Israel's foundational conflict is playing out in the Gaza war. Both Netanyahu and Sinwar need to win, so the Gaza war will carry on.
by Kazi Anwarul Masud
Senior Israeli Military Criticizes Netanyahu
Hiding behind “senior officers in the Israel Defense Forces” or “members of the General Staff,” the message went out to the news organizations. The troops were being sent in for a second time to Jabalya, a third time to Zeitoun, and other locations in the northern part of the Gaza Strip because Hamas had returned. And Hamas had returned because Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had refused to provide a “day after” strategy for an alternative force to take control of the power vacuum in Gaza once Hamas’ military structure had been dismantled.
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| This photo released on April 14, 2024, shows Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu making a phone call with U.S. President Joe Biden. (GPO/Handout via Xinhua) |
The Generals’ Message is Not New
It wasn’t entirely a new message. The generals have been grumbling about the army having to go into Gaza without an overarching strategy from the government from the earliest stage of the campaign – even before the ground maneuver began on October 24. But this is the first time these complaints have not just been made in off-the-record conversations, but as part of what can only be a coordinated briefing against the prime minister. Netanyahu can hardly complain. He has been briefing against the generals from the start of the war, and in a much more orderly fashion. They, and the heads of the intelligence services, have been set up by him and his media proxies as being solely responsible for “the concept” that allowed Israel to be taken by surprise on October 7.
Qatari Funding is Contingent on Leading to Palestinian Statehood
Not him, the man who was in favor of allowing Hamas to entrench itself in Gaza – including with the help of Qatari funding, at his urging – in order to serve his agenda of sidelining the Palestinian Authority and averting any concessions that could lead to Palestinian statehood. View IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzl Halevi talking with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant earlier this month. Naturally, Netanyahu was ready with his counter-briefing. This came in two forms. There was a more measured response for respectable journalists from a “senior political source,” who explained that those demanding a strategy for the “day after” in Gaza while Hamas still has military power are “detached from reality.” No alternative force can be envisaged until Hamas is destroyed militarily. What this message was hinting at, the less respectable mouthpieces were only too happy to spell out: If the IDF’s defeatist Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzl Halevi is not prepared to destroy Hamas, he should resign and make room for officers who are not “captive to the concept.”
Israel’s Foundational Conflict is Playing Out in Gaza Conflict
Israel’s foundational conflict is playing out in the Gaza war. Both Netanyahu and Sinwar need to win, so the Gaza war will carry on. Biden’s ‘doomsday weapon’ threat to Israel is no false alarm. This could have been a legitimate debate on how to conduct the war. There are valid arguments on both sides. The IDF claims it has delivered and now Netanyahu is squandering its gains by lack of a follow-up plan.
Netanyahu Wants Total Degradation of Hamas as a Fighting Force
Netanyahu and those who support his stance say it is pointless trying to organize an alternative to Hamas in Gaza until Hamas has been totally degraded as a fighting force. Upon closer examination, though, both arguments have gaping holes in them and are largely self-serving. Netanyahu has made sure that not only is there no alternative force getting ready to take control of parts of Gaza, but until now, in the eighth month of the war, there has not even been any serious discussion on it and talks with the potential candidates (the Palestinian Authority, relatively moderate Arab states, or Western allies).
Netanyahu’s Ultimate Goal is Reoccupying Gaza for Good
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking at Yad Vashem on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day last week. His avoidance of the issue is primarily political. He is afraid of the far-right parties in his governing coalition who would nix any suggestion that stands in the way of their ultimate goal – reoccupying Gaza for good. That isn’t Netanyahu’s goal. His is to remain in power. The generals have indeed been trying to get Netanyahu and the war cabinet to furnish them with a clearer strategic framework from the beginning of the war. They were rebuffed at every turn, including when the General Staff set up its own team to try to formulate its own strategic ideas. But they should have realized that
Netanyahu’s Tactical Plan
Netanyahu was not going to give them what they needed and made their tactical plans accordingly. They pushed to go big with the ground maneuver, to send entire armored divisions into Gaza City and uproot nearly 2 million civilians. It was their war plan that Netanyahu signed off on. They were aware there was little prospect of having anyone prepared to come in and help run Gaza, yet they proceeded as if there would be. An Israeli strike on eastern Rafah, Gaza Strip, last week. The time for the generals to confront Netanyahu about the lack of a strategy was before embarking on the ground maneuver. They have grounds to blame him now for squandering the tactical gains, but they also shoulder part of the blame. The debate on the “day after” is an essential one, but it’s taking place seven months too late. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government are finding themselves increasingly boxed into a corner. Netanyahu is waging a devastating war in the Gaza Strip that has riled global public opinion and placed him and his government before two of the world’s most significant courts.
The International Court of Justice is expected to deliver a ruling soon on a request to Israel to cease military operations in Gaza, including its offensive on the southernmost city of Rafah. Ihsan Tharoor in his latest Washington Post report has written that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government are finding themselves increasingly boxed into a corner. Netanyahu is waging a devastating war in the Gaza Strip that has riled global public opinion and placed him and his government before two of the world’s most significant courts. Global anger deepened all the more this week in the wake of yet another deadly Israeli strike on Gaza.
Adding to the already considerable pressure on President Biden to change course in its staunch support for Israel’s campaign. After the strike, White House officials struggled to explain how the ongoing Israeli offensive in Rafah did not cross Biden’s blurry red line. “We still don’t believe that a major ground operation in Rafah is warranted,” White House spokesman John Kirby told reporters. “We still don’t want to see the Israelis, as we say, smash into Rafah with large units over large pieces of territory.” Whatever the criteria surrounding “large units” and “large pieces of territory,” the stark reality is that Israel has already driven out hundreds of thousands of people who had been sheltering in Rafah after fleeing other parts of the Gaza Strip. Its capture and closure of the main border crossing into Egypt cratered a struggling humanitarian operation. Aid agencies describe the war-ravaged Gaza Strip as a place where Palestinians have nowhere safe to go. And Israeli officials are adamant that they won’t let up anytime soon in their quest to vanquish militant group Hamas.
Tzachi Hanegbi, national security adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told local radio this week that his government expected to wage its operations in Gaza for “at least another seven months.” He said the extended mission would be “to fortify our achievement and what we define as the destruction of the governmental and military capabilities” of Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups in the territory. In seven months’ time, a rather different political dispensation may exist in Washington. Netanyahu reportedly met this month with three foreign policy envoys working with former president and current presidential candidate Donald Trump — who could yet win the election despite being convicted on felony counts of falsifying business records in his New York state hush money case. Though it’s unclear how he would have handled the crisis differently from Biden, the former president has invoked Biden’s friction with Netanyahu as evidence of U.S. failure and expressed little public sympathy for Palestinian suffering. Trump has told donors that if he returns to the White House, he would severely crack down on pro-Palestinian groups in U.S. universities and even deport foreign students participating in these protests.
Netanyahu, who benefited immensely from Trump’s first term, is arguably hoping for a similar dividend in the event of a second. In the interim, he has openly rejected the Biden administration’s hopes for the Palestinian Authority to take the lead in the postwar administration of Gaza, and he and his allies have shown no interest in even engaging in the White House on reviving pathways for a Palestinian state. And contrary to the Biden administration’s wishes, Netanyahu may soon act on a Republican invitation to address a joint session of Congress. Standing up to Biden — whose favorability among Israelis has dropped in recent months — may help shore up the support Netanyahu needs from the Israeli right and curry favor among their counterparts in the United States. It also accelerates a deeper shift in the U.S.-Israeli relationship. “Over the past 16 years, Netanyahu has departed sharply from his predecessors’ studious bipartisanship to embrace Republicans and disdain Democrats, an attitude increasingly mirrored in each party’s approach to Israel,” my colleagues wrote this week in a piece examining the prime minister’s role in widening a growing divide — even as Biden remains a staunch supporter of Israel and is reviled by many on the U.S. left for being complicit in the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza. It’s not just Netanyahu who is waiting for Trump.
The evidence is clearer that Russian President Vladimir Putin is holding out for a Trump victory, which would probably help the Kremlin consolidate its illegal conquests of Ukrainian territory. “Trump’s proposal consists of pushing Ukraine to cede Crimea and the Donbas border region to Russia, according to people who discussed it with Trump or his advisers and spoke on the condition of anonymity because those conversations were confidential,” they reported. Such a move would fracture the transatlantic coalition built up in support of Ukraine’s resistance to Russian invasion.
It would cement the Republican turn away from Europe’s security at a time when Western resolve around Ukraine is flagging. And it would be yet another sign of Trump’s conspicuous affection for the strongman in the Kremlin. “In his eight years as the GOP’s standard-bearer, Trump has led a stark shift in the party’s prevailing orientation to become more skeptical of foreign intervention such as military aid to Ukraine,” my colleagues wrote. “Trump has consistently complimented Putin, expressed admiration for his dictatorial rule and gone out of his way to avoid criticizing him, most recently for the death in jail of political opponent Alexei Navalny.” My colleagues reported this week about growing tensions between Kyiv and officials in the Biden administration, with Ukraine pushing its Western allies to loosen rules over the usage of some of their weaponry on targets on Russian soil. Pessimism has set in over what Ukrainian forces can achieve militarily this summer, as Russia launches new offensives.
Conclusion
“I think the best we can hope for until the election is a stalemate,” John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser and now vocal critic, recently said. “Putin is waiting for Trump.” Trump’s team “is thinking about this very much in silos, that this is just a Ukraine-Russia thing,” Hill said. “They think of it as a territorial dispute, rather than one about the whole future of European security and the world order by extension.” “Former president Trump’s inexplicable and admiring relationship with Putin, along with his unprecedented hostility to NATO, cannot give Europe or Ukraine any confidence in his dealings with Russia,” said Tom Donilon, President Barack Obama’s national security adviser. “Trump’s comments encouraging Russia to do whatever it wants with our European allies are among the most unsettling and dangerous statements made by a major party candidate for president. His position represents a clear and present danger to U.S. and European security.”
Kazi Anwarul Masud is a retired Bangladeshi diplomat. During his tenure, he worked in several countries as the ambassador of Bangladesh including Thailand, Vietnam, South Korea and Germany
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