In Israel, divisions emerging over war
A general on the war cabinet uses a TV interview to urge country to seek an extended cease-fire
After nearly 15 weeks of war, sharp divisions within Israel over the path forward in the Gaza Strip are increasingly coming into the open.
A member of Israel’s war cabinet — a general who lost a son in the conflict — urged the country to pursue an extended cease-fire with Hamas to free the remaining hostages, a rebuke of the “total victory” being pursued by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He spoke in a television interview.
And in a sign of the growing exasperation among parts of the Israeli public over the government’s failure to free the hostages, relatives and supporters of the captives partially blocked traffic on a major highway in Tel Aviv before dawn Friday, prompting police to briefly detain seven for having “participated in disorderly conduct and unlawful behavior.”
Israel’s emergency governing coalition is under intense and competing pressures as the war drags on. Right-wing politicians are urging the military to act more aggressively in Gaza, even while Israel is contending with outrage across the globe over the carnage and decimation of so much of the territory. At the same time, the families of hostages are urging concessions to secure their return.
Divisions between Israel and its closest ally, the United States, are also increasingly on display. Netanyahu on Thursday appeared to rule out a long-stated goal of U.S. foreign policy: a postwar peace process that would lead to the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state.
“Israel must have security control over all the territory west of the Jordan,” Netanyahu said at a news conference Thursday, referring to an area including occupied territory that Palestinians hope will one day become their independent state. “This truth I tell to our American friends, and I put the brakes on the attempt to coerce us to a reality that would endanger the state of Israel,” he added.
The Israeli official who criticized the prosecution of the war, Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, a retired military chief of staff, has laid bare some of the persistent tensions within the wartime government.
Eisenkot said Israel’s leaders must define a vision for how to wind down the war in Gaza. Only a deal with Hamas would secure the release of the hostages, he said, adding that Israel had so far failed in its stated aim of destroying Hamas. More than 240 people were taken hostage Oct. 7, and about 130 people remain captives in Gaza.
“We didn’t topple Hamas,” Eisenkot told Uvda, an Israeli news program, in a prerecorded interview. “The situation in Gaza is such that the war aims have yet to be achieved.”
Eisenkot’s views carry weight in Israel in part because of the personal price he has paid in the war: His 25-year-old son, Master Sgt. Gal Meir Eisenkot, was killed while fighting in Gaza last month.
Throughout the hourlong broadcast, he appeared to come down on the side of making a deal to liberate the hostages, even if Israel had to accept an extended truce with Hamas. He lamented that a weeklong cease-fire in November, during which groups of hostages were released daily in exchange for imprisoned Palestinians, had lapsed because he said reaching a similar arrangement a second time would be difficult.