TEL AVIV — Over the past week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials have signaled a paradigm shift in the way the country wages its nearly nine-month war in the Gaza Strip: a new and less intense “phase” in the fighting.

Israel has billed the new tactics as a sign of success aimed at freeing up personnel and equipment for the country’s northern front, where the fight with Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militia based in neighboring Lebanon, has been heating up so…