The pressure inside and outside the Israeli borders is intensifying. The plan defended by Benyamin Netanyahu on Sunday for the consequences of military operations in the Gaza Strip is unanimous against him. Calling to “end the work” by taking control of Gaza City, the Israeli Prime Minister attracted the wrath of several historical allies of his country, of his own people and even within his government.
To do this, he detailed five objectives: disarm Hamas; release the hostages; demilitarize Gaza; exercising preponderant security control; “Set up a non -Israeli peaceful civil administration” which is neither Hamas nor the Palestinian authority.
A loaded program that requires human, military, economic and political resources. Will Benyamin Netanyahu have sufficient support to implement his ambitions? “It is difficult to see on which levers he can rely to carry out his projects,” replied Dominique Vidal in a lapidary manner, journalist historian co -author of Palestine-Israel: A visual story (Threshold).
Little political support
The extreme right thanks to which he still governs the Hebrew state finds that it does not go far enough. At the end of 2023 Benyamin Netanyahu had already announced his project to control the entire Palestinian enclave. Limiting oneself to the city of Gaza (in addition to the 75 % territory under Israeli military control) is a decline in its strategy that the most extreme members of its coalition regret. “The Prime Minister and the Cabinet went to the weak,” castigated the Minister of Finance, Bezalel Smotrich. “I want all Gaza, the transfer [de sa population] And colonization, ”added the Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, another extreme right figure.
Popular opposition
Even if he intends to release the hostages, their survival is compromised by the implementation of this plan which must be set up within two months, according to the warnings of the head of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on the fate of the Israelis kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, 2023. “The cabinet decided to the fate of the hostages: the living will be murdered and the dead will disappear forever” Einav Zangauker, mother of one of them, and the figure of the mobilization of families.
Parents of hostages called for a general strike next Sunday. “If it is a success, it can become an important step, on the other hand, if the mobilization is mixed, Benyamin Netanyahu will have their hands free,” warns Thomas Vescovi, doctoral student in political studies on Israel and Palestine at the School of High Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS) and at the Free University of Brussels (ULB).
The fact remains that a majority of the population demands an immediate cease-fire such as the thousands of people who paraded in Tel Aviv on Saturday against the Netanyahu plan. “Excess war leads to popular mobilization,” summarizes Dominique Vidal.
Economic limits …
It is well known, money is the nerve of war. Except that it is not inexhaustible. The offensive that Israel leads in response to Hamas’ bloody attack on its soil is expensive. Already in February 2024, the central statistics office of Israel revealed that economic production had taken out considerably in the last months of 2023, reported the BBC.
A year and a half later, when the State increased its defense expenses by 43.3 % in 2024, this increase in military spending pushed Minister Bezalel Smotrich to increase tax burden, especially on consumers, notes the media areion24.News. “I am not convinced that Israeli society is ready to be bled economically and socially for this new Nakba [l’exode forcé de la population palestinienne] », Point Dominique Vidal.
Especially since the mobilization of some 295,000 reservists since October 7, 2023, according to the Israeli media, it is as many “soldiers who are no longer used in the world of work and do not participate in everyday life”, remarks Dominique Vidal. War is not very good for tourism either. Despite the reassuring speeches of power, the country recorded a 78 % drop in the number of foreign visitors between January and April 2024, compared to the same period of 2023, according to i24news.
Despite these black dots in the finances of Israel, he can always count on the support of “his godfather, the United States, and the European Pact”, nuance Thomas Vescovi according to which “war in Gaza is only possible thanks to these two economic supports”.
… And soldiers
The Israeli army is less and less voluntary to follow the offensive policy led by its government. Even the chief of the staff has issued reservations on the “trap” that would constitute an occupation of the Palestinian enclave. More than 100,000 Israelis have ceased to go to their reserve military service, according to the American media + 972.
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The plan would request the mobilization of 430,000 reservists according to the head of the Israeli opposition Yaïr Lapid. However, after the more than twenty months of war waged, “the army has never mobilized so many soldiers for so long,” points out Dominique Vidal. “The army is tired, the army is demoralized. The army does not want to make this war … We do not want to carry out this war of extermination of the inhabitants of Gaza, “says Shaked Rogel, a civilian academic, in RFI. But will the military institution “have the ability to put itself in frontal opposition to its principal? Everything will settle in the coming days, ”says Thomas Vescovi.
Finally, there is “a real contradiction between what Benyamin Netanyahu wants to do and what he can do, but he is in a flight forward before the many dead ends he meets”, still analyzes Dominique Vidal. The day he is no longer a warlord, the Israeli Prime Minister will become a simple politician, whose future is very uncertain.
