By James Mackenzie
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – As the war in Gaza enters an 11th week, Israelis appear resigned to a long road before the military achieves its stated aim of destroying Hamas and bringing more than 100 hostages back home.
For days, in the face of growing international pressure to halt the fighting and increase the flow of aid into the Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has issued video statements reiterating his determination to win the war.
“Anyone who thinks we’re going to stop is detached from reality,” he said this week.
His own popularity has been badly battered by the security failures that allowed thousands of Hamas gunmen to pour into southern Israel on Oct. 7 but a large majority of Israelis back the military campaign.
“We’re not seeing an erosion of support,” said Tamar Hermann, a senior research fellow with the non-partisan Israel Democracy Institute (IDI), which has been carrying out regular surveys of wartime sentiment.
“The great majority believes the job needs to get done. But what does that mean? No one knows exactly.”
The shock felt by Israelis at the Oct. 7 attack, in which Israel says 1,200 people were killed and more than 240 taken hostage, and the horror at the multiple accounts of rape that emerged in the aftermath have shored up support for the war.
But as Israeli troops battle Hamas fighters through a network of tunnels and ambushes in rubble-strewn streets, with at least 140 soldiers killed already, the scale of the task ahead becomes clearer.
“Seventy-five days after the catastrophe, now comes the phase of disillusionment,” wrote Ben Caspit, a columnist in the centre-left Ma’ariv newspaper and a longtime Netanyahu critic.
The masterminds of the Oct. 7 attack, Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza, and Mohammed Deif, the commander of the military wing, remain at large and Israeli officers say they may need months more to complete their mission.
While an IDI poll of Dec. 19 found 65% of Israelis believe the government will demolish Hamas capabilities as promised, over a third – 29.4% and 5.6% – respectively believe that achieving this is unlikely or say they do not know.
A truce in late November enabled the return of almost half of the 240 people Hamas took hostage on Oct 7. But efforts by Qatar and Egypt to broker a new deal have so far made slow progress.
Hamas says the fate of the remaining 129 hostages hinges on first ending the war. Israel is offering only a pause and more humanitarian aid for Palestinian civilians.
“Israel will feel a sense of sourness, there is no doubt of that at the moment,” Nahum Barnea, a columnist in Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel’s biggest selling daily.
STOP THE FIGHTING
The death of three hostages in northern Gaza, mistakenly shot by Israeli forces as they waved a white flag, came as a blow to a public that has firmly supported the military and the poll showed most Israelis – 55.1% – believe bringing all of the hostages home is unlikely.
At the same time, international calls to stop the fighting have been growing, with even Israel’s staunchest ally, the United States, pressing for a shift to a lower intensity phase of targeted operations against Hamas leaders.
More than 20,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to Palestinian health officials, and as United Nations bodies warn that the besieged enclave faces a humanitarian crisis including a growing risk of famine, it remains unclear how long Israel can resist the pressure.
For many Israelis, for whom the memory of Oct. 7 is still raw, the idea of slowing down remains an anathema, however.
“I can’t really understand why the world doesn’t encourage us to go forward and achieve our mission,” a senior Israeli official told reporters this week, dismissing pressure to stop as “the most hypocritical policy you can imagine.”
Past Gaza wars ended in truces, with Hamas – which is sworn to Israel’s destruction – claiming victory. Israeli officials say that must not be repeated, and point to the defeat of ISIS, al Qaeda and the Axis powers of World War Two as precedents.
The pro-Netanyahu daily, Israel Hayom, said this week that signs Israel might offer concessions to get more hostages home were “extremely worrying.”
“Hasn’t the time come to show firmness, to break the cycle of bloodshed, and to return to the principle that we don’t capitulate to terrorism but, rather, we defeat it?” columnist Ariel Kahana wrote.
(Additional reporting by Dan Williams; Editing by Howard Goller)
