Netanyahu and top aides think Israel can beat Hamas on the battlefield

On Sunday, Israel sent infantry into the northern part of the Gaza Strip and areas around Rafah in the south. Israel has also deployed troops in the so-called Netzarim corridor, which bisects the Palestinian enclave, returning to areas it had withdrawn from as part of a cease-fire deal. Israel also has targeted a series of Hamas’s Gaza-based political leaders in recent days.

The moves represent the start of a new battle plan. Netanyahu and a hawkish group of top aides appointed in recent months argue that Hamas must be beaten on the battlefield by force of arms before any political solution to the fate of Gaza can be advanced.

Previously, defense officials had taken the view that Hamas could be degraded militarily, but that it would be necessary to establish a new governing authority in Gaza to really end Hamas’s influence.

Netanyahu and his new team, including Defense Minister Israel Katz and top general Eyal Zamir, believe that last year’s military defeat of Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Trump administration’s willingness to back a renewed offensive against Hamas gives them more latitude to fight.

Katz, in a policy shift announced last week, said that Israel would gradually seize territory from Gaza as long as Hamas holds on to hostages.

“Once you win, things will start to sort themselves out," said Amir Avivi, a former Israeli military commander.

The new approach is likely to be controversial among Israelis. Most polls show a large majority of Israelis, including a majority of right-wing voters, want the fighting to stop as part of a deal that brings home the remaining hostages in Gaza.

That doesn’t mean they expect Hamas to give up on armed conflict with Israel. But they argue that a prolonged cease-fire and reconstruction in Gaza combined with stronger regional alliances would put Israel in a better position to eliminate Hamas in the future.

Israel has been ramping up pressure on Hamas in recent weeks. It started restricting supplies and electricity in early March and launched a wave of deadly airstrikes and ground operations this past week.

A resumption of fighting will mean more pain for Gaza, already in ruins after more than a year and a half of war. The conflict has left more than 50,000 Palestinians dead, according to health authorities, who don’t say how many were combatants. Israel says it has killed as many as 20,000 militants.

An Israeli tank maneuvers next to destroyed buildings in the Gaza Strip.

Still, Hamas has survived. It turned hostage swaps over the past two months into spectacles in an effort to signal its authority and has been recruiting fighters and scavenging unexploded munitions to prepare to fight on.

Netanyahu’s new aides say that Israel could have done more damage to Hamas if it hadn’t been held back by shortfalls of ammunition and pressure from the Biden administration to use less force and provide humanitarian aid.

There also was a reluctance among Israeli military leaders to hold territory, which allowed Hamas to regroup in areas after the Israeli army moved on.

Now, the Trump administration has ramped up the flow of ammunition and encouraged Israel to take the gloves off. The defeat of Hezbollah also means Israel has more forces that it can deploy in Gaza to occupy ground and control aid deliveries.

Hamas’s tunnel system would need to be destroyed and its other fighting infrastructure rooted out. The effort could take months or years, killing more people and leaving more of Gaza in ruins, but it would eventually squeeze out the militants, advocates of renewed fighting say.

Those on the other side say Hamas will never be eliminated without a political and diplomatic solution that offers an alternative to the militant group. Further military actions pose a risk to the lives of remaining hostages and will inflict more damage on civilians in Gaza, they say.

Opponents of the new approach also say Israel’s war-weary society and exhausted reservists can’t handle the burden of prolonging the war, they say.

A poll released March 9 by the Israel Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem-based think tank, found that 73% of Israelis supported negotiating with Hamas over an end to the fighting and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in exchange for the release of the remaining hostages.

Notably, 56% of right-wing Israelis polled said they supported the cease-fire deal, as did 62% of voters from Netanyahu’s Likud party.A poll by the hard-right and pro-Netanyahu Channel 14 news station from March 20, on the other hand, found 57% of respondents supported renewing the war, and 39% were opposed.

With Israeli society divided, mobilizing larger numbers of reservists for a new campaign in Gaza could prove challenging, said Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute.

Large protests in recent days led by hostage families calling to end the war and demonstrations against Netanyahu’s attempted ousting of the chief of the Shin Bet internal security service, who supports a cease-fire deal, have underscored deep divisions in Israeli society. His dismissal is currently being blocked by Israel’s supreme court.

Israel is likely to rely on regular soldiers for a renewed ground invasion of Gaza, while sending reservists to less active battlegrounds, like the border with Lebanon and Syria or to the West Bank, said Avivi, the retired general.

Hamas is deeply unpopular in Gaza, but the violence of the war and lack of an alternative ensures it has some support, said Tahani Mustafa, a senior Palestine analyst at International Crisis Group. She said the group is seeing an uptick in recruitment.

The large occupying force needed to combat an insurgency would be expensive, further damage Israel’s international reputation and create lots of new targets for Hamas, said Ofer Fridman, a former Israeli officer and war-studies scholar at King’s College London.

Many Israelis feel the country will need to go back to war in Gaza eventually but want the government to set the goal of destroying Hamas aside while the remaining hostages are released. Analysts say that will create time for better planning.

“We will have a second round and find ourselves in Gaza again," said Avner Golov, a former senior director at Israel’s National Security Council who is now with MIND Israel, a national-security advisory group. “But we need to be smarter."

Write to Dov Lieber at dov.lieber@wsj.com and Anat Peled at anat.peled@wsj.com