Netanyahu clashes with his own army
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was scheduled to meet with his security cabinet on Tuesday to order the army to invade the entire Gaza Strip, including the areas where Hamas is believed to be hiding the hostages. But the meeting had to be postponed due to differences within his own government and, above all, the opposition of the military leadership to a decision that would endanger the lives of the hostages and cause more casualties among their ranks.
The visible face of the revolt is the head of the general staff, Eyal Zamir, who believes that the Israeli troops on the ground are exhausted and that what is needed is to give them a break. After 22 months of offensive, Israeli ground forces are showing signs of fatigue and frustration, as the number of hostages they have managed to free alive has been minimal, and Israel's image has plummeted worldwide due to civilian deaths and the hunger it suffers.
Everything points, then, to the fact that we are approaching a turning point in the conflict. On one side, there is Netanyahu and his plans to annex Gaza at any price, and on the other, there is the opposition of the army and the families of the hostages and international pressure. Indeed, on Saturday, a demonstration in favor of negotiations to release the hostages drew 60,000 people in Tel Aviv. Nor can we ignore the impact of the public letter to Donald Trump signed by 600 former Israeli security officials, including ministers and former heads of spy agencies.who warned the US president on Monday that the only way to recover the hostages is through an agreement with Hamas and that militarily there is nothing more that can be done in Gaza.
It is this internal pressure that truly has a chance of changing the course of the Israeli government, which for the moment has the complicit silence of the United States. If top security experts in Israel claim that war is futile, if the country's leading NGOs are no longer afraid to use the word genocide to portray what is happening in Gaza, and if the army's top brass no longer trusts, after two years of campaigning, in the quick victory that was promised at the beginning of the invasion, there is reason to think that Netanyahu is weaker than thought.
Surely the analyst is right New York Times Patrick Kingsley when he claims that the Israeli prime minister squandered a golden opportunity to end the war after his military victory against Iran six weeks ago. At the time, Netanyahu had sufficient political authority to impose a truce in Gaza on his partners. But instead, he doubled down in pursuit of a total victory that never came. And now he finds himself in a dead end, rapidly losing the credit he had gained internally and having completely squandered his external credit. His bid to conquer the entire Strip seems more like a flight forward than a true strategy for the future.
