By: Antoine shalt, a Palestinian researcher, Writer, journalist and translator.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, the atmosphere in Israel more than 15 weeks after the war against the Gaza Strip, which was launched by Israel in the wake of the surprise attack by Hamas on military positions in the area of the border with the Gaza Strip and on what is known as the “Gaza envelope towns”, on October 7, 2023, as it is deprecary by the public and characterised by a general feeling that despite the achievements of the army, Hamas has not been undermined, and the return of the kidnapped Israelis detained in the Gaza Strip is moving away more and more (“Haaretz”, 19/1/2024).
And Barack is a point in the sea of Israeli comments that are consistent with the general conclusion he uttered and dives into the reasons that led to it, both political and military. These are comments by current and former political and military officials, analysts and opinion writers.
It is currently clear that the “story of the Israeli war on Gaza” falls under two Israeli narrative styles, one full of fabrication, blackout and fraud, and the other involving details and orientations that convey reality and refute lies.
When reviewing many of the statements issued by the current political and military officials, in order to help the method of the second narrative, we find them with a great deal of criticisms of the first fabricational style, the most prominent of which are the following:
1)The conduct of the battles within the scope of the ongoing war does not achieve the goals set for it, foremost of which is the goal of achieving a complete victory over Hamas, which even the minister described in the “war cabinet” and the former Chairman of the General Staff of the Israeli Army Gadi Eisenkot as an unrealistic goal, stressing that anyone who talks about inflicting an absolute defeat on this movement does not tell the truth and tells fairy stories;
2) That the war has no military future, as quoted by Haaretz (18/1/2024) by one of the ministers of the Israeli mini-ministerial council for political-security affairs (the cabinet), who added that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is working to prolong it in order to escape forward from the question of responsibility (mainly about the failure of October 7, 2023);
3) That Israel’s two stated goals behind the war, which are to destroy Hamas and release the Israeli abductees held in it, are completely incompatible. At the moment of this writing, four senior Israeli army commanders spoke to the American newspaper “The New York Times”, which published their statements last Saturday (20/1/2024). According to the four leaders told the American newspaper, unexpected challenges in the context of dealing with Hamas, and the reluctance of Israeli leaders to make decisions, made it unlikely that the 130 Israeli kidnapped held by this movement in the Strip would be returned only through diplomatic means;
4) That the war did not progress according to the pace that was expected by the Israeli military institution at its beginning. According to what was published in foreign media, quoting high-level Israeli military sources, based on a review of the army’s assessments and plans from last October, there was an expectation that the army would have operational control over the cities of Gaza, Khan Yunis and Rafah by the end of last December, but while this goal was achieved in Gaza City, the battles in Khan Younis are still ongoing, and the Israeli forces did not begin any serious operations in Rafah, located in the far south of the Strip. Moreover, Israel was surprised by the size of the Hamas tunnel network, which completely contradicted the assessments in this regard, which is prevalent in the corridors of the security establishment.
Turning to what Israeli political, military and opinion writers write more than 15 weeks after the war against the Gaza Strip, we must stop quickly at the following:
First, the intelligence shortcomings:
Since the early days of the October 7 attack, there has been a ruling in Israel that has enjoyed a near-unanimity that the surprise involved is a strategy the size of the surprise of the 1973 October War (the “Yom Kippur War” in its Israeli designation) but more humiliating and prestige to Israel. At the same time, Israel’s failure to deal with it far exceeds the failure of that war, not just at the level of intelligence foresight. Taking into account that the Israeli intelligence side has developed a lot since the half-century of the 1973 war, and Israel has become one of the most advanced countries in this field, along with other areas related to technology, as well as deterrence and pre-frustrations, the failure is unprecedented even when comparing the two events. In this particular regard, more than one follower, including the former Israeli ambassador to the United States, Zalman Shuval, wrote that there are those who compare the surprise attack launched by Hamas to the “surprise” of the Yom Kippur War. But we should reiterate that in that war that broke out fifty years ago, there was never a surprise, but there was a sinful and irresponsible blackout, from the Prime Minister of Government, the Minister of Defence and the Chief of the General Staff of the Israeli Army, on an intelligence that clearly indicated and cannot be interpreted to Egypt’s intention to start the war. The default or failure at the time was also from one branch of the Israeli intelligence organisation, but now the failure is for this whole institution, which did not have any information about Hamas’ intention.
The talk about the intelligence shortcomings is still manifested in many manifestations, the most prominent of which is currently related to the almost applied ignorance of the tunnel network, as mentioned above, and the military capabilities of Hamas, as pointed out, for example, the former spokesman of the Israeli army, Avi Benjaminy (“Maariv”, 19/1/2024). The military analyst at the Israeli television channel 13 Alon Ben-David may have been unique in publishing the news of the surprise of the Israeli army and the General Security Service (“the Shin Bet”) of what he described as “the enormous size of the military industries in the Gaza Strip,” stressing that this surprise and surprise multiplied with the discovery of the unimaginable scope of Hamas’ capabilities to produce weapons and infrastructure underground (“Maariv”, 19/1/2024). Bin David claimed that a very small part of the weapons reach the Gaza Strip through smuggling through Egypt, so the challenge for the Israeli army in the coming years, in his opinion, is to destroy the huge quantities of Hamas weapons, and dismantle its ability for military industries, pointing out that the movement has an infinite ability to support its ranks with new people.
Second, about the atmosphere in the circles of Israeli public opinion:
The “Index” website of public opinion polls in Israel, supervised by political analyst Shmuel Rosner, stated that the percentage of Israeli Jews who were sure that Israel would achieve a victory in the war against the Gaza Strip was 75 percent last October and rose to 78 percent the following month (November), but fell to 61 percent in January (“Maariv”, 19/1/2024).
In his opinion, the reason for this decline is due to the disappointment prevailing among public opinion in Israel with the progress of the war according to the pace promoted by the Israeli military establishment at its inception.
But other aspects include the formation of consciousness, destabilising certainties that may have been established by many factors, including indoctrination, according to Rosner. Every additional day in which victory is not achieved involves more things that anger the general public, most notably the following: new numbers of dead and wounded, the expansion of protests, especially with regard to the file of prisoners and kidnapped, the continued evacuation of tens of thousands of Israeli residents from their homes in the southern border areas (with the Gaza Strip) and the northern (with Lebanon) against the background of the war between Israel and Hezbollah, and the continued exertion of international pressure on Israel that reached one of its culminations at the convening of the International Court of Justice in The Hague to discuss the case of South Africa, which accuses Israel of genocide in the Gaza Strip. He also stresses that the mere drop in confidence among the broad public that Israel will achieve victory compromises the latter’s ability to achieve such a victory. Perhaps the mere fact that this explains the insistence of the Chief of the General Staff on asking the public to be patient, and the tendency of the Prime Minister to refute analyses that focus on the difficulties of the war. Rosner points out at the same time that while the Israeli public expresses their relative confidence in the Chief of the General Staff, their confidence in the Prime Minister ranges from 30-34 percent since the war began!
This Research was originally published y Madar Center and translated from Arabic by Apple