Israel mobilizes 60,000 reservists for the final conquest of Gaza City.

BarcelonaThe Israeli government's plans to conquer Gaza City, which became known at the beginning of August, are beginning to take shape. While we await an official response on the matter, the proposal for a sixty-day truce that Hamas has already accepted, Benjamin Netanyahu's administration is heading toward a new, even bloodier phase of the war. Defense Minister Israel Katz approved the military plan for the conquest and occupation of the enclave this week and ordered the deployment of 60,000 additional reservists to complete the operations. The Defense Ministry confirmed this to Agence France-Presse on Wednesday, after several Israeli media outlets had reported the news.

According to public radio station KAN, the mobilization orders will arrive in the coming days, and the reservists will have to report to their barracks within two weeks. This quota will be added to the more than 70,000 reserve soldiers already operating in different sectors of the Strip. The newspaper Haaretz points out that this latest mobilization is a direct consequence of the approval of the plan by Minister Katz, while the newspaper Maariv He points out that the plan still needs to be ratified by the security cabinet, expected tomorrow, Thursday. The name chosen for the Gaza City offensive is revealing: "Chariots of Gideon II."

On the one hand, it evokes the figure of Gideon, a Jewish leader of the Book of Judges –the seventh book of the Tanakh and the Christian Old Testament, which tells the story of the leaders and guides of Israel– who, with a small, divinely chosen force, defeated the Midianites. On the other hand, the name is not new to the Israeli military imagination. In 1948, during the Nakba (the expulsion of Palestinians from their land, following the founding of the State of Israel), Operation Gideon was carried out, precisely, to expel the population of Bet-Xean, a town in the northern district of Israel. Reusing this name today evokes a thread of continuity between the policies of that time and those of today, deepening the collective trauma of the Palestinian people.

The military operations underway in the neighborhoods of Sabra and Zeitoun, in the southeast of the city, aim to surround the city of Gaza, where one million people still live in subhuman conditions. Some of the inhabitants are displaced people who returned to the north last January, when a temporary ceasefire suggested the war might end. But hopes quickly faded when Israel resumed military operations in March and cut off humanitarian aid, sparking the worst crisis of the entire conflict, and starvation was used as a weapon against the Palestinians.

The Rafah precedent

At the beginning of May, Netanyahu already decided that the city of Gaza should be occupied and that the territory that was conquered would not be returned to the Palestinians. The memory of Rafah now hangs over the destroyed village. In May 2024, Israel ordered the evacuation of the southern city, then inhabited by nearly a million people. Before the Israeli army began the systematic destruction of Rafah, most fled to the coastal area of Al Mawasi. Today, what was once a vibrant city practically no longer exists. Information trickling in through Israeli media suggests that the same fate could now be repeated in the north, in Gaza City. Israel plans new mass evacuations, which could be completed within two months.

But the question is: evacuations to where? Khan Yunis and Rafah have been devastated. The camps in the center of the range—Nuseirat, Bureij, and Deir al-Balah—still exist, but have been repeatedly attacked, and their populations live in dire conditions. Israeli military sources assure us that, for the moment, there are no plans for the immediate occupation of these camps, but admit that if Hamas remains present in the area, especially if it holds hostages, the pattern could be repeated.

And indeed, the Israeli army has launched information leaflets this Wednesday demanding the urgent evacuation of the Jabaliya refugee camp, located in the north of Gaza City, according to reports. HaaretzIn a statement, the Israeli government also announced that the population of the region and the outskirts of the enclave's capital "has been warned and authorized to move south for their safety." All of this suggests that a total control operation is all but imminent.

From a military perspective, Netanyahu and Katz maintain that the operation is essential to achieve "total victory" over Hamas. According to Israeli security sources cited by the BBC, there are still 50 hostages being held in Gaza, around 20 of whom may be alive. For many Israelis, this offensive poses an additional risk to their survival. The families of the hostages have intensified their protests in recent days and have warned that the government's strategy amounts to condemning them.

And although the Netanyahu government has officially said that it is studying the latest ceasefire proposal put forward by Egypt and Qatar – and accepted by Hamas – in which the Palestinian group agrees to release half of the hostages it is holding in the Strip in exchange for a truce, it will only accept a comprehensive agreement that includes the release of all fifty hostages. The plan is identical to the truce proposal made by the United States to stop the fighting and to which Tel Aviv had given the green light. The more than likely change in Tel Aviv's position would end up confirming its intentions to assault and conquer Gaza City definitively.