NYT: IDF Commanders Say Diplomatic Settlement Only Way to Free Hostages
Jan. 20, 2024 (EIRNS)—Israel’s top military leadership has apparently concluded that it can either save the hostages held by Hamas, or it can defeat Hamas in intense warfare, but it can’t do so without killing the hostages. This is the gist of a report posted this morning by The New York Times. Its authors, Ronen Bergman and Patrick Kingsley, both based in Jerusalem, were given what must have been unusual access to secret military plans and senior IDF commanders and civilian leaders. The conclusion they draw is that the war in Gaza is not going as well as military planners had expected and that the frustration of IDF commanders is causing friction with Israel’s political leadership.
Sources report that the publication of this report reflects a growing factionalization in the IDF against the policies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu and the lunatic religious zealots in his cabinet whom he uses to cover his own genocidal intentions against Palestinians and his vehement opposition to a two-state solution. These sources say that leading elements of the IDF command believe that the military is being disgraced by Bibi's war of extermination against the Palestinians, which they now realize can never end. The IDF has launched its own investigation of the Hamas invasion of Oct. 7, and is looking into the idea that Netanyahu has lied to them and the Israeli people about those events and that he actually facilitated the attack, with knowledge from intelligence sources of its planning and taking no steps to prevent it, so that he would have an excuse to launch his genocidal crusade against Palestinians to wipe out the possibility of any negotiated peace and a two-state solution. These sources say that if the case can be built, the IDF leadership will minimally have the leverage to force Bibi to resign.
The Times article is clearly intended to pave the way for this, showing the utter bankruptcy of the Netanyahu war policy, and its total failure to ever free the hostages, which is something that the Israeli people have repeatedly demanded.
“After more than 100 days of war, Israel’s limited progress in dismantling Hamas has raised doubts within the military’s high command about the near-term feasibility of achieving the country’s principal wartime objectives: eradicating Hamas and also liberating the Israeli hostages still in Gaza,” Berman and Kingsley write. “Israel has established control over a smaller part of Gaza at this point in the war than it originally envisaged in battle plans from the start of the invasion,” plans which were reviewed by the two reporters. “That slower-than-expected pace has led some commanders to privately express their frustrations over the civilian government’s strategy for Gaza, and led them to conclude that the freedom of more than 100 Israeli hostages still in Gaza can be secured only through diplomatic rather than military means.”
“The dual objectives of freeing the hostages and destroying Hamas are now mutually incompatible, according to interviews with four senior military leaders, speaking on the condition of anonymity…” they report further. “There is also a clash between how long Israel would need to fully eradicate Hamas—a time-consuming slog fought in the group’s warren of underground tunnels—and the pressure, applied by Israel’s allies, to wrap up the war quickly amid a spiraling civilian death toll.”
The tunnel system under Gaza has turned out to be much more extensive than the IDF expected and very difficult to fight in. By focusing its efforts on destroying the tunnels, the military risks mistakes that could cost the lives of more Israeli citizens. Three Israeli hostages, The Times notes, were already killed by their own soldiers in December, despite the fact that the hostages were waving a white flag and shouting in Hebrew (and they were above ground, not in any tunnel).
Since the IDF is unlikely to rescue the estimated 130 or so hostages (only one has been rescued so far), the diplomatic route to a settlement leading to the release of the hostages in return for the freeing of thousands of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons is seen as the only alternative. “According to three of the commanders interviewed by The Times, the diplomatic route would be the swiftest way of returning the Israelis who remain in captivity.”