Israel Wins Gaza Battles but Risks Losing the War

For six months, Israel’s military has won battle after battle against Hamas.

But as the fight loses momentum and postconflict plans fail to gel, Israel is facing the prospect of losing the war.

The invasion of the Gaza Strip is stalling. Most Israeli troops have gone home. And Hamas is returning to areas that previously had been cleared of militants.

International pressure and the challenges of taking on fighters burrowed into a civilian population have combined to impede efforts to root Hamas out of the enclave’s refugee-packed south.That has frustrated Israel’s central publicly stated war aim: to kill Hamas’s leaders and destroy the radical Islamist militant group as a military and political force.Some military and political leaders blame Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s failure to promulgate a plan for postwar Gaza, saying that it left a political vacuum that the radical Islamist group is exploiting to rebuild its influence in the strip. Israel’s military is growing increasingly frustrated about the government’s indecision. Without a political plan for Gaza, tactical wins won’t add up to any lasting strategic gain, say current and former senior officers and soldiers who spent months in hard urban combat.

“As someone who has seen these battles, we won the battle,” said Noam Ohana, a reservist with Israel’s 98th Division who fought in Khan Younis, the biggest city in southern Gaza. “You can choose to not reap the fruits of your military victory and then you will have…   a political problem.”

Israel’s invasion of Gaza followed Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which killed more than 1,200 people, including over 300 soldiers, according to Israeli authorities. Israel’s response has killed more than 33,000 people in Gaza, most of them noncombatants, according to Palestinian health authorities. The figure, however, doesn’t distinguish between civilians and militants.

Publicly, Israel’s military says the campaign is a major success, albeit a work in progress. Israeli forces have killed thousands of Hamas militants and destroyed many of their rockets, tunnels and other infrastructure, Israel says.

Privately, however, many officers and ordinary soldiers worry about the prospect of their tactical successes against Hamas being squandered by political indecision.

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