From Gaza to the West Bank: Israel’s Unyielding War Machine
“A year of combat” – this is how Israel’s new Chief of Staff, Eyal Zamir, described 2025 at a conference organized by the Israeli ministry of defense.
The exact sentence, translated from Hebrew, was: “The year 2025 will continue to be a year of combat.” The word ‘continue’ is crucial, suggesting that Israel will resume its wars, despite ceasefire agreements signed with the Lebanese government in November and Palestinian groups in January. In other words, it seems that Zamir is signaling that Israel will reopen these two fronts, even in the face of ceasefire deals.
Despite Israel’s insatiable appetite for war, it is hard to imagine what the Israeli army could achieve through renewed violence when it has already failed to accomplish its objectives in nearly 14 months in Lebanon and over 15 months in Gaza.
Israel launched thousands of airstrikes on Lebanon, destroying entire towns and villages and killing and wounding thousands. It also dropped over 85,000 tons of bombs on Gaza, leading to the unprecedented genocide and the killing and wounding of over 170,000. Despite this, Israel has failed on both fronts. In Gaza, as reported by Reuters, Hamas alone managed to recruit up to 15,000 fighters just before the end of Israel’s 471st day of relentless warfare.
Furthermore, the return of nearly one million Palestinians to northern Gaza has reset Israel’s so-called tactical or strategic achievements. These efforts, aimed at depopulating northern Gaza to create permanent military buffer zones, were reversed by the population’s return.
The war also came at a staggering cost to the Israeli army. Ironically, during the same ministry of defense conference, Zamir revealed the actual costs of Israel’s wars in the past year. He stated that the ministry “now provides care for 5,942 new bereaved family members,”, adding that the “Rehabilitation Department has taken in over 15,000 wounded service members, many bearing both physical and mental scars from the war.”
These figures were not broken down by category or war front and did not include casualties from October 7, 2023, to the end of the year. However, they represent the highest estimate of Israeli casualties provided to date, raising the question: Can Israel afford to return to war?
Former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who was dismissed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on November 5, offered clues about Israel’s military crisis during an interview on Channel 12. Gallant recalled a conversation he had with Netanyahu after the Hamas assault on the Gaza Envelope region in southern Israel.
“The prime minister told me that we would see thousands of dead in the offensive in Gaza. I told him: We will not see thousands of dead,” Gallant said. Zamir’s numbers, however, have now validated Netanyahu’s estimates, not Gallant’s.
Another early fear of Netanyahu was that “Hezbollah will destroy everything if we hit it,” referring to the city of Tel Aviv. While that particular prediction did not fully materialize, the stalemate in Lebanon ensures Israel will remain haunted by similar fears.
So, will 2025 be a year of combat for Israel?
Netanyahu faces a twofold challenge: if all war fronts officially end, his government will collapse; but if he returns to active war, he will fail to claim any decisive victory.
It is possible that Zamir’s “year of combat” doctrine is aimed at saving face – projecting strength without reopening major war fronts. Israel may continue to create crises in Gaza and Lebanon without fully engaging in war, perhaps by delaying scheduled withdrawals, adding new demands, and so on.
But this may not be enough for Netanyahu to stay in power, especially in the face of growing dissatisfaction. This is where the Iron Wall, Israel’s ongoing military operation in the West Bank, comes into play.
Though Israel has launched numerous raids in the West Bank, the January 21 campaign was directly linked to the war in Gaza. It began two days after the latest ceasefire, signaling that a large deployment of Israeli forces in the West Bank was meant to offset reduced combat in Gaza.
It also served to distract from Israel’s sense of failure in Gaza, as described by Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who quit Netanyahu’s coalition on January 19.
The war in the West Bank, centered in the refugee camp of Jenin, has used tactics similar to those employed in Gaza. Tens of thousands have been displaced from Jenin, Tulkarm, and other northern West Bank regions; hundreds have been killed, wounded, and had their homes demolished. The Israeli army seems to be attempting to compensate for its failure to ethnically cleanse Gaza by displacing entire communities in the West Bank.
If Israel persists in making 2025 a “year of combat” focused on the West Bank, the consequences could be dire, especially for an army that has already suffered unprecedented losses on multiple fronts.
If Israel continues on this path, an all-out uprising may become imminent, and new, unexpected fronts could open up simultaneously.
Israel must be reined in. It is acting like a wounded animal and, in doing so, it continues to kill Palestinians in the name of security while destabilizing the entire Middle East. Netanyahu must be stopped.
Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak Out. His other books include My Father was a Freedom Fighter and The Last Earth. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net
Middle East
Palestine: In Gaza and the West Bank, the ceasefire does not stop Israel’s colonial machine
Sunday 9 February 2025, by Theo
On Sunday 19 January 2025, the ceasefire in Gaza and the release of prisoners came into effect. Within a very fragile framework, 1,967 Palestinian political prisoners from all over Palestine were to be released. Released but, as is often the case, only to be re-arrested. Since 1967, according to the UN, 800,000 Palestinians have spent time in Israeli jails. In the first phase, 69 women and 21 children were released, while 70 of those released in the second phase were sentenced to deportation and exile.
For the mainstream media, there are, on the one hand, the Israeli ‘hostages’ who are much talked about and, on the other, the Palestinian prisoners who are called ‘terrorists’. They don’t really know the term ‘political prisoners’ or ‘imprisoned children’. Nor do they know anything about the conditions of detention: often imprisoned without trial, by administrative decision, hostages to a practice inherited from British colonialism and perpetuated by Israeli colonialism, mistreated, tortured, sometimes killed or killed in prison.
Israel continues in the West Bank
The hypocrisy and cynicism of Israel and its allies know no bounds. At the same time as the Zionist state is signing the ceasefire for Gaza, it is deploying even more of its army in the West Bank. In the occupied territories, the Palestinians are suffering, at an intensified pace, the violence of fascist settlers accompanied by the repression and brutality of the Israeli army. The reports we hear from journalists are terrifying. As for our friends in the West Bank, they tell us about the prevailing fear but also ask us to continue our solidarity actions. Hundreds of new checkpoints are being set up at the entrances to towns, villages and refugee camps. They are closing off all access and turning the West Bank into a mousetrap. Arrests of Palestinians of all ages have become massive.
Jenin, one of the bastions of Palestinian resistance, is under attack: bombings, destruction of roads and infrastructure, demolition of homes, forced displacement and massacres of the inhabitants. Trump has lifted financial sanctions against the most virulent settlers in the West Bank and is calling on Egypt and Jordan to take in Gazans.
Israel’s right to flout international law
This is a serious time. If Israel, with the active help of the United States and the complicity of Western countries and certain Arab countries, pursues its plan to annex what remains of the Palestinian territories, after the genocide in Gaza, a new and even more dramatic Nakba is in the offing.
This situation will continue to be treated by the mainstream media, the government and Europe as Israel’s perpetual ‘right’ to defend itself with impunity, in other words as an apartheid colonial state that flouts international law and UN resolutions. And ignores the decisions of the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice.
Only the Palestinian resistance, together with international solidarity, can stop Israel and the United States. Let’s continue to mobilise and put pressure on governments, let’s step up the campaign to boycott Israel, its products and the companies that are complicit. Let’s step up solidarity with the Palestinian people for their right to resistance, for their right to remain on or return to their land, for their right to life, freedom and justice. Let’s broaden our solidarity so that the massacres, genocide, occupation and colonisation stop.
L’Anticapitaliste 30 January 2025
Attached documentspalestine-in-gaza-and-the-west-bank-the-ceasefire-does-not_a8848-2.pdf (PDF - 905.4 KiB)
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Theo
International Viewpoint is published under the responsibility of the Bureau of the Fourth International. Signed articles do not necessarily reflect editorial policy. Articles can be reprinted with acknowledgement, and a live link if possible.
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