of much of the Israeli public.
For a long time, polls indicate that most Israelis support ending the war in exchange for a deal that would see Hamas releasing its remaining captives.
In recent weeks, this public demand has grown. A Channel 12 News poll last month shows that 74 percent of Israelis support signing such a deal.
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The army warns that the full occupation of Gaza will risk the captives’ lives. The government is fully aware of these dangers: Culture Minister Miki Zohar admitted that expanding the war would put the remaining captives in grave danger.
If the decision to occupy the entire Gaza Strip is indeed made, it marks a moment when Netanyahu’s government abandons what most of the public wants.
The government is leading Israel to a move with unknown results and significance for the country, for the army and even for Netanyahu himself. In turn, this uncertainty is fuelling opposition to the war, both by the public and the army.
This week’s appeal by various former heads of the security forces to end the war, which included people who led the military, Mossad, Shin Bet and the police, indicates the army’s grave concerns about fully occupying the Palestinian enclave.
The former officials believe that in practice Israel has nothing more to achieve in Gaza, and to some extent attests to the army’s position. This is also what most of those demonstrating in the streets against the government think.
This view, which sees the continuation of the war as futile, stems from a failure to achieve the government’s stated goals of the war.
Hamas resistance in Gaza continues, despite the severe damage it has suffered, and Israeli soldiers continue to be killed. Similarly, the military has not been able to secure the release of the hostages as it had promised in March after Israel unilaterally ended the ceasefire.
But fear of a pointless war is not the whole story of Israeli opposition to the onslaught. There are two internal and external aspects that can be added to the list of Israeli grievances.
More Israelis, including from the political mainstream, are expressing reservations, and sometimes even opposition, to Israel’s war crimes in Gaza.
It began at the end of 2024, when former defence minister Moshe Yaalon said that Israel was carrying out ethnic cleansing in the northern Gaza Strip. It intensified after Israel collapsed the ceasefire, with former prime minister Ehud Olmert acknowledging that Israelis were committing crimes in Gaza.
Now they are joined by a growing number of public figures, such as author David Grossman, a beacon on the Israeli left, who last week said that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
More soldiers are speaking about how they are unable to live with what they have done and what they have seen in Gaza.
And the images of starving Palestinians have contributed to the growing resistance to Israel’s crimes in Gaza, even though the Israeli media is conducting a propaganda campaign that denies the famine and Israel’s role in creating it.
International image
At the same time, the demand to end the war is also linked to the international image of Israel following mounting pressures from its allies and the world.
Naftali Bennett, who aspires to be Israel’s next prime minister, recently returned from the United States and testified that Israel has become a “leper state”. According to Bennett, a move to fully occupy the enclave must not be carried out without taking into account international public opinion.
Bennett, who does not oppose the killing of Palestinians – morally or politically – understands, like others in Israel, that the country is moving towards global isolation.
Such isolation could have fateful economic consequences. Israel’s trade agreements with the European Union, which constitute a significant pillar of the Israeli economy, are in jeopardy.
Poland, which until recently was considered one of Israel’s allies in the EU, came out against its actions in Gaza in a statement made by Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
Former Israeli PM Bennett says Israel is seen as a ‘leper state’ in US
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It is not just economic concerns that are troubling Israelis. Just yesterday, a German football team cancelled the signing of an Israeli player in light of his support for the war.
The chairman of the Israel Football Association said this week that it has become more difficult to find places in Europe that will agree to host Israeli teams, which have been unable to hold European fixtures domestically since the war began.
From here, the road to exit football’s flagship European competitions is short.
Large numbers of Israelis are beginning to comprehend the cost of Israel’s war on Gaza. They are seeing how Israel is perceived in the world today as a pariah state, as a lonely nation.
In fact, apart from the Trump administration – and even there, it seems that there are cracks – there is no one in the world who accepts the Israeli story on Gaza anymore.
The world’s perception of Israel, as Israelis perceive it, has a fundamental impact on the demand to end the war. Often, Israelis’ initial response to international criticism is accusations of antisemitism, misunderstanding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or that the world does not know Palestinians and Arabs.
However, when international criticism is so harsh, it can crack even this set of defence mechanisms.
According to a Channel 12 News poll, about 56 percent of Israelis fear that in the future they will not be able to travel abroad due to Israel’s bad image. Israel will become an isolated island, they fear, which will create a sense of ghetto.
In addition, most Israelis, apart from some supporters of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, see themselves as part of the western world.
For Israelis, being outcast from the West is a fatal blow to their very identity. Therefore, the continuation of the war poses a great threat to the Israelis themselves.
Affecting capabilities
Concerns of international isolation are evident also in the Israeli army.
Despite the central role that the United States plays in arming Israel, it is not the only country with which Israel has arms trade relations with. Weapons and parts of aircraft also come from European countries such as Britain, France, Germany and Italy, whose governments have come under severe pressure to end ties with the Israeli military apparatus.
Therefore, along with the fear of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, the military is very concerned about the influence of international public opinion on its very capabilities.
In conclusion, the Israeli army is concerned about the order to occupy the entire Gaza Strip because of various reasons.
The military is very concerned about the influence of international public opinion on its very capabilities
The army, which still sees itself as the people’s army, is afraid of losing its unifying status in Israeli society. The full occupation of the Gaza Strip with its unknown consequences, the danger to captives and soldiers, the pointlessness of the war and the growing Israeli isolation, could lead to a rift between the people’s army and its people, who see such a move as a crime against the hostages or against the Palestinians.
The consequences of such a rift could be a failure to report for army reserve duty, which has been suffering from a manpower shortage. If the army makes such a move, it risks becoming a mercenary force that is completely loyal to the settlers, a process that has been going on for some time but could become even more literal.
Now the Israeli army finds itself in a decisive moment. On the one hand, the army can listen to the public and end the war, and on the other hand, it can agree to Netanyahu’s demand to occupy the entire Gaza Strip and bring about an unprecedented rift between the military and many in the Israeli public.
We are now facing a dramatic moment in the war on Gaza.
