Why Israel's Generals are now openly speaking out against Netanyahu?
Senior Israeli Military Officers openly critizes 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.
The Generals message are not new
It wasn’t entirely a new message. The generals have been grumbling about the army having to go into Gaza without an overreaching 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 as 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, 2023.
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Israeli 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 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).
Nenyatahu’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 two 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. 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 has delivered a ruling 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. 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. TzachiHanegbi, 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 crackdown 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.
Conclusion
“I think the best we can hope for until the election is a stalemate,” John Bolton, Trump’s former national security 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.”
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