Analysts warn Israel’s ‘forever war’ pushing army to the limit
IDF soldiers in Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza.
The Palestine Chronicle reports on 20 March 2025:
With Israel renewing its genocidal onslaught on the Gaza Strip, defense analysts, and reservists “have begun to warn of growing attrition on the fighting force, with jobs, families and lives put on hold,” the Financial Times reported on Thursday.
“For the first time (since the start of the war) there may be a chance some reservists won’t report for duty,” Amos Harel, the defense analyst for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and author of a book on civil-military relations, was quoted as saying. “This could become a bigger problem if there’s no consensus behind the war,” Harel added.
In Israel, most men and women are expected to enlist in the army for two to three years at the age of 18, the report explained, with many continuing in the reserve unit afterward. However, before the current war – deemed a ‘forever war’ – the “deal” with the army was for reservists to serve “30 days a year,” the report quoted Chen Arbel Marinberg, the wife of a reservist, as saying.
Around 300,000 reservists were mobilized early in the war, “serving 200 days across three combat tours in Gaza,” the report noted, “with more expected later this year.” “We were told to prepare for five years of intense fighting,” Marinberg said.
Military Losses
According to Israeli army figures, cited by the Financial Times, over 800 soldiers have been killed and around 6,000 injured since the start of Israel’s military assault on Gaza in October 2023. The figures exclude soldiers who were struggling with mental health and post-traumatic stress disorder.
The report noted the argument from military officials who say that 10,000 more soldiers were needed “especially new armor and infantry brigades in order to better defend Israel’s borders and ‘indefinitely’ hold buffer zones inside neighboring territory,” such as Lebanon and Syria.