There’s little consensus in Israel on how to manage Gaza after the war. It’s a question that is on the minds of some reservists who are essential to the fight.
Military reservist Lia Golan, 24, gives instructions to Israeli soldiers atop a Tiran tank on the Israel-Gaza border in December. ISRAEL-GAZA BORDER — As Israel’s war in Gaza rages, it’s leaning on a backbone of reservists to fight — soldiers who say they are committed to serve but who are also divided over what comes next.
Israel maintains a conscripted army but called up the vast majority of its 465,000 reservists in the early days of the war. It vowed to eradicate Hamas, which ruled the territory, after the group’s fighters killed around 1,200 people in Israel and abducted more than 250 others to bring back to Gaza as hostages.
The ministry also recently proposed changes to Israel’s military and reserve laws, seeking to extend the service of both conscripts and reservists, but the amendments have not yet been sent to the Knesset for consideration. Israeli leaders have said they don’t want responsibility for Gaza, a territory Israel occupied from 1967 to 2005. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has come under fire for failing to plan for the “day after,” also opposes letting the Palestinian Authority govern.
Ariel Shauliyan, 41, is also a reservist and Garmiza’s neighbor in Nokdim. “We are frozen in place,” he said. “We still think that military rule like there was in the second intifada is correct.” His condition has worsened since Oct. 7, he said, after he spent more than half of the months-long war driving a D9 armored bulldozer in Gaza, demolishing buildings across the territory. In May alone, he was deployed to Rafah in the south and Jabalya in the north, where the military just concluded a weeks-long operation.
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