A soldier in front of Israeli army tanks at the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel, on May 29, 2025. (Credit: Jack Guez / AFP)
The Israeli army announced Friday the death of four soldiers in Gaza and said it lacks 10,000 troops for its “operational needs,” at a time when the governing coalition appears on the verge of collapse due to disagreements over the conscription of ultra-Orthodox Jews.
Meanwhile, Gaza’s Civil Defense announced the deaths of 38 people in Israeli strikes or gunfire on Friday across the small Palestinian territory, where residents are marking the first day of the Muslim holiday of Sacrifice (Eid al-Adha), for the second consecutive year amid the rubble of war.
The four soldiers were killed early in the morning while operating “in a complex belonging” to Hamas, when “an explosive device detonated, causing part of the structure to collapse,” said Brigadier General Effie Defrin, spokesperson for the Israeli army. Five other soldiers were wounded, one seriously, he added.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed his condolences “to the families of our four heroes who fell in Gaza in the fight to defeat Hamas and bring back our hostages.”
Israel is under international pressure to end the war sparked by Hamas’s bloody attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The humanitarian situation in the Palestinian territory is catastrophic, with the UN warning of famine due to Israeli restrictions on humanitarian aid. The Israeli army intensified its offensive in Gaza in mid-May, with the stated goals of freeing the remaining Oct. 7 hostages, taking full control of the territory, and destroying Hamas, which seized power there in 2007.
‘Operational need’
To continue its offensive, the Israeli army “is short more than 10,000 soldiers, including about 6,000 combat troops,” General Defrin stated. “This is a real operational need, and that is why we are taking all necessary measures,” he emphasized at a televised press conference, in response to a question about the conscription of ultra-Orthodox Jews, who have long been exempt from military service.
Netanyahu’s governing majority is being tested by this sensitive issue, which could bring down his government — one of the most right-wing in Israel’s history — and trigger early elections. Amid ongoing war, the exemption is increasingly unpopular in Israeli society.
Netanyahu must navigate pressure from a faction of his own party pushing for a law to conscript more ultra-Orthodox and impose harsher penalties on draft evaders. This is a true casus belli for the parties representing the “men in black,” who demand a law guaranteeing their exemption from military service and threaten to leave the coalition—causing the government’s collapse—if their demands are not met.
‘He wears a shroud’
In the Gaza Strip, 38 Palestinians were killed Friday, on the first day of Eid al-Adha, in Israeli airstrikes or gunfire across the territory, including 11 in a bombing in Jabalia in the north, according to Civil Defense.
When contacted by AFP for comment, the Israeli army did not respond.
Given the press restrictions in Gaza and the growing difficulty of accessing the field as fighting expands, it is extremely difficult to independently verify the death tolls and circumstances reported by Civil Defense.
Among the dead was the son of Souad Al-Qarra. “I bought him clothes for the holiday yesterday [Thursday], and he didn’t wear them — he’s wearing a white shroud,” she said at his funeral. At the same ceremony, another Palestinian woman, Layla al-Qatati, displaced from Gaza City, said she had lost her son and daughter-in-law: “My son Qaiss got married for Eid al-Fitr [marking the end of Ramadan] three months ago, and now, for Adha, he and his wife have become martyrs.”
The Oct. 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Over 54,607 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory military campaign, according to figures from the Health Ministry in Gaza, considered credible by the UN.
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