Shortly after Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion of Israel, its sadistic massacre of 1,200 Israelis and kidnap of 246 men, women and children from southern Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government declared war on Iran’s Palestinian proxy. The government set four war goals: the military eradication of Hamas; the eradication of Hamas’s civilian regime in the Gaza Strip; the return of all the hostages; and the permanent pacification of Gaza to ensure that it will never pose a threat to Israel again.
Almost immediately thereafter, anonymous “senior IDF sources” began grousing to the media about the government’s war goals. “Sources in the General Staff” have been regularly cited advocating for replacing the goals of the war with others that rule out Hamas’s eradication and the permanent pacification of Gaza.
A few weeks into the war, the Biden administration began insisting that the government set out its vision for postwar Gaza while making no effort to hide what it expects the plan to include: the transfer of power to the terror-infused, Hamas-aligned Palestinian Authority. As Netanyahu hemmed and hawed and delayed his response to avoid a confrontation with the administration, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevy and the other generals hopped on the U.S. bandwagon.
Buttressed by a chorus of retired generals, the sitting generals have insisted on and off the record that the absence of a vision of the day after the war leaves the military directionless. Netanyahu, they gripe, is making it impossible for the IDF to fight strategically.
The generals have things backwards. Israel’s strategic goals of destroying Hamas and securing the release of the hostages are both straightforward. It is the General Staff’s job to set out a plan for achieving them, replete with benchmarks to mark success. By demanding a plan for the day after the war, the General Staff is not asking for further guidance. It is demanding that the war goals be revised.
Last Saturday, the General Staff’s insubordination reached an all-time high. Israeli reporter Ronen Bergman co-authored an article in The New York Times based on the claims of four unnamed generals in the General Staff.
Titled, “In Strategic Bind, Israel Weighs Freeing Hostages Against Destroying Hamas,” Bergman wrote, “After more than 100 days of war, Israel’s limited progress in dismantling Hamas has raised doubts within the military’s high command about the near-term feasibility of achieving the country’s principal wartime objectives: eradicating Hamas and also liberating the Israeli hostages still in Gaza.”
The fact that the IDF is making slower progress than anticipated owes in large part to the intelligence failures that preceded the Hamas invasion. On Oct. 6, the IDF assessed that Hamas had around 160 kilometers (nearly 100 miles) of underground tunnels. Now, after two months of ground (and underground) warfare, the IDF realizes that it was off by around 500%; Hamas’s underground tunnel complex span up to 800 kilometers (500 miles). Obviously, under the circumstances, the ground operation is taking longer than initially anticipated. Rather than roll with the punches and keep slogging forward, Bergman wrote that the slowness of Israel’s advance “has led some commanders to privately express their frustrations over the civilian government’s strategy for Gaza, and led them to conclude that the freedom of more than 100 Israeli hostages still in Gaza can be secured only through diplomatic rather than military means.”
“The dual objectives of freeing the hostages and destroying Hamas are now mutually incompatible, according to interviews with four senior military leaders, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not permitted to speak publicly about their personal opinions,” he wrote.
Bergman is based in Tel Aviv. After telling the world that Israel is incapable of winning, he turned to the Israeli media to share the generals’ message with the public. Speaking on Channel 12, Bergman said it is time for Israel to quit the fight and sue for a deal—any deal—to secure the release of the hostages. Citing the four generals, Bergman proclaimed that defeat is the only option.
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