Hamas may have reached its final days in Gaza, but they won't go without a fight. And they won't fight without their civilian human shields as a last-ditch strategy to foil the IDF.
Last week, Hamas tried reviving the old Steven Witkoff formula for a cease-fire before Israel fully committed to the capture of Gaza City. By this time, however, both Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump had rejected phased hostage releases and demanded immediate release of all in exchange for a pause in military operations. With Trump giving the green light to the ultimatum, Netanyahu and his IDF chief reconciled on the need to finish the war, and today he emphasized that overall goal:
The prime minister and IDF chief vowed Tuesday to press on with the war against Hamas, as the Israel Defense Forces called up tens of thousands of reservists for the impending conquest of Gaza City.
Premier Benjamin Netanyahu said the war was entering its “decisive stage,” while IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir told troops that the Gaza City campaign was already moving forward, that operations would be intensified and expanded, and that the IDF would not accept anything less than the complete defeat of Hamas.
“We will not stop the war until we defeat this enemy,” Zamir said during a visit to central Israel’s Nachshonim base, where he spoke with newly mobilized reservists and personnel from the Technological and Logistics Directorate.
“Hamas will have no place to hide from us. Wherever we locate them, whether they are senior or junior figures – we strike them all, all the time,” he said. “We have already begun the Gaza maneuver. We are already entering places we have never entered before and operating there with courage, strength, valor, and an extraordinary spirit.”
That's quite a show of unity, especially given Zamir's earlier opposition to any hint of an occupation. Four weeks ago, Zamir went public with his misgivings about a full-out conquest of Gaza, reportedly warning Netanyahu that even a short occupation would "drag Israel into a black hole":
According to Hebrew media reports, he warned that “occupying the Strip would drag Israel into a black hole — taking responsibility for two million Palestinians, requiring a yearslong clearing operation, exposing soldiers to guerrilla warfare and, most dangerously, jeopardizing the hostages.”
Sources in the Prime Minister’s Office have suggested that if Zamir objects to the plan to occupy Gaza, he can resign as IDF chief.
“We are not dealing with theory; we are dealing with matters of life and death, with the defense of the state, and we do so while looking directly into the eyes of our soldiers and the citizens of the country,” Zamir said during the Thursday morning assessment, the army said.
Zamir did say at the time that such disagreements are normal and didn't amount to a political breach. Still, though, something significant must have changed to make Zamir this publicly enthusiastic about an urban-warfare phase as a "decisive" battle in the overall war. Perhaps Zamir feels better after Trump gave his support to the rejection of another round of Hamas Hokey Pokey -- or maybe the IDF has good enough intel to avoid the worst aspects of an urban assault.
Hamas must be worried about that, too. The Israelis are attempting to get the remaining civilians out of Gaza City and into shelters prepared at the coast. They had a great deal of success in such evacuations in Rafah and Khan Younis, but Hamas needs their human shields for international pressure to stop the war they themselves started. The Jerusalem Post has audio of Hamas operatives attempting to intimidate civilians from leaving them exposed to the IDF:
A senior defense source on Wednesday said that Hamas is working hard to block Palestinian civilians from evacuating from Gaza City in northern Gaza despite the military's two-week effort to encourage them to leave as the clock ticks down to an expected large-scale invasion. ...
According to the defense source, Hamas wants to keep as many civilians as possible in Gaza City, both to serve directly as human shields from IDF attacks and also to place more diplomatic pressure on Israel to end the war in the event that Palestinian civilians are caught up in the crossfire.
In the senior defense official's view, Hamas views the deaths of its own population as a strategic asset to play against Israel's reputation globally.
I'm sorry -- is this even a controversial position? Of course Hamas strategizes for maximum civilian deaths. It's why they embed themselves, their arms, and their command-control operations in hospitals, schools, and mosques. They routinely fire missiles and rockets into Israel from residential locations. They want to cause mass deaths among the civilian population, or at least threaten it, to force Israel to back down in the face of their terrorism. For nineteen years, that strategy worked along with the hostaging strategy, both designed to leverage civilian deaths into manipulating Israel and the world to let them off the hook for terrorism.
As I have maintained since October 7, the massacres changed the calculus with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran. The Israelis realized -- slowly -- that Hamas was not manageable or malleable, but was an existential threat that had become more emboldened with every concession. They wanted to annihilate Israel and had begun to acquire the means to carry out that mission in connection with Iran and its other proxies. It took many months for this lesson to sink in, but the Israelis now appear determined to end this threat fully and finally regardless of world opinion. Zamir may have some misgivings about what that means for the IDF -- and for good reasons -- but in the end, it's either Israel or Hamas, and Israel chooses Israel. That's what it means to start a war of annihilation, as Hamas is about to learn for the first time in its existence ... which hopefully will also be the final lesson for Hamas.
Update: Trump has one last offer for Hamas:
This is precisely what Western leaders should have demanded all along. The kidnapping and torture of hostages is a grotesque violation of the laws of war, especially civilian hostages. There should have been no other negotiations allowed until that war crime was addressed. Note well that Trump didn't offer an exchange either, but an immediate and unilateral release of all hostages still in Gaza, as a condition to end the IDF operation. I'll guess the answer based on the offer, and watch the Israelis continue their operation.
Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump and his administration’s bold leadership, we are respected on the world stage, and our enemies are being put on notice.
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