Occupation of the Gaza Strip: Netanyahu’s final shot at releasing hostages.
The plan to occupy Gaza City, which was approved by the security cabinet last weekend as the first stage of Israel’s new military strategy in the Gaza Strip, will cause great harm and risks for the Zionist regime.
Occupying Gaza: Repeating a Failed Experience
The Zionist regime occupied the Gaza Strip, along with the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai Desert, in the 1967 Six-Day War. This occupation continued until 2004.
During the approximately 37 years of occupation of the Gaza Strip, approximately 13 Zionist settlements were built in the strip, and nearly 8,000 Zionists settled in these settlements. However, on the one hand, the enormous security costs that the occupation of the Gaza Strip has imposed on the Israeli army in the past 22 months, and on the other hand, the deterioration of the affairs of more than two million Palestinians living in Gaza and the development of the infrastructure networks of this strip will cause great troubles for the Zionist regime. Therefore, the occupation of the Gaza Strip is essentially a failed experiment that Israel has tried once in the past decades.
The high security and human cost of the occupation of Gaza
The second issue that has led many military and security officials of the Zionist regime, including Eyal Zamir, Chief of Staff of the Army, David Barne, Director of Mossad, and Tsekhi Hanegbi, Netanyahu’s internal security advisor, to oppose this strategy is its extremely high security cost.
On the one hand, with the idea of occupation being put on hold and the prospect of negotiations to reach a ceasefire agreement being lost, the lives of the remaining Israeli prisoners in Gaza will face danger, because the resistance groups will no longer have a reason to keep the prisoners alive.
On the other hand, the human cost of the continued presence of the Israeli army in Gaza, as in the past, is also very high, even now that Hamas is thought to be weakened. For example, the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth has announced the death toll of the Israeli army during Operation Gideon’s Chariots at around 50. This is a very high number of deaths for an operation that lasted only 80 days (and that after two years of war). In addition, the figures announced by the Israeli army regarding the deaths are heavily censored, and the real number is likely higher.
Strong domestic and international opposition to the continued occupation of Gaza
The third cost of the attempt to occupy Gaza is the intensification of opposition and protests against this measure within the occupied territories and also internationally. Last night, more than 10,000 people went on strike on the Ayalon Highway in Tel Aviv against the plan. The Association for the Support of Israeli Prisoners, based in the Gaza Stri,p was at the heart of these protests. The protesters called for the military to disobey the commanders’ order to occupy Gaza and for various businesses and trade unions to declare a general strike, including the Israeli labor union.
On the other hand, in recent months, new movements have emerged from some of Tel Aviv’s Western allies to recognize an independent Palestinian state due to Israel’s continued genocide in the Gaza Strip and its organized use of weapons of starvation. So far, France, Britain, Canada, and Portugal have announced their readiness to recognize an independent Palestinian state in September 2025, and several other Western countries may be added to this list.
New polls also show that anti-Israeli and even anti-Semitic tendencies are increasing among the people of many European and Western countries allied with Israel as a result of the regime’s continued killing of Palestinians. The negative attitude of the Greek people towards Israeli tourists is one of the signs of this development.
A poll by the Zionist newspaper Ma’ariv also shows that 62 percent of Zionists are afraid of traveling to Europe due to the anti-Israel wave on the continent.