War on Gaza, the view from Israel

Public support for Israel’s war aims may be faltering, but not necessarily for the reasons many might expect.

As the war on Gaza closes in on eight months of violence, support in Israel for the campaign is waning.

Columns in The Jerusalem Post speak of compassion fatigue while on the fringes of Gaza, reservists tell American journalists of the toll the relentless violence has taken.

None of this concern, or compassion fatigue, extends to the more than 36,000 Palestinians killed so far.

“I believe the Israeli public’s support for the war might be flagging,” Shai Parnes said by phone from Jerusalem, “but probably not for the reasons you’re thinking.”

Parnes, spokesperson for the Israeli NGO B’Tselem, which documents human rights abuses in Palestine, spoke over a shaky connection about a consistent ache in Israeli society over the absence of the captives taken to Gaza on October 7, the economic cost of the war and the toll on reservists who have interrupted their jobs or studies several times to wage war on a besieged enclave that is mostly rubble now.

The total military and civilian costs of the war to Israel is projected to be 253 billion shekels ($67bn) between the years 2023 and 2025, Bank of Israel Governor Amir Yaron warned at a conference at the end of May.

Golan described the emotional toll of the unknown fate of the Israeli captives, soldiers being killed and Israeli citizens left homeless. At no point did she mention the Palestinians killed and displaced.

If the military doesn’t rule over Gaza, “everything will come back again and again”, 38-year-old Yechezkal Garmiza, a reserve soldier in the Givati Brigade told the Post.

“We need to finish the job,” he said – a reflection of the broad, if carefully curated, consensus that holds across Israeli media.

In Tel Aviv, the urgency of the protests calling for the return of the captives is growing.

This week, tens of thousands of people pressed into Democracy Square and other locations around the country to demand the release of the captives and the dismissal of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

War fatigue for a people divided

However, calls for the captives’ return and criticism of the government is not the same as a demand to halt the war. Public support for the conflict is strong, if starkly divided along political lines, polling carried out by the Pew Research Center from March to April has shown.

The roots behind much of that division was recently highlighted in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which spotlighted in two stories the strict controls imposed by the Israeli censor over what information Israeli citizens are, and are not, allowed access to.

Likewise, the decisions by Ireland, Norway and Spain to recognise Palestine can be dismissed as a rejection of Israel rather than its actions.

Aside from official protestations that Israel is being singled out, it has not swayed public opinion notably in favour of the war.

“If you asked me what the mood was two weeks ago before all these things happened, my answer would be the same: Support for the war might be slacking … not on humanitarian grounds but for direct, personal reasons,” Parnes said.

More recent initiatives, such as a peace plan announced by United States President Joe Biden after Parnes was interviewed – framed as an Israeli proposal – have also served to divide and undermine public enthusiasm for a war that appears to many to have no end.

Israel launched its war on Gaza on October 7 after a Hamas-led incursion into its territory killed 1,139 people and took more than 200 captive.

Since then, Israeli attacks on the small strip of land have killed more than 36,000 Palestinians, wounded more than 81,000 and destroyed any sense of normalcy among a battered and traumatised population.

“The government of Israel is leading its country to commit crimes of magnitudes that are difficult to [comprehend] and even continues to abandon its hostages,” Parnes said.

Last week, Israeli National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi told Kan public radio he was expecting seven more months of war if Israel were to destroy Hamas and the smaller Palestinian Islamic Jihad group in Gaza.

“Most Israelis want to see the hostages back and do not support endless military operations in Gaza,” Eyal Lurie-Pardes of the Middle East Institute told media last week.