Why Israel is shifting focus to returning evacuees to the North - analysis

Israel’s Security Cabinet updated the objectives of the war to include “returning the residents of the North securely to their homes.” This comes two weeks after Israel’s defense minister demanded that the war goals be extended to include this demand. Up until now, the evacuation of the North, around 60,000 people in numerous small communities and the city of Kiryat Shmona, was not a goal of the war effort.

It remains a key question why it wasn’t always a goal to return the residents to the North. To understand why, it’s worth looking at the wider picture of the war goals.

When the war began on October 7, the country’s goals were unclear. Israeli leaders claimed Hamas was similar to ISIS and that “there won’t be Hamas” after the war.

However, it quickly became clear that Israel did not have a day after strategy for Gaza and that the war would be conducted by raiding Hamas in Gaza, instead of taking over Gaza and removing Hamas. Therefore, the war goal was actually to eliminate Hamas’ governing and military capabilities and to return the hostages.

While returning the hostages is a specific goal, reducing Hamas’s capabilities is up for interpretation. It could be argued that eliminating 17,000 Hamas members has reduced its military capabilities and it no longer poses a threat to Israel. In the past Israel has fought numerous wars with Hamas; Israel declared that it had succeeded each time. Each time, Hamas emerged stronger, leading to key questions about whether the goals of past conflicts were met.

During the 2021 war against Hamas, reports in Israel claimed that Hamas’s underground metro in Gaza might have been set back years. This assessment now appears to be incorrect. Hamas did not suffer much of a setback in 2021. This concern now looms over the current war in Gaza and the declared war aims. In addition, it appears Prime Minister Netanyahu also wants long-term control over the Philadelphi corridor. This could be another war goal.

Hezbollah began its attacks on Israel on October 8. Israel responded by evacuating residents of the North within a mile or two of the border. This affected more than a dozen small communities. Several days later, Israel also evacuated Kiryat Shmona, sending 24,000 people to seek refuge elsewhere.

Evacuating residents

The evacuation of border communities was unprecedented in its scale because it also involved the communities on the Gaza border. When Israel fought past wars, it sometimes evacuated children, or people chose to leave their homes, but Israel never evacuated so many communities for so long. Evacuating some people in the lead-up to the Six Day War, for instance, is a lot different than evacuating 100,000 people and disrupting their lives for a year. Some 14,000 children in the North are now spending a second year away from home in unfamiliar schools.

It’s puzzling why the return of the residents to their homes wasn’t always a war goal. It’s also confusing why they were kept away from their homes for so long. Hezbollah has been allowed to terrorize northern Israel every day for 11 months. All it receives in response is proportional precision airstrikes and some artillery fire. Hezbollah takes some losses but it is not deterred. It is difficult to see now how Israel will get its deterrence back.

There is intense pressure on Israel not to escalate against Hezbollah. This means that Israel is expected to accept the status quo, keep people evacuated, and allow Hezbollah to attack whenever it wants. This is a big difference from the past, such as in 2006, when Hezbollah attacked and received a major war in response. That war, although it didn’t initially go as planned, created almost two decades of peace in northern Israel. Hezbollah understood it couldn’t carry out attacks.

This all changed in 2022 with the maritime deal. After Israel was pushed to sign a maritime deal with Lebanon, which was dictated by Hezbollah threats, the Iranians believed they could pressure Israel more. What Hezbollah understood after the maritime deal is that it can always threaten Israel and then be rewarded. It isn’t only rewarded by Israel but also by the US pressuring Israel to make deals that allow Hezbollah to dictate things at the point of a gun. Instead of making sure that Hezbollah didn’t gain by making threats, the maritime deal showed that Israel could be forced to make deals.

Hezbollah is now emboldened. Israel faces an uphill struggle to achieve the war goals and it faces this struggle on multiple fronts. For instance, the goal of returning hostages seems very difficult without a ceasefire. There were already four hostages in Gaza before October 7; the bodies of soldiers Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul; and living hostages Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed. They had been left in Gaza since 2014. It’s unclear if Israel can achieve the goal of returning hostages, considering history.

Israel’s goals, ranked in difficulty, now include returning hostages, returning evacuees from the North, and reducing Hamas’ military and governing capabilities. It’s unclear if adding more goals will become a form of mission creep, especially if there is a lack of seriousness about achieving them. Returning the evacuees to the North should have been a goal from the first day; they should never have been evacuated in the first place. Once Israel begins evacuation as a policy, it leads to negative outcomes.

This is why Israel’s former leaders such as David Ben-Gurion never wanted to evacuate people. He understood it was a sign of weakness and Israel’s enemies would keep pushing for more people to be evacuated. Israel faces an unprecedented challenge in the North with Hezbollah. Evacuating people also sent a message to the international community that Israel was willing to remove people and cave into threats. The United States would never evacuate parts of Arizona and Texas due to cartel threats. Only Israel is expected to evacuate its population under the threat of the gun.