Paula Bernabéu
Tel Aviv, May 8 (EFE) .- The days that followed the attack of Hamas of October 7, 2023, the assistance of reserved soldiers in the Israel Army shot: who received the call to the reservation came to serve and, who did not voluntarily presented themselves in the barracks. 19 months after the start of the offensive in Gaza, the figure has collapsed in a tired society and that sees in the war a political crusade of the government.
The army eludes to contribute the figures of who come to his call: “There has not been a drastic change in enlistment rates,” he points to Efe when asking about a shortage of troops increasingly present in the national press. When requiring the concrete figure of the index, they limit themselves to responding: “At the moment we have no more comments.”
The Israeli public chain Kan pointed in March that this index has fallen to 60 %, half of what was in October 2023. Then, 300,000 were called rows and tens of thousands more.
“We have decided to do this to stop unnecessary deaths (in Gaza), bring everyone back (hostages) and end a war that continues for political interests,” he explains to Efe at home, on condition of anonymity, a 24 -year -old reservist who has decided to resign.
Between June and July 2024 he was part of a “classified unit” (as refers to it for security) in the offensive in Gaza. He went to ranks despite having participated in the previous months in proportions: “He told me that there were enemies of peace in Gaza and that we had to fight against them.”
“In those two months I realized that serving in the army is a ‘consensus’. In Israel it is assumed that we are surrounded by enemies and that you have to serve to keep your home safe. And this can be used in a very cynical way to achieve political objectives that have nothing to do with long -term security,” he adds.
Allowing a “medical problem”, this reservist now appears as ‘not available’ in the lists of army combatants, but will actively renounce when they call rows. Resorting to medical motifs or leaving the country has become among many Israelis in a passive way of avoiding fighting.
Now he does not see how the offensive aims to fulfill the objective of recovering the 59 hostages still captive in Gaza, especially after Israel broke the high fire (which sponsored the release of 38 of them) on March 18.
-On April 21, the Minister of Finance, the ultra -rightist Bezalel Smotrich, said in an interview that “recovering hostages is not the most important” for the government. Despite the stir caused, Prime Minister, Benjamín Netanyahu, followed him shortly after, ensuring that, although the captives are important, “the final objective” of the offensive is to destroy Hamas.
Netanyahu “knows that, if he decides to stop the war, he will run out of government, because the extreme right ministers threaten him, blackmail him with abandoning him,” Guy Porlan says, retired pilot who in April headed the writing of a letter demanding the end of the offensive and the immediate return of the captives with almost a thousand signatories between retired and reversed military.
Israel approved on May 5 to expand its operations in Gaza and take on more territory in the enclave. In the face of this new phase, the army is calling tens of thousands of reservists who will mostly be destined to the border with Lebanon or the West Bank, so that regular soldiers are relocated to the strip.
The military reserve was created so that Israel can quickly mobilize fighters for specific short -term conflicts with its neighbors -minimizing the casualties and seeking not to affect the economy -but the war in Gaza contradicts its nature: the offensive adds 19 months and there are reservists that have served since it began, according to Poran.
The Army also extended in February for four months the duration of mandatory military service (at least 32 months for men and 24 for women over 18), making them compute as a time in the reserve.
When the Israelis end the service become part of this body. Before the war in Gaza, they could be recruited until 40, in the case of the soldiers, and the 46, in that of the officers, a maximum age that has already been extended in a year in summer of 2024.
Before an army that eludes pronounced by the shortage of combatants, but seeks to recruit thousands of them, the reservist interviewed by Efe claims his decision.
“See you as authentic patriots who aspire to the peace and security of all those who live in these territories,” he says. “We feel that the policies that are followed in this war go against Israel’s interests and we do this because we are concerned about the place we were born, in which we want to live in peace and security.” EFE
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