- ‘What you have is a plan that was approved by the Israeli government to ethnically cleanse Gaza … and to continue killing as many Palestinians,’ says Israeli analyst Ori Goldberg

- Israel has ‘lost all the leverage it had over Hamas’ due to growing international outrage and European moves for recognition of Palestinian statehood, says analyst Mohammad Magadli

- The Israeli army is ‘vehemently against the plan to capture Gaza City, precisely because it knows that it will endanger the hostages,’ says Robert Geist Pinfold of King’s College London

ISTANBUL

As Israel pushes ahead with its plan to reoccupy Gaza City, analysts warn that the move could forcibly displace up to 800,000 Palestinians and plunge the enclave into conditions resembling a “concentration camp.”

Critics view it as one of the most dangerous turns yet in Israel’s war on Gaza, with experts telling Anadolu that the policy is less about defeating Hamas than about engineering mass displacement, leveraging the threat of invasion in negotiations, and prolonging the conflict to serve Netanyahu’s political survival.

Ori Goldberg, an Israeli analyst, said the plan operates on “two levels” – internal political needs and an “approved” policy of forced removal.

“What you have is a plan that was approved by the Israeli government to ethnically cleanse Gaza and to encourage immigration, as they call it, and meanwhile, to continue killing as many Palestinians,” Goldberg said.

Even if total removal of Palestinians proves impossible, Goldberg warned, preparations are underway. He pointed to the Israeli defense minister’s use of the term “concentration” to describe herding Palestinians into the ruins of Rafah: “What is ultimately a concentration camp for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians is now a stated policy goal.”

While “full measures” like total occupation may be unlikely, Goldberg said Israel is “certainly capable of killing thousands and thousands of Palestinians, and there’s no reason to assume that it won’t.”

Mohammad Magadli, analyst for Israel’s Channel 12 and head of news for Nas Radio, noted the immense military cost of such an operation.

Occupying Gaza City, he said, would mean displacing some 800,000 Palestinians, many already uprooted from elsewhere in the Strip.

“The Israeli army said clearly in the last Cabinet meeting that this is impossible … because of huge logistical difficulties … and a serious manpower shortage,” he said.

Leverage and pressuring Hamas

According to Magadli, the “core” aim is to use the threat of reoccupation to push Hamas back into indirect talks.

“The declared objective … is that Netanyahu wants to preserve his government. But the main and hidden objective – perhaps unannounced but the core goal – is to bring Hamas back to the negotiating table and push it to accept a partial deal … to return the Israeli captives,” he said.

He argued that Israel has “lost … all the leverage it had over Hamas” in recent weeks due to growing international pressure, European recognition of Palestinian statehood, and outrage over the starvation crisis Israel has created in Gaza.

“After losing all this leverage … Israel is now trying to find a new card – the threat of occupying Gaza City,” he said.

Robert Geist Pinfold, a lecturer in defense studies at King’s College London, added that the Israeli army is “vehemently against the plan to capture Gaza City, precisely because it knows that it will endanger the hostages.”

Past Israeli operations, he noted, have led to hostage deaths through friendly fire or by prompting captors to kill them.

Netanyahu’s political survival

Pinfold argued the plan serves Netanyahu’s political needs more than Israel’s strategic interests.

“Conquering Gaza City will … keep Israel on a war footing, meaning that Netanyahu can keep using national security reasons to delay his trial and prevent a commission of enquiry” into the government’s failures before Oct. 7, 2023, he said.

Goldberg was blunt with his assessment: “On one level, you’ve got no real plan, but on the other level … a big list of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and these are now also officially goals of the Israeli government.”

All three experts stressed the plan’s massive logistical demands.

Magadli estimated it would require mobilizing 200,000 reservists – “a massive number” compared to the roughly 350,000 peak mobilization at the start of the war.

Goldberg suggested the Israeli army might be emphasizing these obstacles “to show the government that it is impossible to do what the government wants to do.”

He emphasized that the government “doesn’t know what it’s doing,” beyond appeasing “settlers who are committed to ethnically cleansing the Gaza Strip.”

Pinfold said internal divisions between Israel’s civilian leadership and the military are widening: “There is real tension in Israel between the civilian and military leaders.”

International dimension

Pinfold noted that Netanyahu has said Israel will not annex Gaza but would hand administration to Arab states – “probably a combination of Gulf states such as the UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.”

In a Fox News interview last week, Netanyahu said: “We intend to, in order to assure our security, remove Hamas there, enable the population to be free … and to pass it to civilian governance … We don’t want to keep it. We want to have a security perimeter, but we don’t want to govern it. We don’t want to be there as a governing body.”

The prime minister said Israel wants to “hand it over to Arab forces that will govern it properly, without threatening us, and giving Gazans a good life.”

Pinfold said this vision faces a major obstacle: “These states want to help rebuild Gaza but … Israel must first commit to a two-state solution and Palestinian statehood.”

He argued Netanyahu’s long-term aim is to make Gaza “so unlivable that the Arab states feel they have no choice but to step in … dropping their demands on Israel.”

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