GNITN - Special Edition

Israel At War Day 672

What’s Next?

What’s the Plan?

As I perused the many news sites I use to source my daily updates it was hard to know just exactly what Prime Minister Netanyahu wants to do next to end the war against Hamas. One headline says that Israel’s military will take over all of Gaza and hand it over to Arab forces not hostile to them, another headline says that he wants to setup a security perimeter with no intention of annexing the Strip. Of course there are multiple sites that say that the military wants to go about things another way. Ultimately the PM will get what he wants. Of all the sources I decided to use this one from the Jewish News Syndicate:

Israel intends to take control of the entire Gaza Strip to remove Hamas, and transfer authority to non-hostile “civilian governance,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday.

The PM was asked directly if Israel is taking over the entirety of Gaza:

When asked whether Israel intends to take control of all of Gaza, the premier told Fox News‘s Bill Hemmer, “We intend to, in order to ensure our security.”

This was before the actual meeting with Netanyahu’s leadership to make the plans official:

Netanyahu gave the interview shortly before his Security Cabinet was scheduled to meet to decide on the continuation of the war on Hamas, with one option being a full-fledged occupation of the Gaza Strip.

He specifically stated the goals, although he mentioned that the people in the Strip could be free of “Gaza” when he probably meant Hamas something online critics are complaining about:

The continuation of the war will seek to “remove Hamas there, enable the population to be free of Gaza and to pass it to civilian governance that is not Hamas and not anyone advocating the destruction of Israel,” Netanyahu told Fox News.

“We want to liberate ourselves and liberate the people of Gaza from the awful terror of Hamas,” the prime minister said.

Even the Gazans want Hamas to be removed as seen in a recent poll. Netanyahu then said that Israel doesn’t intend to keep the land which is in contrast to others saying they want to annex it:

Netanyahu stressed that the Israeli government does not “want to keep it” after taking control of the entire 26-mile-long coastal enclave.

“We want to have a security perimeter,” he said. “We don’t want to be there as a governing body. We want to hand it over to Arab forces that will govern it properly, without threatening us, and giving Gazans a good life. That’s not possible with Hamas.”

Things Could Change

The actual meeting and vote haven’t occurred yet, but some believe that things can and will change:

The Security Cabinet convened at 6 p.m. at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem for the debate and a subsequent vote. The session is scheduled to last until 11 p.m. but expected to last well into the night.

A senior official told the Ynet news outlet on Wednesday afternoon that while the ministers were expected to support the proposal to occupy Gaza to defeat Hamas, “things can always change in the Middle East.”

As I alluded to earlier the PM’s plans are more than likely to be approved:

Senior government officials told the outlet that any proposal brought to the Security Cabinet by Netanyahu would likely win a large majority.

And as I also mentioned earlier, the IDF Chief of Staff is believed to want to go a different way:

According to the report, Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir will press ministers to vote against Netanyahu’s proposal, which he was said to believe would endanger hostages and debilitate the IDF.

Zamir’s plan appears to keep pressure on Hamas in areas where the hostages are thought to be held:

Zamir will reportedly recommend a plan to encircle Gaza City and the central refugee camps while continuing raids by IDF commando units, which he believes will allow for renewed hostage talks with Hamas. Fifty hostages remain in captivity in the Strip, including 20 to 22 who are believed to be alive after being kidnapped across the border during the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in southern Israel.

I have been hearing rumblings that this war is taking too long to finish and I tend to agree that it could have been over sooner. But I also see all the various moving parts complicating it. Hezbollah to the north is pushing back on the Lebanese leadership’s demands that they disarm and could very well be a problem to Israel again. Syrian leadership appears to be a growing threat to Israel and its de facto leader is no friend to the Jews. Iran is seen as planning a preemptive strike on Israel even now. The Houthi rebels are never going away it seems and they launch attacks on Israel every four days now. Who knows how many Iranian proxies are in Iraq just waiting to also attack Israel? What I’m trying to say is that even if Israel enacts an updated plan to end the war against Hamas things can and probably will cause them to meet again to adjust the trajectory of the fighting. Which is yet another reason why this conflict is so hard to predict. Bible prophecy can help us figure things out as well, however even those prophecies are not as clear as we’d prefer them to be. I think they tell us the who but the how and when are less clear. As we pray for the peace of Jerusalem we need to also be flexible so we can be more specific in our intercession.