GAZA — Going into Gaza remains a rare opportunity for journalists. Access has been tightly controlled throughout the Israel-Hamas war, and even now, months into a ceasefire that has paused the fighting without resolving it, entry is neither routine nor casual. Last week I had the opportunity to interview Nadav Shoshani of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) inside the Gaza Strip itself, as he walked me through the so-called “Yellow Line” roughly dividing the enclave between east and west, the strained reality on the ground, and the directions in which this conflict may now move.

Shoshani is the IDF’s international spokesperson, one of the most visible Israeli figures to emerge since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of the Jewish state. For months he has been a fixture in global media, correcting casualty claims and explaining operations in real time. In modern conflict, the spokesman is not an afterthought to the battlefield but an extension of it. What is said publicly shapes diplomatic reaction, public opinion, and operational latitude. English-language briefings in particular are conducted with as much care as any military deployment.

Spokesmen can be dry to interview: They do not reveal classified plans or freelance personal views. Instead, they articulate the institutional position. They present what Israel wants seen, understood, and, ideally, repeated. But even this is useful data for us journalists, and for our readers, too. It is a form of evidence, explaining the narrative the army — and the state — wants to be repeated. From this embed, and from this conversation, the message was consistent: tense but disciplined control in a moment of relative calm (but not peace), determination without appetite for escalation, action in response to violations rather than initiative for renewed war. It was almost as if they wanted to portray a sense of disciplined, determined boredom.

We met at an IDF post a few hundred meters from what is now called the Yellow Line, the boundary dividing Israeli-controlled territory from areas still under Hamas control. Just beyond it lay Deir al-Balah and the central camps, dense urban belts whose origins stretch back to the aftermath of 1948 and whose political culture has long been shaped by displacement, factional rivalry, and Islamist terrorist organizations.

Shoshani’s own trajectory mirrors the way this war has pulled figures back into public roles. During his initial decade-plus in the IDF he served in key communications positions, including spokesperson for Military Intelligence and head of the IDF’s social media desk. In 2022 he moved into politics, advising Gadi Eisenkot in Israel’s parliament, known as the Knesset. He briefly entered private consulting. After Oct. 7, he was called back into uniform at Eisenkot’s request. Since then, he has become one of the IDF’s most recognizable English-language voices.

As we moved between locations in a military jeep, he spoke about operating in a conflict that is scrutinized but rarely visited, as a result of Israel’s own decision to bar free movement of journalists in the area. The informational theater runs parallel to the physical one. Every strike, every claim, every casualty figure is contested. The spokesman stands at the junction between battlefield and broadcast.
From the vantage point near the Yellow Line, the broader strategic dilemma came into focus.

Hamas continues to control significant internal areas of Gaza. Israeli assessments indicate that weapons accumulated earlier in the war remain dispersed across the enclave. Tunnels are still being uncovered even in the southern city of Rafah, where the IDF has operated for an extended period. “The IDF are world class experts in dealing with terror tunnels,” Shoshani said. “And still, after a year plus in Rafah, there are still tunnels.” He described the network as vast and deeply embedded.

In the sector we were visiting, Shoshani said, there are dozens of tunnel shafts. “Single digits” are dismantled each week. It is a steady, grinding process rather than a decisive sweep. As the Israelis are still discovering new shafts and tunnels, the assumption is that the network is even more vast than they know. And for Israel, destroying the tunnels is part of Hamas’s commitment to disarmament in accordance with the US-backed ceasefire.

“The first line of the agreement says Gaza will be a terror free zone,” Shoshani told me. “The agreement speaks about Hamas disarming.” Israel, he said, is committed to that outcome.

Yet Hamas leaders abroad have recently made clear that disarmament is not under consideration. Khaled Meshaal has described surrendering weapons as removing the “soul” of the resistance. Instead, he has floated the prospect of a long “hudna” — a five, seven, or ten-year truce in which weapons remain intact. A pause, not a conclusion. The way things are at the moment it seems like America remains undecided, torn between the momentum of building on the relative calm of the ceasefire and the inclination toward helping Israel defeat its jihadist enemies.

That divergence defines the uncertainty of this moment. A ceasefire predicated on demilitarization rests on a premise one side openly rejects.

Israel currently controls somewhere between 51-58 percent of the Gaza Strip. Within Israel’s political and security leadership, the argument is not over whether Hamas must be weakened, but over how far that effort must go. One school supports sustained operational control and calibrated pressure, judging that persistent attrition imposes manageable diplomatic costs while limiting Israeli exposure. Another warns that leaving Hamas organizationally intact, even in a diminished form, merely postpones the next confrontation and preserves its capacity to reconstitute. The dispute turns on a single question: Can Hamas be contained, or must it be eradicated to prevent recurrence?

“We are literally standing between Hamas and our civilians,” Shoshani said, pointing toward Israeli communities only a kilometer or two away. The distance is short enough to be visible. Oct. 7 lingers as the unspoken baseline of risk. I walked through the burnt-out homes of Be’eri shortly after the massacre. I cried quietly among the makeshift memorials at Re’im for the Nova party victims slain by the barbarous Palestinian terrorists full of bloodlust. I met survivors from Nahal Oz, evacuated for months from their beloved home and living as a family of four in a single kibbutz bedroom in the north. The scars will remain in the psyche of Israel and Jews for decades to come.

The atmosphere at the post was quiet but taut. Occasional distant fire cracked and faded. Wind carried sand across the position. A short drive away, at the Kissufim crossing, pallets of humanitarian aid sat stacked inside Gaza, inspected and approved. “Every week, 4,200 trucks are going into Gaza,” Shoshani said. He emphasized that the Israeli depot on the other side was empty because everything cleared had been transferred into the Strip, awaiting collection by international agencies.

Humanitarian logistics and sniper fire exist side by side. Reconstruction frameworks are discussed internationally while tunnel shafts are dismantled meter by meter.

US President Donald Trump is expected to announce billions in funding for Gaza and provide an update on an international stabilization force at the next meeting of his Board of Peace. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has now formally joined the initiative, signing a back-dated letter during his US trip last week. Public language emphasizes transformation and demilitarization.

Questions surrounding the proposed international stabilization force are also occupying serious attention among policymakers. Under the framework advanced during the Trump administration’s post-war planning, the concept envisages a multinational force deployed in Gaza after the cessation of major combat operations. Its stated purpose would be to oversee demilitarization, support reconstruction, assist in training local security forces, and provide a transitional security umbrella while Israeli forces reduce their footprint.

Within the proposed international architecture, Indonesia has emerged as a potential contributor. Jakarta signaled its readiness, in principle, to supply a substantial contingent to such a force, positioning itself as a Muslim-majority state willing to participate in post-conflict stabilization. The rationale is clear. Indonesian involvement would lend broader regional legitimacy to any arrangement and dilute the perception that Gaza’s future security is being shaped solely by Western actors or by Israel. But everyone knows that nobody can truly disarm Hamas other than the IDF.

Legitimacy is only one dimension of the problem. For Israeli decision-makers, the critical issues are structural and operational. Under what mandate would such an international force operate? Would it be authorized to conduct active counter-terror operations, or confined to monitoring and training? How would intelligence be shared? What happens if armed factions attempt to regroup or test the limits of the force’s authority? These are the foundations upon which success or failure rests.

The Indonesian proposal illustrates the wider tension embedded in the international force concept. A deployment designed primarily for peacekeeping and humanitarian support may stabilize the optics of the post-war environment, but stabilization in a territory where armed networks have deep roots requires more than presence. It requires enforceable authority, coherent command structures, and the political will to confront spoilers — all things I witnessed in the IDF outpost in Gaza but cannot imagine will be present among foreign forces.

I ask LTC Shoshani about the Indonesian rumors and statements. On the ground, foreign troops are absent. “I think that’s more in the in the level of declaration and statements made by politicians,” he said. “It’s not something on the ground happening right now. As you can see, there’s only IDF soldiers in Gaza, but we’re working within the [US-led Civil Military Coordination Center] CMCC for the different solutions that have been agreed upon.” For the IDF, political declarations have yet to alter operational reality.

The central questions remain stark. Can Hamas realistically be disarmed without permanent occupation? If not, can Israel accept a reduced but armed Hamas presence? And if neither path proves viable, how long before the present equilibrium fractures? My embed in the Gaza Strip seems designed not to answer these questions, but to prompt them to the rest of the world to ponder. Criticism is easy, but Israel has to deal in solutions.

Meanwhile, the yellow line is clearly marked, by fluorescent yellow blocks of concrete dotted along the length of the strip. “It is not the type of area where you cross by accident,” Shoshani said. The IDF post we were standing in was deliberately positioned 200 to 300 meters back, allowing time for warnings, leaflets, shots into the air if necessary. Escalation is designed to be gradual.

Yet he seems keen to point out that ceasefires erode incrementally. A sniper attack. A targeted strike in response. Another violation. The cumulative weight builds.

From inside Gaza, the picture is neither triumphant nor chaotic. It is controlled, watchful, provisional. Israel is holding territory, responding to attacks, dismantling infrastructure, insisting on disarmament as the stated end state. As Trump and his two key negotiators — Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner — talk publicly about reconstruction and rebuilding, and as Britain, France, and Canada deal in fantasies of Palestinian statehood, the Israeli soldiers I meet are tasked with the boring, grinding, slow process of degrading Hamas, pushing back when it ventures forward, and keeping alert as it declares it will not disarm.

That thick mud wall Shoshani and I stand behind wasn’t here a few weeks ago. It has been built because the line did not hold well enough. Though the line itself remains in place, what lies beyond it, and what may yet cross it again, remains unresolved.