At least 39 people were killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza on Wednesday, the Palestinian health ministry in the territory stated.

An additional 124 people were injured as Israel tightens its vise on the population of Gaza and is reportedly moving towards prolonged direct control of the territory under a more united right-wing political and military leadership.

The health ministry said that 830 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel resumed its intensive attacks by air, land and sea on 18 March. Nearly 40 percent of those killed were children, according to the ministry.

The death toll in Gaza since 7 October 2023 reached a grim threshold of more than 50,000 confirmed fatalities in recent days, more than half of them women and children, according to the health ministry.

On a less depressing note:

As the analyst Harel notes, if prolonged, direct military control of Gaza is in fact Israel’s strategic objective, “it’s not self-evident that the [Israeli military] will be able to find enough troops to carry out such an ambitious goal.”

According to Haaretz, some army units are recruiting volunteers on social media and offering economic incentives due to fears that reservists, doubting the strategic direction of the war, will not report for duty in the event of another mass mobilization.

Reservists are now being threatened with fines by their commanders, contrary to military procedures, if they don’t show when called up. Israeli media outlets have stated that the current rate of enlistment is only 60 percent in certain units.

Meanwhile, even a weakened Hamas “remains a potent adversary,” as Reuters stated in a report published last week after interviewing sources close to the faction, as well as Israeli and Palestinian analysts.

“In the weeks before the ceasefire took effect in January, Hamas killed dozens of Israeli soldiers with hit-and-run guerrilla warfare that was some of the deadliest of the conflict,” Reuters stated.

If it attempts prolonged, direct control, the Israeli military would be up against the resistance in Gaza while the political establishment is already being met with massive protests demanding a negotiated return of the captives.

Vicky Cohen, the mother of an Israeli soldier held captive in Gaza, said in an interview with a Haaretz reporter during a protest in Jerusalem last week that “Israel never intended to go through with the second stage” of the ceasefire. She said the renewed offensive is not aimed at returning the captives in Gaza, who have been forsaken by the Israeli government.

“As far as [the government] is concerned, it is time to go back to war, to take revenge on Hamas and to bring Hamas down,” she said. “It hasn’t brought Hamas down in over a year, how will it succeed now?”

Danny Elagart, whose brother Itzik was killed while being held in Gaza, accused the Israeli government of sacrificing the captives for its self-preservation.

“Israel today is neither democratic nor Jewish. It is a messianic dictatorship that uses the lives of civilians for the sake of remaining in power,” Elagart told protesters outside of Netanyahu’s office in Jerusalem on Tuesday.

Domestic turmoil amid right-wing power grab

An estimated 200,000 Israelis gathered in the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and other cities on Saturday night to protest the renewed fighting in Gaza and to demand the release of the captives.

Many of the protesters, which include right-wing Israelis as well as centrists and those on the left, also oppose Netanyahu’s moves to sack senior officials including intelligence chief Ronen Bar and Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara as he consolidates his control over state institutions.

“Those decisions have set the stage for a constitutional crisis,” the JTA reported. “The protesters portray them as an abrogation of the popular will that will endanger the 59 remaining hostages […] as well as Israel’s [imaginary] democracy.”

Israel’s parliament passed a state budget on Tuesday, preserving Netanyahu’s coalition government and preventing snap elections.

“This is a budget of war, and with God’s help, it will be a budget of victory,” Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s far-right finance minister, said shortly before the vote.

The preservation of the government allows Netanyahu and his far-right allies to move forward with their efforts to undermine the independence of Israel’s judiciary — efforts that fomented massive protests in the country on the eve of the 7 October 2023 attack.

The stabilization of the coalition government will also allow it to approve the exemption of ultra-Orthodox Jews from compulsory military service and advance bills formalizing the de facto annexation of Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank.

The Israeli parliament will be voting on proposed legislation to overhaul the judiciary on Thursday.

Benny Gantz, the former Israeli defense minister, reportedly warned Israel’s current justice minister that moving ahead with the vote would be a “mistake” and that Israel is on “the brink of a civil war” — echoing comments made by Aharon Barak, the former president of Israel’s high court, reported by media last week.