A former Israeli general considered that the army is moving away from achieving the goals of the war, and is sinking more and more into the “Gaza mire.” He called for reconsidering the course of the war, getting out of dense residential areas, and following the approach of a surgical attack with aircraft based on intelligence information to get out of the “useless nightmare.” from him”.
Reserve General Yitzhak Brick wrote in the Israeli newspaper Maariv – on Monday – “With the passage of time, we are moving further and further away from achieving the goals of the war: eliminating the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and releasing the kidnapped people; and we are sinking deeper and deeper into the mud of Gaza.”
He said that there are situations in war in which the course of action must be reconsidered, as “it is clear today to the army that at this stage it will not be possible to achieve the goal for which we are striving.”
Brik continued, “Just admitting that there is no intention to enter Rafah, where Hamas has complete control, because it is the most crowded place in Gaza and the entire Middle East, where two million refugees live in refugee camps, and their environment is terribly crowded, and therefore it is impossible to attack these camps, with one word.” “It is impossible to eliminate Hamas there, whose soldiers are mixed with refugees.”
Brik considered that “the failure to eliminate Hamas rule in Rafah and the failure to control the tunnels underneath it, which are considered the main passage for weapons from Sinai to the Gaza Strip, means that we have failed to achieve the basic mission that we set for ourselves in the war, which is to overthrow Hamas rule.” .
Tunnel entrances
Brik said, “In Rafah, Hamas enjoys freedom of access to Khan Yunis, and from there to the northern Gaza Strip through hundreds of kilometers of interconnected tunnels.”
He stressed that even if the army destroyed a thousand tunnel entrances, Hamas has thousands more, “and therefore the partial destruction does not actually affect their movement in the tunnels.”
Therefore, Brik believes that “the continuation of the Israeli army’s fighting in its current form in Khan Yunis, and in the neighborhoods and cities of the central Gaza Strip, does not add to achieving the goals of the war.” Rather, “the opposite is true, as the fighting there inflicts on us every day heavy losses from the explosives and traps they plant.” We have anti-tank missiles fired at us.”
Burke considered that “the time has come to re-evaluate the way of fighting, that is, to change the paradigm and get out of dense population centers, and to surgically attack by aircraft based on accurate intelligence information and with ground raids only.” He said that this is the plan that the army must implement in the third phase of the war and that He does so immediately and “comes out of the useless nightmare.”
Loss of world support
He also saw that “members of the government from the extreme right declare day and night that the fighting inside the Gaza Strip must continue with all its strength until Hamas is defeated, while they ignore the facts on the ground and live a false reality.”
He added, “According to their understanding, the Gaza Strip must remain in Israel’s hands, whether in the security aspect or in the civil administrative aspect, until the end of the world. The meaning of this approach is that Israel will accept responsibility for two million refugees, and for every disaster that befalls, and a humanitarian crisis will fall on Israel’s shoulders.” “.
He continued: “We will thus lose the support of the world in general, and the support of the United States in the war, and we will lose all of our achievements in the war for which we have paid dearly so far.”
Brik added, “But this is not enough. According to their approach, large forces of the Israeli army will continue to remain in the densely populated areas of the Gaza Strip for many years and will face a guerrilla war with Hamas, which will continue to confront us with traps and fire anti-tank missiles at our forces and cause us heavy losses.” .