BIRMINGHAM, UK: It was the second that Israel’s army acknowledged the failure of its eight-and-half month struggle in Gaza – definitely the mission set out by Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, when he mentioned after the Oct 7 Hamas assault that he would destroy the militant group.
On Jun 19 the spokesperson for the Israel Protection Forces (IDF), Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, instructed Channel 13 Information that the purpose of eradicating Gaza’s management was unattainable.
“This enterprise of destroying Hamas, making Hamas disappear – it’s merely throwing sand within the eyes of the general public. Hamas is an thought, Hamas is a celebration. It’s rooted within the hearts of the folks – anybody who thinks we will remove Hamas is mistaken,” he mentioned.
At one stage, the IDF spokesperson was merely restating what analysts had cautioned simply after Hamas’ killing of 1,143 folks, together with 767 civilians, and its abduction of round 250 others. An all-out army assault, from the air and on the bottom, would permit Hamas to current itself because the protector of Gaza’s civilians, at the same time as Israel killed many hundreds of them.
However, at one other stage, this was the Israeli army’s problem to Netanyahu.
Three days earlier Netanyahu had snapped at a Cupboard assembly: “To realize the aim of destroying Hamas’s capabilities I’ve needed to make choices that weren’t all the time accepted by the army management.”
Now the IDF was successfully saying to the prime minister that his plan A of destroying Hamas was not viable. So what’s plan B?
In Hagari’s phrases: “If the federal government doesn’t discover an alternate – (Hamas) will stay in Gaza.”