By: Antoine Shalhat
Israel’s destructive and exterminal war on the Gaza Strip entered, yesterday, April 8, 2024, its seventh month. It was launched following the surprise attack by Hamas on military positions in the border area with the Gaza Strip, and on what is known as “Gaza envelope towns,” on October 7, 2023.
Of course, half a year after the war necessitated the preoccupation of many political and military analysts and opinion article writers in Israel with the total period that has elapsed and what has been new on the conduct of the war and its battles, not to mention trying to stand in front of its outcome, which we will focus on by mentating the views of Israeli analysts specializing in military affairs.
Regardless of many fine details, although important, it was noted in what was reported by military analysts today and yesterday specifically that there was a consensus on a near-applied Israeli failure to achieve the goals set for this war, foremost of which is the elimination of Hamas’ capabilities and authority, and the release of all Israeli abductees detained in the Gaza Strip.
What can be drawn from these views are two conclusions: first, the failure to achieve the goals of war so far; and second, that these goals are also unattainable on the foreseeable horizon.
If we want to model this Israeli consensus, it is enough to review what Yoav Lemur, a military analyst for the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the new Israeli right, wrote by Yoav Lemur, a military analyst for the newspaper Yisrael Hum, the new Israeli government.
One of the highlights of Lemur is that half a year after the outbreak of the war it launched against the Gaza Strip, Israel should think of another path, as all the goals it set in mind at the beginning of the war are still far from being achieved.
According to Lemur, Israel has set two central objectives for the war on Gaza: destroying Hamas authority, and returning the kidnapped. It can be said that the recovery of the body of one of the kidnapped people from the Strip by Israeli commando units last Saturday is the biggest evidence of resounding failure in relation to the second goal of the war. The main Israeli argument behind the postponement of the release of the kidnapped was that there was a need to complete the achievement of the goal of decisiveness of Hamas. This goal is still far from being achieved in his opinion, and Israel, with its political and military institutions, claims that the achievement of this goal is entrusted to the invasion of the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. In order to carry out such an invasion, it is necessary to evacuate the displaced in the southern areas.
In addressing the backlog of the military campaign, most military analysts note that the Israeli government has also failed to manage what is described as the political-strategic aspect of the war. Israel launched its unprecedented war and was, in some way, the support of a number of major countries for its main goal of eliminating Hamas power, as reflected in the positions declared by the United States and several central European countries, but half a year later, Israel suffers from near-isolation at the level of international positions, as well as being more susceptible than ever to a wave of boycotts, sanctions and judicial proceedings against its leaders and senior officers, it is expected to increase. A large number of these analysts attribute the reason for these developments at the global level to the Israeli government and its president’s president’s “challenge” of the administration of US President Joe Biden, especially in terms of unwillingness to discuss the issue of the day after the war in the Strip, and the resort of a number of ministers and members of the Knessesset to make statements supporting the displacement of the population of the Gaza Strip and the restoration of Israeli settlement in it, contrary to the positions announced by the government and the promises it made to the international community.
There is no doubt that Yoav Lemur, which we have quoted above, is one of many models of Israeli military analysts adopting the same conclusions, as well as much larger models of political analysts, who point out that half a year after the start of the war, the Israeli balance in the face of Hamas is still unsatisfactory, as the military analyst wrote to Haaretz Amos Harel (5/4/2024) stressing that there is really no way to change this result, and it is clear to everyone, exception of some followers of fools (those who are fully questioned to what the government and its president is promoting), that there is no value to the promises made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the absolute victory of all A day or two Harel expresses his belief that the ceiling of Israeli expectations was very high on the destruction of Hamas’ rule and the dismantling of its military capabilities, of course within a strict time frame not exceeding several months.
These conclusions are highlighted by those issued by former military leaders highlighted in the forefront of these days by the former head of the Military Intelligence Division (“Aman”) and the current head of the “National Security Research Institute” at Tel Aviv Tamir Hayman University, who saw that Israel is now in one of the worst of the worst crosses it has gone through, it is stuck in a war that has not yet been successful in resolving, and faces all the deep social faults and polarizations that hide behind the dust of the battles. In Hayman’s reading, in addition to the problems associated with the war in Gaza, Israel faces a dilemma on the northern front (with Lebanon), and in this front, which is a major challenge at this stage, there are two problems: first, that the magnitude of the disruption of daily life it creates now is much greater than the size of the disruption of life in the southern front (with the Gaza Strip), and the second is that it is not clear when life in the north will return to normal. Also on the international front, there are two main problems: the loss of legitimacy of the essence of Israel’s existence, on the one hand, the deterioration of relations with the United States and the transformation of Israel into an American political-internal party topic, on the other (N12, website of the Israeli television channel 12, 4/4/2024).
In order for some not to think that the failure that Israeli military analysts say is limited to what they have obtained so far, Amos Harel asserts that the war is doomed to last a long time, yet it is difficult to believe that Hamas can be completely dismantled even in the future.
Of course, this is not the whole story regarding the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip, which is expected to continue even if its methods change. But we chosed to list some of what was released by military affairs analysts whose interest is limited to the purely security aspect, given the fact that the conclusions regarding this aspect are the best area by which Israel’s failure to impose the stabulation of its narrative, which continues to adopt hollow terms, not the simplest of which are “absolute victory.”
This analysis was first published in Arabic by Madarcenter.org.
The English version is by Google.
Antoine Shalhat is Palestinian Israeli affairs expert , a journalist and a writer.
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