With no clear exit strategy in Gaza, Netanyahu is trapped in a ‘Chakravyuh’

Israel marked Memorial Day on 13 May, followed by the 76th Independence Day on May 14, in a rather muted manner, owing to the ongoing war in Gaza. Striking an angry and defiant tone, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while addressing the nation on the Memorial Day, said that Israel would never forget and “will not let anyone else forget” the crimes Hamas committed on 7 October, 2023, making it clear that Israel is in no hurry to end the war until it extracts full revenge from Hamas and ‘eliminates it from the face of the Earth’.

With the war stagnating and repeated attempts towards an early ceasefire faltering, it is becoming more and more difficult to find an end to this war which is extracting a huge price on human lives in Gaza. As per estimates published by the Gaza Ministry of Health, over 35,000 lives have already been lost with the majority of them being women and children.

In the past few weeks, every passing day has brought more and more negative news for Israel. A brief review of the war over the past seven months clearly reveals that it has so far been a story of missed opportunities, war fought more on ego than strategy and setting in of frustration and disillusionment within Israel and its allies. And Netanyahu, caught in the middle of all this, is finding himself trapped, with walls closing in on him with every passing day.

Missed opportunities

Israel had vowed revenge after the Hamas terror attack into Israel on October 7 killed more than 1,100 people in Israel, marking it as the worst single-day attack on it, ever. Its initial war strategy was, therefore, based solely on revenge and rage. However, after the initial retaliation which led to hundreds of Hamas combat cadre being eliminated and its military potential severely degraded, Israel did not revise its military goals and continued to strike Gaza with a singular aim of ‘eliminating Hamas forever’. This was completely unlike the previous wars that Israel had fought in Gaza right from ‘Operation Cast Lead’ in December 2008 where Israel, after achieving its military objectives, withdrew forces from Gaza.

However, this time perhaps Israel decided that ‘enough is enough’ and Hamas cannot be left to mount another attack in future on Israel. In this state of mind, Israel’s leadership failed to set concrete and achievable politico-military goals. As a result of which, the war drags on and opportunities to end the war have been missed.

The first opportunity came in November 2023, a month after the war started when a humanitarian truce was agreed to, leading to exchange hostages, primarily women, children and elderly. The truce was extended twice before Israel unilaterally resumed its operations on 1 December.

Another opportunity went by in January this year when a ceasefire proposal was presented in Paris on January 28. The deal proposed a ceasefire of six weeks coupled with the first phase of civilian hostage releases. The ceasefire could be extended for a longer period later. Israel initially voiced concerns and dismissed a counter proposal from Hamas for a ceasefire of 135 days, calling it ‘delusional’.

On 25 March, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) finally succeeded in getting a resolution passed which demanded an immediate ceasefire and unconditional release of all hostages. Israel was furious at the US for letting the resolution pass and alleged that the US had “abandoned its policy in the UN” and was harming the war effort and the measures for the release of Israeli hostages in Hamas’s custody. The resolution remains un-actioned.

As recent as April 30, another deal was presented which involved the release of 33 hostages in the custody of Hamas during the first stage of a 40-day ceasefire. The deal also envisaged a second phase of 40 days when the rest of the hostages, including male civilians and soldiers, as well as the bodies of others would be released in return for end of hostilities and return of Palestinian prisoners in Israel. Despite the US pushing this proposal, PM Netanyahu rejected the deal and stated, “We will enter Rafah and we will eliminate the Hamas battalions there, with or without a deal, in order to achieve total victory.” Despite continuing negotiations in Cairo and Doha, Israel does not look inclined towards a peace deal.

Closing in of the trap

A number of analyses on the war in Gaza have suggested that the terror strike by Hamas on 7th October was a trap and Israel fell right into it. The initial rage and revenge prevented Israel from looking at the situation rationally and to use its military superiority to strike hard and end the war swiftly, and on its terms. As a result, with every passing episode in the war, Israel is finding itself getting trapped deeper and deeper into the conflict without any clearly defined exit. Few of such events merit attention to highlight this aspect.

One of the major things that has gone against Israel is the indiscreet targeting of schools, hospitals, refugee camps and UN compounds leading to global outrage, rapidly shifting narrative against it and thousands of deaths.

The Israeli strike on the Iranian Consulate building in Damascus on April 1 should definitely count as a self-goal by Israel. It not only gave the perfect and legitimate opportunity to Iran to strike inside Israel for the first time but also led it to shed its ‘strategic patience’, signalling dangerous escalation in case of any future provocation.

The withdrawal of all Israeli troops from Gaza (except one brigade) on April 7 and moving those northwards too has to be counted as a serious miscalculation. It gave the ideal opportunity for Hamas to return back to vacated areas in Gaza. As a result, the IDF, on its return to Gaza, is facing renewed battles in Central and Northern Gaza, especially in areas of Gaza city, Jabilia Camp and Nuseirat Camps. Result — not only has its military campaign gone haywire, Israel is being inflicted with major casualties too. Israeli media reports suggest that the IDF has lost more than 20 soldiers in the past three days and a major military base close to Tel Aviv has been damaged by a major fire caused by the ‘unknown’.

The attack on international aid convoys as well as UN personnel too is causing severe backlash. The attack on convoy of World Central Kitchen (WCK) on April 1 was condemned worldwide and on May 13, an Israeli strike on a UN vehicle led to the first international casualty wherein Colonel Waibhav Kale (retired) from India was killed. As per the UN, more than 190 UN staff have been killed in the Gaza war till now.

The Rafah offensive is the final nail as regards the war is concerned. On May 6, the Israeli military issued orders for evacuation of 100,000 Palestinians in eastern Rafah and Israeli tanks entered there in the early hours of May 7, taking control over the Rafah crossing on the Palestinian side, opposite Egypt. With over 1.3 million people in Rafah, a full-scale offensive will result in a human massacre of unprecedented scale. A mass exodus has already started and almost 3,60,000 people have reported to have left Rafah, moving northwards back into Gaza.

Almost all stakeholders including the US, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey have declared that the Rafah offensive is a red line and should not be crossed. The US has even put its arms shipment to Israel on hold and warned that arms shipments could be stopped if there is a full-scale invasion of Rafah. But Israel is not listening and PM Netanyahu has made it clear that with support or no support, Israel will go through with the Rafah operations, stating, “If we need to… we will stand alone. We will fight with our fingernails.”

Qatar, the mediator in ceasefire talks, too has termed the Rafah offensive ‘backwards’. US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has called upon Israel to devise a ‘strategic endgame’ and a post-war plan. Else, Israel could be mired in a counter-insurgency campaign that never ends.

The context of Chakravyuh

The context of Chakravyuh (circular military formation) is drawn from the Indian epic Mahabharata. During the war, Dronacharya plans a Chakravyuh for the Kauravas to trap the Pandavas. Explaining it, Col Vivek Chadha (Retired), Senior Fellow at MP-IDSA, said that it was a multi-layered dynamic formation set up to surround enemy formations. This extremely complex and deceptive set up required very high military skills to break through. It was said that only Abhimanyu and Arjuna on the side of Pandavas could breach the Chakravyuh. However, Abhimanyu was not trained to break out of the Chakravyuh. As the story goes, while Arjun is lured into another part of the battlefield, it is left to his son Abhimanyu to fight through the Chakravyuh. Unfortunately, while Abhimanyu is able to penetrate the various layers of Chakravyuh, other warriors following him are unable to do so, leaving Abhimanyu stranded. Fighting gallantly, Abhimanyu is faced by insurmountable odds as the inner layers of the formation close in upon him, until he is eventually brought down by the Kauravas.

However, unlike the Mahabharata where Abhimanyu is forced to enter the Chakravyuh in his fight for the greater cause, but is finally unable to find an exit, in the case of Israel and Netanyahu, they are unwilling to take many exit routes out of the Chakravyuh presented to them from time to time. It is as if Netanyahu is bent upon being seen as the martyr who went down fighting the Chakravyuh of the Gaza war, in the greater cause for the future of Israel. With Netanyahu adamant that Hamas has to be completely eliminated and the Rafah offensive will go through, the situation is likely to become tougher for Israel in the coming weeks.

Adding to it, if the US stops its shipment of offensive military supplies to Israel, Egypt opens a military front across Rafah, and Hezbollah ups the ante in the North, the walls of Chakravyuh will start closing in for Netanyahu very soon. Coupled with it, the growing opposition at home, especially from the family of hostages, is not making it any easier for him. His own military Chief of Staff, Herzi Halevi, was quoted on May 11, tearing into Netanyahu during security consultations for the failure to develop and declare a so-called “day after” strategy. He added that as long as there isn’t a diplomatic move to develop a governing body in the Strip that isn’t Hamas, “we’ll have to act again and again in other places” to dismantle Hamas’s infrastructure. It will be a Sisyphean task. There have also been reports of arguments over the war and its end state between Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.

It may, therefore, be prudent for Netanyahu to take a deliberate review of what Israel wants as a definable end state of war, soon. Else, the walls of Chakravyuh may keep closing in to an extent where there may not be many viable exit options left for Israel.

The author is Assistant Director, MP-IDSA. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.