Israel’s prime minister says the war in the Gaza Strip will soon enter a new phase.
“The intense stage of the war with Hamas is about to end,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a televised interview on Sunday. “This does not mean that the war is going to end, but the war in its intense phase is going to end.”
But whatever relief those comments bring after more than half a year of horrific bloodshed, Mr. Netanyahu quickly made two things clear: There is no ceasefire in Gaza. And the next battle may be in Lebanon, with the forces of a Hamas ally, Hezbollah.
After the withdrawal of troops in Gaza, he said: “We will be able to move some of our forces north.”
Mr. Netanyahu stopped short of announcing an invasion of Lebanon, a move that would likely have resulted in heavy Israeli and Lebanese casualties, and instead left the door open to a diplomatic resolution with Hezbollah.
Any diplomatic solution to Gaza remains uncertain, in part because Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition would likely collapse if Israel stopped fighting in Gaza without removing Hamas from power.
However, the prime minister appeared to signal that Israel, after completing its current military operation in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, would not seek major ground incursions into towns in central Gaza, the only area of ​​the territory where the Israeli army has not carried out such attacks.
While Israeli leaders have said since January that they were moving to a lower-intensity war, the end of the Rafah operation may allow that process to be completed.
Mr. Netanyahu’s remarks and recent comments by Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who was in Washington on Monday, indicated that the focus of Israel’s political discourse and strategic planning is shifting to its northern border with Lebanon.
In a statement on Monday, Mr Gallant’s office said he had discussed with US officials “the transition to ‘Phase C’ in Gaza and its impact on the region, including Lebanon and other areas”.
Early in the war, Mr. Gallant outlined a three-phase battle plan that included intense airstrikes against Hamas targets and infrastructure. a period of ground operations aimed at “eliminating pockets of resistance”. and a third phase, or Phase C, which would create “a new security reality for the citizens of Israel.”
