All my previous posts on the 2023 Israel-Hamas war have been leading up to my belief that the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with his extreme right coalition members have been pursuing the goal of either pushing Palestinians within Gaza into neighboring countries and/ or to destroy Gaza outright. These Israeli leaders have already been implementing this policy in the West Bank where Israeli settlers have been forcing Palestinians to give up property without any accountability.
It’s my opinion that Prime Minister Netanyahu with his extreme right coalition partners are guilty of gross negligence or willful blindness because they continuously ignored timely, ample, detailed intelligence from multiple reliable sources about the attack plans by Hamas, the Palestinian terrorists governing in Gaza, prior to its October 7, 2023 brutal massacre of Israeli civilians.
Israel’s razing of Gaza is especially hard to justify in light of its stated goals being the destruction of Hamas’s ability to govern the Gaza Strip or to pose a future military threat from the Gaza Strip to Israeli civilians, when Israel’s assertions about its success in bringing the fight to Hamas in Gaza seem to be lackluster, at best.
As exemplified in the following articles, news journalists are beginning to view Israel’s claims regarding the status of its war against Hamas in Gaza with a good dose of skepticism.
As per the December 21, 2023 Guardian report, “Israel is losing the war against Hamas – but Netanyahu and his government will never admit it” by Paul Rogers:
Excerpts:
“Until recently the war narrative on Gaza has been very largely controlled by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the country’s ministry of defence. Israel’s international reputation may have plummeted with the killing of more than 20,000 Palestinians, the wounding of more than 50,000 and the destruction of much of Gaza, but the IDF could still sell a plausible narrative of a severely weakened Hamas, even claiming that the war in northern Gaza was largely complete, and success in southern Gaza would follow before too long.”
“The narrative was helped by severe difficulties for the few journalists still operating in Gaza, including the risk to their personal safety, while the international press corps was stuck in Jerusalem and dependent on IDF sources for much of their information.”
“That changed as a different picture began to emerge. First there was a lack of evidence to support the IDF’s claim of a Hamas headquarters under al-Shifa hospital, then the IDF could not identify the location of the Israeli hostages, despite having some of the world’s most advanced intelligence.”
“Very recently there have been two further incidents. On 12 December, there was a skillful triple ambush staged by Hamas paramilitaries in a part of Gaza supposedly controlled by Israeli forces. An IDF unit was ambushed and took casualties. Further troops were sent to aid that unit, and they were then ambushed, as were reinforcements.”
“Ten IDF soldiers were reported killed and other seriously wounded, but it was their seniority that counted, including as it did a colonel and three majors from the elite Golani Brigade. That Hamas, supposedly decimated and with thousands of troops already killed, could mount such an operation anywhere in Gaza, let alone a district reportedly already under IDF control, should raise doubts about the idea that Israel is making substantial progress in the war.”
“A further indication came a few days later, when 3 Israeli hostages succeeded in getting away from their captors, only to be killed by IDF soldiers, even though shirtless and carrying a white flag. What has since made that worse, and is causing considerable anger in Israel, is that calls from the hostages were picked up by an audio-equipped IDF search-dog five days before they were killed.”
There are other, wider indications of the IDF’s problems. Official casualty figures have shown more than 460 military personnel killed in Gaza, Israel and the occupied West Bank and about 1,900 wounded. But other sources suggest far greater numbers of wounded.
Ten days ago, Israel’s leading daily, Yedioth Ahronoth, published information obtained from the ministry of defence’s rehabilitation department. The head of the department, Limor Luria, was reported as saying that more than 2,000 IDF soldiers had been registered as disabled since the conflict began – with 58% of all those it had treated suffering from severe injuries to their hands and feet – suggesting a far higher casualty toll than the official figure. Meanwhile, the Times of Israel has reported the number of injured IDF soldiers, Israel Police and other security forces as 6,125. There have also been a number of friendly fire casualties, with the same paper reporting 20 out of 105 deaths due to such fire or accidents.”
“Overall, the IDF is still following the well-rehearsed Dahiya doctrine of massive force in responding to irregular war, causing extensive social and economic damage, undermining the will of the insurgents to fight while deterring future threats to Israel’s security. But it is going badly wrong. Criticism is coming from unexpected quarters, including from the former UK defence minister, Ben Wallace, who has warned of an impact lasting 50 years. Even the Biden administration is becoming thoroughly uneasy.”
“It is worth recognising why. The 7 October attacks and the brutality involved struck Israel’s assumption of security to the core, which means that the great majority of Israeli Jews have so far continued to support Netanyahu’s response. Even that, though, is fraying and is made worse by the killing of the three hostages by IDF troops.”
“An effect of all this is that the IDF commanders are coming under huge pressure to succeed and will go as far as the war cabinet will allow. Many of those commanders are highly intelligent if inevitably single-minded people, and will now know that for all Netanyahu’s rhetoric, Hamas, or at least Hamas’s ideas, cannot be defeated by military force. They also know that while talks are stalling, pressure from the families of hostages may soon result in another humanitarian pause. Therefore, their aim will be to damage Hamas as much as they can.”
“What makes that possible is Netanyahu’s dependence on an extremist minority of religious fundamentalists and trenchant Zionists in his government. They would not have anything like the wider support in Israel were it not for the tragedy of 7 October, yet they are doing more and more harm to Israel’s long-term security. Not only does Israel risk becoming a pariah state, but it will also fuel a generation of radical opposition from a reconstituted Hamas.”
See: Israel-Gaza war: Can Hamas actually be eliminated? /CNBC …
As per the December 20, 2023 Washington Post analysis, “Israel is struggling to destroy Hamas, but it’s destroying Gaza” by Ishaan Tharoor:
“Hamas is entrenched and difficult to defeat. Even after waging one of the most intense, heavy military campaigns in recent history, Israel has only neutralized a fraction of the militant group’s armed strength. And, in the process, it has ravaged the embattled territory where Hamas has held sway, displaced close to 90 percent of the population, flattened whole neighborhoods, triggered a sprawling humanitarian disaster and found itself flailing in a losing battle for global public opinion.”
“Gaza’s hospitals are in a state of collapse, with only a few capable of operating. Disease and hunger stalk the territory. Sanitation systems have failed. There’s little electricity, and almost no cooking gas. My colleagues talked to Palestinians who spend hours each day in desperate searches for food and water. “We have been humiliated by this war,” Khalil Tafesh, a father, said. “At the end of the day, we just want to live.”
“Concerns are only deepening about the smoldering status quo. Much of Gaza’s once-densely populated north has been leveled, and the bulk of the territory’s population is crammed into makeshift accommodations near the southern Rafah border crossing with Egypt. The prospect of an exodus of refugees is becoming more real — a displacement that would be viewed by many in the region as yet another tragic moment of Palestinian dispossession.”
“All the while, Hamas, while bruised, has not been beaten. Israel is seeking to decapitate its military leadership and eliminate much of its military capacity. The ongoing campaign has proved difficult, no matter Israel’s far superior capabilities and resources. And even a near-total battlefield victory would not extinguish the group, which has roots in Palestinian society and positions itself as the standard-bearer of resistance to decades of Israeli occupation and land grabs.”
“Rather than destroy Hamas, this war will destroy Gaza and render it largely uninhabitable, as we can already see in northern Gaza,” noted Dov Waxman, professor of Israel Studies at the University of California at Los Angeles. “This will fuel more militancy among Palestinians and more support for armed resistance.”
“That sense of a bloody cycle is underscored by the chilling language coming from many prominent voices in the Israeli political establishment, including Netanyahu, who has discussed “thinning” out Gaza’s population. His rhetoric, observed Middle East historian Jean-Pierre Filiu, demonstrates that behind Israel’s “stated desire for retaliation lies the desire to eliminate not just Hamas but the Gaza Strip.”
See: Skepticism Grows Over Israel’s Ability to Dismantle Hamas…/NYT
Gronda Morin 