As the war on Gaza approaches eight months of violence, support for the campaign in Israel is waning.
Chronicles in the Jerusalem Post speak of compassion fatigue while at the gates of Gaza, reservists tell American journalists about the consequences of the incessant violence.
None of this concern, nor this compassion fatigue, extends to the more than 36,000 Palestinians killed so far.
“I think Israeli public support for the war could weaken,” Shai Parnes said by telephone from Jerusalem, “but probably not for the reasons you imagine.”
War fatigue for a divided people
Parnes, spokesperson for the Israeli NGO B’Tselem, which documents human rights violations in Palestine, spoke, fragilely, of constant suffering in Israeli society due to the absence of captives taken to Gaza on October 7, of the economic cost of the war. and the toll of reservists who repeatedly interrupted their work or studies to wage war in a besieged enclave that is now nothing but rubble.
The total military and civilian cost of the war for Israel is expected to amount to 253 billion shekels ($67 billion) between 2023 and 2025, Bank of Israel Governor Amir Yaron warned at a conference at the end of May.
Among the reservists, who are denied any end date for the conflict, support for the war remains, even if the exhaustion of lives subjected to endless interruptions begins to show.
“I really want to know what the end will be,” Lia Golan, 24, a reserve tank instructor and student at Tel Aviv University, told the Washington Post this week. “And no one told us what it was.”
Golan described the emotional toll of the unknown fate of Israeli captives, soldiers killed and Israeli citizens left homeless. At no time did she mention the Palestinians killed and displaced.
If the army does not rule Gaza, “everything will come back again and again,” Yechezkal Garmiza, 38, a reserve soldier in the Givati brigade, told the Post.
“We must finish the job,” he said – reflecting the broad, if carefully curated, consensus that prevails in the Israeli media.
In Tel Aviv, the urgency of demonstrations calling for the return of captives is growing.
This week, tens of thousands of people gathered in Democracy Square and other locations across the country to demand the release of captives and the dismissal of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
However, calls for the return of captives and criticism of the government are not the same as a demand to end the war. Public support for the conflict is strong, although it is sharply divided along political lines, a Pew Research Center poll from March to April showed.
The roots of much of this division were recently highlighted in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which highlighted in two articles the strict controls imposed by Israeli censorship on what information Israeli citizens do or do not have access to.
Any information deemed “sensitive”, from the reasons for the continued detention of Palestinians caught in Israeli police nets to the campaign of intimidation against a former prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), is prohibited to the Israeli public by the law. .
In recent weeks, a request for an arrest warrant from the current ICC prosecutor against Netanyahu and his Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, has been dismissed by most Israeli politicians and media as “new anti-Semitism.” , according to Parnes.
Similarly, the decisions of Ireland, Norway and Spain to recognize Palestine can be seen as a rejection of Israel rather than its actions.
Aside from official protests that Israel is being singled out, this has not significantly swayed public opinion in favor of war.
“If you asked me what the mood was two weeks ago before all these things happened, my answer would be the same: support for the war might decline… not for humanitarian reasons but for direct and personal reasons,” Parnes said.
More recent initiatives, such as the peace plan announced by US President Joe Biden after the Parnes interview – presented as an Israeli proposal – have also served to divide and undermine public enthusiasm for a war that many seem unending.
Israel launched its war on Gaza on October 7 after a Hamas-led incursion into its territory killed 1,139 people and took more than 200 prisoners.
Since then, Israeli attacks on this small strip of land have killed more than 36,000 Palestinians, injured more than 81,000 people and destroyed any sense of normalcy among a battered and traumatized population.
“The Israeli government is leading its country to commit crimes on a scale that is difficult to understand and even continues to abandon its hostages,” Parnes said.
Last week, Israeli national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi told Kan public radio that he expected another seven months of war if Israel destroyed Hamas and the smaller Palestinian Islamic Jihad group in Gaza. .
“Most Israelis want the hostages returned and do not support endless military operations in Gaza,” Eyal Lurie-Pardes of the Middle East Institute told Tel Aviv Tribune last week.
Politicians divided
In Israel, seemingly irreconcilable views on the fate of captives and the future of Gaza divide politicians and public opinion, making an end to the fighting out of reach.
The gap between these two sides widened further on Friday when Biden announced that the peace proposal he said came from Israel.
Rather than unifying, the proposal divided.
Far-right cabinet members Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich have threatened to rebel against any suggestions to end the fighting.
Netanyahu’s rival and supposed centrist Benny Gantz has spoken warmly of the deal and has already threatened to leave the three-member war cabinet, in which he sits with Netanyahu and Gallant, if there are no plans for Gaza beyond the conflict was not agreed.
“In mid-May, Gantz threatened to leave the government by June 8 if no plan was presented,” Lurie-Pardes said. “However, that date is approaching and we are still waiting.”
Even if the current peace proposal may justify postponing this threat, any plan for Gaza’s future is unlikely to satisfy either Gantz and his supporters, or the Smotrich-Ben-Gvir camp, which is open to their ambitions to colonize the enclave.
In the short term, opposition leader Yair Lapid has promised to support Netanyahu in parliament on the peace plan, but this is not unlimited support for the prime minister as Lapid has also signaled his intention to form a alternative government.
Last week, Lapid met with politicians Avigdor Lieberman and Gideon Saar to plan a rival government, which they urged Gantz to join.
All this maneuvering and division will have little or no impact on those dying in Gaza, said Mairav Zonszein of the International Crisis Group.
“There is no political will to end the fighting. Both Lieberman and Saar are far-right. They are unlikely to end the war.
“Gantz is unlikely to offer a real alternative to the current approach, other than operating in a manner more acceptable to the United States,” she said.
“Public confidence in Israel’s war aims may be waning, but people still struggle to see an alternative to fighting. »
An endless war?
“On their face, Israel’s war objectives – to destroy Hamas as a military and governmental force and return the hostages – were simple,” Lurie-Pardes said.
However, he continued, these goals are unlikely to be realized without a political solution for an administration in Gaza, and Netanyahu cannot propose this without endangering his coalition, which relies on extreme RIGHT.
Netanyahu is also suspected by many analysts of prolonging the war for his own purposes, including to stay in power while he is on trial for corruption.
“All Netanyahu needs to do,” Lurie-Pardes said, “is maintain his coalition for the next two months of the Knesset summer session. If he succeeds, we will not really consider elections before March 2025 due to the different requirements of electoral laws in Israel.”
For those stuck in Gaza, March is far away, if they survive.