The war on Gaza has reached its 100th day, and despite the fire, destruction and mass killing, it has not achieved its declared goals. In Israel, its politicians are trying to escape forward by seeking to strengthen the patience of the Israelis, and waiting for a victory about which their doubts are increasing, while the families of detainees inside the Gaza Strip are escalating their protests and continuing a demonstration in Tel Aviv that began in the evening Yesterday, and will continue until Sunday evening.

“100 days of isolation” that Israel experienced at the level of people and public opinion in the world supporting the Palestinians, their narrative, and their rights, in exchange for most Western governments siding with it, culminating in Germany’s announcement of its official accession to Israel in the confrontation with South Africa.

Today is 100 days of declared and hidden bleeding in Israel. So far, the military spokesman admits that about 180 Israeli soldiers have been killed since the ground incursion on October 27 (and more than 500 soldiers have been killed since the “Al-Aqsa Flood”), and he also admits that about 2,000 wounded soldiers have been wounded. However, Many Israeli civilian sources reveal that the number of wounded is six times the announced number, and at least 2,000 soldiers have become officially disabled since the start of the war.

It is “100 days of shock.” 

Even though more than three months have passed since October 7, large Israeli circles are still expressing their shock at that “imaginary” day, and their awareness of an event similar to October 6, 1973, and even more dangerous.

The depth of the shock is evident in what Ben Dror Yemini, an Israeli political commentator, said on Friday that October 7 was the deadliest strike in the history of Jewish settlement, and since then a war has been taking place that is the most frustrating of Israel’s wars since its establishment, noting that the atmosphere is heavy with a feeling of double bitterness. Tactically and strategically. He points to several factors behind this general mood prevailing in Israel today: “First, most of the kidnapped people are still in the hands of terrorist organizations and are suffering there, and some of them are wounded, and it is not clear how many of them will remain alive. Secondly, the army did not put its hands on Hamas leaders. Third, the launching of missiles continues, and fourth, the situation in the north is very dangerous facing an enemy with greater military capabilities. Fifthly, the Houthis, who were treated with disdain and ridicule, threaten Israel's southern gateway. Sixth, hundreds of thousands of Israelis in the south and north have been displaced for months, and there is no end at the end of the tunnel.”

At the same time, Yamini joined many Israeli attempts to maintain morale. He also said, “The high level of bitterness is unjustified. Despite all the obstacles, our army, which is fighting an enemy inside tunnels and inside populated areas, is doing a great job.” Therefore, we need patience, and even long patience, because there is no shortening the path.”

100 days of anticipation

Ben-Dror Yamini is not alone in realizing the fact that “moral capital” is evaporating with time, that the Israelis’ wait has become long, that their patience is beginning to diminish, and that their skepticism about the feasibility of the war is growing, and therefore attempts to strengthen support and encouragement continue by official and media bodies. This comes against the backdrop of 100 days of waiting and doubt. Despite the loud rhetoric about achieving and accumulating victories, the Israelis are aware that the war has been prolonged, and it is between a state that has devoted most of its budgets, for years, to security and the army, and Palestinian factions trapped inside geographic “sardine cans,” and they wonder: If we have achieved all these victories, why do the Palestinians continue to resist!

Coinciding with this anniversary, and against the backdrop of these doubts, the head of the occupation government, Benjamin Netanyahu, appeared again, in a press conference, alone without Gantz and Gallant, trying to restore the Israelis’ shattering confidence and rally their support to continue the war. He said many things, repeating his well-known slogan: “We are on the way.” To win. “I know there are those who doubt that, but I am not with them.” However, only 56% of Israelis believe that Israel is capable of achieving victory, and they doubt how clean Netanyahu’s calculations are, and free of strange considerations related to his desire to prolong the life of his government by prolonging the war on Gaza, and perhaps with Hezbollah, according to the “Yedioth Ahronoth” poll, today.

100 days of doubt

He was preceded, in a separate press conference, by army commander Herzi Halevy, who warned against trying to stop the war in order to recover the kidnapped people, claiming that military pressure on “Hamas” was the way to recover them.

Halevy and the rest of the army commanders concerned with continuing the war to erase the shame that befell them, after October 7, have been sending, in the last month, clear messages (leaks and through close military analysts) of the necessity of defining the goals of continuing the war, and determining the features of the next day of the war, so that it does not turn into a stagnation in the place and exhaustion.

At this stage, a large number of Israeli military analysts agree with the call to make the recovery of the kidnapped and prisoners a first priority, at the price of stopping the war, compared to a small number of these analysts who continue to support the idea of continuing the war in search of a clear resolution, including Avi Sakharov, who says, today In Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, “Ceasing the war and withdrawing in exchange for liberating the kidnapped people and maintaining Hamas’ authority will unintentionally perpetuate Hamas’ victory on October 7 and pave the way for more such attacks.”

In his press conference, Netanyahu indicated that the war would not end without “bridging the gap in the south of the Gaza Strip,” because keeping the Salah al-Din axis (Philadelphia) and the Rafah crossing in the hands of “Hamas” means keeping the door open for weapons smuggling, but he did not answer the question of how this would be done on the ground. .

Currently, the occupation army continues to redeploy in a different manner due to American pressure, and in search of reducing the extent of its losses, so it moves slowly and cautiously in the southern Gaza Strip, especially since Israeli detainees are present there, according to Israeli estimates.

On the other hand, Israeli observers doubt the possibility of completing the occupation of all of the southern Gaza Strip, given the presence of a large number of Gazan refugees spread there, and given the danger posed by allowing them to return to the north, because this will allow Hamas to increase its forces there by infiltrating among civilians, according to what Roui Sharon military commentator on Hebrew Radio confirms, on Sunday. Roy Sharon points out that the dilemma is big, which is that the Israeli leadership is talking about this openly, but on the ground it is not known how this will happen, noting the sensitivity of the issue in terms of embarrassing Egypt, if it allows Israel to control the border with the Gaza Strip. He adds: “The situation is complicated, and this seems an impossible task. Will Egypt accept the Israeli dictation?”

100 days of conflict between two declared goals

In Tel Aviv, an unprecedented demonstration continues in these hours. It began yesterday evening and continues until this evening without interruption, under the title: “Let us return the kidnapped now,” and “We do not want a new 136 Ron Arad.”

On this symbolic day, the voice of the families of the detainees and their increasing numbers of supporters in the Israeli street has become more intense and stronger as they demand an end to the war, so that their relatives can be restored, in contrast to the position of the ruling establishment, which practically sacrificed them in exchange for “Israel’s highest interest, the restoration of prestige, the power of deterrence, and revenge.” These people have been silenced and deceived, since the first day of the war, with the official claim that the ground incursion brought Israel closer to achieving both goals: destroying “Hamas” and recovering the detainees. Today, they have become categorically aware that the opposite is true, and that the continuation of the war does not return detainees, but rather kills them. Only one female soldier was recovered, and the rest were released thanks to negotiations. “Let us get the detainees back before it is too late, and later we will have all the time to renew the war and settle the score with Hamas.” This is the saying of the families of the detainees, along with an increasing number of Israelis, as is reflected in the participation of tens of thousands of demonstrators in Tel Aviv holding up pictures of the kidnapped in the rain and despite the  stormy weather.

In its editorial, Haaretz newspaper calls, on their behalf, for the immediate return of the kidnapped people, stressing that the government is not authorized to leave them to their fate. She continued, recalling the fate of the Israeli air navigator missing since the First Lebanon War: “We do not want a new 136 Ron Arad.”

Today, Sunday afternoon, work inside Israel will be suspended for ninety minutes, coinciding with the organization of protests across the country in support of the families of detainees.

100 days deferred split

Today also marks 100 days of questioning the fate of the internal unity brought about by the war, after a major division and rift among the Israelis that exploded on days like this in 2023, with Netanyahu’s sixth government undertaking “judicial reforms” that opponents considered a “coup against the regime.”

Despite the momentous event, on October 7, and the war and its losses, it is clear today that the internal bleeding has not stopped inside Israel, for two fundamental reasons. The first is that the differences and differences are deep and too great to be healed by war, and the second is the belief of each of the two camps that the other party bears responsibility for the shame of October 7th: The opposition sees what happened as a strategic failure as a result of a failed strategy led by Netanyahu to buy Gaza’s silence with money and manage the conflict with it, while the ruling coalition sees that the failure is only intelligence, for which the security establishment bears responsibility, not the political level, and the latter’s attempt to evade accountability and responsibility continues to pour oil on the fire of disagreements. Just as the Palestinian resistance’s steadfastness for 100 days, and its success in exacting a painful price from the Israelis, amid questions about the government’s eligibility and ability to manage the war, in addition to doubt about the integrity of its priorities and the cleanliness of its accounts, makes the faltering internal unity worse.

A poll published by Yedioth Ahronoth reflects this bleeding wound, as 75% of respondents say that the feeling of unity has been strengthened, while 58% of them believe that division will return immediately after the end of the war, while only 61% are confident that Israel will win this war, and these are low percentages compared to previous polls, and this is an expected result in light of the simple, stark fact that the war has been going on for 100 days. 

The President of Israel, Isaac Herzog, realizes the danger of continuing internal bleeding, and is trying again to contribute to healing and stopping it. In an article published today in Hebrew newspapers, entitled: “Our spirit will triumph,” he asserts that the leadership is being tested by preserving the unity of the people and avoiding political campaigns (a veiled reference to the sectarian tendencies of Netanyahu and his group). He added, trying to urge the Israelis to adhere to unity at all costs: “Our enemy thought that on October 7th he would weaken us and deepen the division between us, but our spirit refuses to be broken.”

He was followed by former Education Minister Shai Biron, who said, in an article published by “Yedioth Ahronoth” today: “We do not want to return to October 6th, calling for working together and searching for what is inclusive.”

100 days in hell

Perhaps the people of Gaza today do not remember the 100 days of war against them, because the intensity of the bombing and brutal killing made them lose the ability to distinguish between day and night and days. They bandage their wounds with patience in the face of killing, wounds, hunger, thirst, deprivation, and the traumas of their children and the elderly. 60,000 wounded so far, 22,000 dead, an unknown number of missing persons, and hundreds of thousands of refugees, some of whom are drowning in the mud of winter and spending the night in the rubble, in the open, which raises the question of whether Hamas had estimated in advance that this price would be a “nakba" again will the people of Gaza pay it alone, in exchange for the “flood of Al-Aqsa”, for the liberation of all Palestinians, and for an independent state for them?

In any case, Israel will emerge a loser from this confusing confrontation for it. But can it be said that the Palestinians, despite their patience and steadfast resistance that astonished the world and surprised the occupation, and still is, have won, and the Gaza Strip has been reduced to rubble? An unprecedented war, since the Nakba, between a state full of soldiers, and a besieged Palestinian faction that decided to try to break the siege, undermine the prestige of the occupying state, and punish it for its continued violations. 100 days ago, Israel pretended to be waging a defensive moral war, and its press was militancy, more than any previous war, claiming that it was a war of good people against bad people.

But some Israeli voices, tweeting away from the herd, are clear and decisive, and the most prominent and loudest of them, today, Sunday, is the journalist Gideon Levy, who wonders in his article: “If this is not genocide in Gaza, then what is it?”

Levy asks the question of the knower: “What do we call the mass killing that has continued until this moment indiscriminately, and in numbers that are difficult to imagine?” What do we call a situation in which a large number of children die, while they are in their final stages, lying on hospital floors, and elderly people suffering from hunger and thirst? How do we call two million displaced, bleeding and sick people facing hunger and thirst? What is important about the judicial description of their miserable situation at the International Court of Justice?

Levy concludes, in a brave article, by saying sarcastically: “What is important is what the Israelis are committing against the Palestinians. Israel will breathe a sigh of relief if Hague rejects South Africa’s lawsuit. If the lawsuit is rejected, the conscience of the Israelis will be relieved!”

He was followed by his fellow journalist, Amira Hass, who recalled the lie of the Israeli military spokesman justifying the killing of journalists Hamza Wael Al-Dahdouh and Mustafa Thuraya. This is an opportunity to remember that the war of extermination has so far affected 100 Palestinian journalists. Are all of them “terrorists” belonging to “Hamas” and “Jihad”? 

100 days of silence

In the face of popular demonstrations in the streets of Western cities, the Arab countries, in their overwhelming majority, remained silent, or resorted to gossip and verbal taxes, and perhaps what was hidden was greater for some of them, in exchange for the military “terror” of “Hezbollah” from Lebanon and the Houthis from Yemen.

In general, the voice of Arabs and Muslims remains less strong with the sound of protests in Western capitals, and this is what drives the madness of Israel, in which many have asked: “What has South Africa and our money to do what no Arab country has done, while it is five thousand miles away from us?”

Source: Sama News