A dike has blown up in Israel, swept away by the slow reduction of troops deployed in Gaza. Unable to decide on their future mission in the enclave, the war cabinet, which is leading the operation, is now publicly expressing its divisions. In his first interview on Israeli television, one of the members of this select council, former chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot, called, Thursday, January 18, for legislative elections in the coming months “in order to renew public confidence, because at the moment there is no confidence”.
The general thus demonstrates an inability to collectively define the objectives of the war in the short term. Coming from the centrist opposition, he refuses to say whether he has confidence in Benjamin Netanyahu and “hope” that the Prime Minister does not seek to prolong the conflict indefinitely in order to ensure his political survival.
Since his entry into the cabinet on October 11, Mr. Eisenkot has already let those around him say that he considers the Prime Minister to be a danger to national security, and that he himself intends to act as a safeguard. He clarified on Thursday that he had already done so in October, by helping to prevent the opening of a front in Lebanon, which would have offered Hamas the regional war that it may have sought to ignite.
The focal point of their deep disagreement today is the future of the approximately one hundred and thirty hostages captured by the Islamist movement on October 7, and still captive. The Israeli government has claimed, since the end of October, that they can only be freed by exerting immense military pressure on the enemy. If operations have been reduced in the Gaza metropolis, destroyed, partly depopulated and cut off from the world, they continue intensely in the southern periphery of the enclave, in Khan Younes, without allowing for the release of hostages nor the capture or assassination of the most senior Hamas officials.
“We did not overthrow Hamas”
The general staff, like Mr. Eisenkot and his ally in the cabinet, General Benny Gantz, fear that the operation will bog down without producing more results, for lack of clear objectives. “We did not overthrow Hamassaid Mr. Eisenkot on Thursday on channel 12. The situation in Gaza is such that the war objectives have yet to be achieved. » Defeating Hamas militarily would take many more months and the hostages do not have that time, believes this general, who lost a son, a soldier engaged in Gaza, in December. Israel announces the death of mistreated captives every week. “We should courageously say that it is impossible to bring back the hostages alive in the near future without an agreement [avec le mouvement islamiste] »concludes Mr. Eisenkot.
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