Military expert Wassef Erekat said that the Gaza front is still a major front despite its classification by the Israeli occupation army as a “secondary battlefield,” describing it as a “kill, not fight” front, regardless of the number of divisions present on it.
Erekat explained to Tel Aviv Tribune that this classification is an attempt to “justify the inability of the Israeli army in the field,” believing that it “will not affect the killing, destruction, and harm of Palestinians.”
He expressed his conviction that the Israeli army is “defeated psychologically and morally,” so he is trying to avoid the situation with “terms and definitions that belong to him and the Israeli leadership at home.”
Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported that the Israeli army turned the Gaza Strip into a “secondary battlefield” for the first time since October 7, 2023, the date Israel began its devastating war on the besieged Strip.
The newspaper added on Friday that most of the attention and resources of the occupation army are currently directed to Lebanon.
Erekat, a retired Palestinian general, stated that the Israeli soldier “is a soldier of killing and destruction, and he has not proven himself as a fighting soldier in the field when facing resistance.”
He explained that the occupation army is being killed, “and every day that passes without achieving the goals of the war – with the exception of the massacres it commits – is the downfall of the Israeli army, whose prestige was broken and it lost the prestige of deterrence on October 7, 2023.”
The military expert believes that the situation in Gaza will not be affected by this new classification, “but will increase in killing and destruction, because the Israeli soldier has become embarrassed after failing to achieve the goals.”
He cited tens of thousands of martyrs and injured in light of the continued Israeli land, sea and air bombardment, and the destruction of various aspects of life and infrastructure, including schools, hospitals, mosques, cemeteries, government headquarters, and others.
He added, “Political and military leaders in Israel say that three lunatics (Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich) have plunged us into a quagmire from which we cannot get out except through a comprehensive war or a war of attrition.”
He concluded that “the Gaza front is much stronger and larger than it was previously.”