Israeli reservists face growing strain as extended deployments in Gaza take a toll on their lives and commitments.
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.
However, major questions have emerged regarding official numbers last February, after Israel’s newly appointed Chief of Staff, Eyal Zamir, announced new statistics concerning the Israeli army’s losses since the start of the genocidal war on Gaza and up until the end of last year.
A report broadcast by Israel’s Channel 12 on Sunday, quoting statements from Zamir, who also holds the position of Director General of the Ministry of Defense, revealed that 5,942 Israeli families had “joined the list of bereaved families” in 2024, with more than 15,000 injured individuals being absorbed into the rehabilitation system.
According to Al-Jazeera, Israeli affairs expert Azzam Abu Al-Adas clarified that the term “list of bereaved families” is used within the Israeli army’s terminology to refer to the families of military members who have been confirmed killed during the war.
Conscription of Haredi Jews
Analysts meanwhile warn that such organizational changes will take time to develop and also impact the question of whether to conscript ultra-orthodox (Haredi) Jewish men, the report added.
Currently, the Haredi who make up about 14 percent of the population have been exempt from military service. However, the Israeli Supreme Court has ruled it unconstitutional with the vast majority of the Israeli public demanding that they serve, the report said.
According to official figures, the report added, only a few hundred Haredi men have enlisted over the past year, “out of over 10,000 draft orders” issued by the army.
‘Likely to Miss Call-Up’
The Financial Times spoke to several reservists who said that “while it is rare for a reservist to fully quit their unit, they are now more likely to miss a call-up for training or operational duty due to personal reasons.”
The report quoted one reserve officer stationed for months near the Gaza border as saying that the reporting rate has become “less than half” among reservist units.
An air force navigator and intelligence officer were reportedly both discharged recently after announcing they would suspend their reserve service, “with the latter saying on X he would not participate in a war not in “the interests of the people of Israel’”.
The report also noted that polls show that more than 60 percent of Israelis want Benjamin Netanyahu to reach a deal with Hamas over the remaining captives, “even it if means ending the war.” However, the premier, “under pressure from his far-right political allies, has vowed not to stop fighting until Hamas has been eliminated,” the report added.
(PC, FT)
Fed like pigs, armed to the teeth with an arsenal of all kinds of weapons and sponsored by US and co. Yet, the idf terrorists can’t keep up against isolated resistance fighters in a tiny strip where they endured nearly 20 years of siege and 16 months of ongoing genocide, hunger and thirst. I have said this before and I will keep saying it: a bunch of cowards wielding sophisticated weapons are no match for men whose only weapons are faith and a righteous cause.
The Jewish revolution against Zionism is crucial to defeating the Zionist State and its Occupation of Palestine East and Palestine West.