Crisis Intensifies in the Ranks of Israeli Occupation Forces

Jacob Montag

Since Israel’s reinvasion of the Gaza Strip in March, the IDF has been beset by an increasingly acute internal military crisis. High-level Israeli military figures have acknowledged a lack of battlefield success on the ground in Gaza, stating that the occupation forces are overextended and have been unable to defeat the resistance fighters.

According to the analysis of Israeli security sources, it will likely take an attritional war lasting years or even decades for the occupation forces to achieve their military objectives—what has already proven to be an impossible feat. Such an effort, they claim, would require deploying tens of thousands of soldiers to Gaza, including many in the reserves. In late March, Israel’s Defense Ministry announced that it suffered over 16,000 injuries since October 2023, and expected to have over 100,000 injured soldiers by 2030. Prior to Al-Aqsa Flood, the total number of Israeli soldiers injured from all previous wars and battles sat at 62,000, meaning that in less than 18 months the Palestinian resistance and its allies inflicted over a fourth of the amount of injuries than Israeli forces suffered over the course of its 77 years of existence.

At the same time, the IDF is currently undergoing the largest draft resistance crisis it has faced in decades. Over 100,000 Israeli reserve units are reportedly refusing to show up for their mandatory duty. According to Israeli media, while the overwhelming majority of the Israeli Jewish population rallied behind the genocide over the course of the past 18 months, popular support for the war has dramatically waned since Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from the ceasefire in March.

The last time the IDF faced a draft resistance crisis of this scale was during the 1982 bombing and siege of Beirut. This bombing campaign, like the ongoing U.S.-Israel genocide in Gaza, took the lives of countless unarmed civilians and sparked widespread international outrage. Due to the constraints imposed on the occupation forces by guerrilla warfare carried out by the newly-formed Hezbollah, Israel’s failure to mobilize reserves, and diplomatic pressure from U.S. imperialism aimed at preserving its military outpost, the siege was ultimately lifted after just two months, representing a significant strategic defeat for Israel that simultaneously emboldened armed anti-imperialist forces in the region.

In addition to the ongoing draft crisis, the Golani Brigade, an elite Israeli infantry unit deployed in Gaza, recently published an open letter calling for the cessation of hostilities and the re-initiation of negotiations to free Israeli prisoners of war held by the Palestinian armed resistance. Similar petitions were also issued by Mossad and Shin Bet operatives, Israeli military doctors, and retired Israeli naval officers, among others. Despite being arch-enemies of the Palestinian national liberation struggle, many in the Israeli military and intelligence apparatus are turning against the war as it proves to be ineffective at crushing the Palestinian insurgency.

As the Palestinian resistance and its allies throw back the occupation forces, the contradictions within the Israeli state and society continue to sharpen. A recent poll published by an Israeli newspaper shows that 62% of Israelis want an end to the war. While many Israelis are beginning to acknowledge the necessity of making political concessions to the Palestinian armed resistance in the hopes of prolonging Israel’s morbid existence, the Netanyahu government continues to pursue all-out war in accordance with the dictates of the most ultra-reactionary imperialists, laying the seeds for its own downfall as well as the eventual downfall of the criminal Zionist entity.

Photo: Israeli army evacuates wounded soldiers from Gaza. Nir Keidar/Anadolu Agency.

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