The military has been tasked with handling the Hamas-orchestrated Land Day march on the Israel-Gaza Strip border on Friday, but we should not mistake it for a purely military event. The march symbolizes an issue that runs far deeper, and one that mandates Israel to review its policies on Gaza and make potentially difficult decisions.
The march itself is an attempt by Hamas to alleviate the pressure building up in Gaza using the tried-and-true method of directing Gazans' anger at Israel.
The march is supposed to be the pinnacle of the protests held near the border since U.S. President Donald Trump's Dec. 6 recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, but while Hamas is sparing no effort to ensure mass turnout, the Palestinians in Gaza have shown little interest in heeding the call. Still, Gaza's rulers are expected to push the masses toward the border fence, no doubt in hopes of triggering clashes with Israeli security forces.
The IDF is bracing for a potentially violent mass protest and preparations are already underway. Additional troops are to be deployed to the border, including special forces units and dozens of snipers, as well as Border Police troops. Security forces have been ordered to prevent a breach of the border fence, but they have also been instructed to exercise maximum restraint so as to minimize the number of Palestinian casualties.
The anxiety in the southern sector was palpable on Sunday night, when the Iron Dome defense system engaged what turned out to be Hamas machine-gun fire, discharged as part of a wide-scale drill the terrorist group held in Gaza.
Head of the Air Defense Command Brig. Gen. Tzvika Haimovich was right to say that saving lives is more important than saving money, but the IDF must now make sure that Hamas is not adopting a new tactical approach: firing cheap ammunition as a way of exhausting Israel's expensive interceptors.
Israeli defense officials maintain that Hamas has no interest in provoking a full-scale conflict with Israel, but there is real concern that a large number of Palestinian casualties in Friday's protest would trigger a dynamic of escalation.
Friday's march is meant as a prelude to a tense month, culminating with the U.S. Embassy's move to Jerusalem, slated for May. For this reason, the military is expected to maintain additional troops along the Israel-Gaza Strip border and across Judea and Samaria for a while.
Meanwhile, Israel was slow to understand that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has manipulated it into a corner by stalling and eventually backing out of the false reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas.
The Palestinian Authority plans to suspend wage payments to Hamas employees in Gaza and further cut its funding of Gaza's power. This essentially makes clear that Abbas is trying to promote an armed conflict between Israel and Hamas, from which he would emerge as the biggest winner.
The beginning of the process by which Israel has sobered up from the dream of having the Palestinian Authority rule Gaza again, 10 years after Hamas forced it out of the enclave, was felt in the cabinet meeting earlier this week, but Israeli decision-makers must go further than offering theoretical solutions.
Israel must formulate a clear policy regarding Gaza that will set clear goals and outlines the ways to reach them, and this should be done sooner rather than later.
Failure to do so could significantly push up the next round of fighting in Gaza, which could erupt from the coming protest or the ones planned for the coming weeks, but its motives would be civilian, primarily due to the growing distress in the Gaza Strip. Anyone who wants to avoid this must act immediately, with an overall perspective, and not suffice with tasking the IDF with preventing demonstrators from breaching the fence.
