>>510480131 (OP)They are forced to by demographics.
Even before Gaza, the IDF was running out of recruits.
The birth-rate is dropping, while the Israeli-Arab population within Israel proper, not just the West Bank is increasing - within a decade the Arab vote will be large enough to control the Knesset unless Israel abandons the idea of being 'the only democracy in the Middle East' or conducts an internal genocide not just in Gaza.
Hence the fight to remove the Haredi exemption - the IDF is so desperate for conscripts, parliament and the Courts were forced to finally override the religious parties powerbase.
Now the IDF are losing Reservists in the Gaza meat-grinder - not just as deaths and casualties, but the rest are being screwed by longer and multiple call-ups. Business-owners are going bankrupt being dragged away from their work, employed workers are being fired by businesses that would usually support their absences on reserve service but now can't afford to carry the excessive vacancies. Some reservists are now refusing call-ups, and others are leaving Israel to avoid further continued service.
Current conscripts and serving reservists are on a 12month service extension to prevent them leaving, and specialist commando units that would normally be kept for strategic strikes at external targets are being wasted as regular infantry to bolster exhausted reservists.
>Gaza is the IDFs second-last war.It isn't the war the IDF wanted.
They needed that war to be the US-Iran conflict to remove their last major threat while the IDF was still strong enough to hold back the collateral damage of any Hezbollah or Syrian border attacks or an internal Palestinian uprising.
Hamas surprised them by starting unilaterally before Iran, and now Trump's 'Single Strike and Done' attack on Iran has pushed a US invasion of Iran too far into the future to be viable.
>The next IDF war will the retreat into the sea.The Herzl experiment is over.