Zakaria: Something very unusual is happening in Israel. Military officials are turning on Netanyahu

Zakaria: Something very unusual is happening in Israel. Military officials are turning on Netanyahu

Something very unusual is happening in Israel. Senior military officials have begun voicing criticism of Prime Minister Benj Netanyahu’s conduct of the war i Israeli media has been reporting on a weekend security meeting at which the chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, General Halsey Halevi, criticized Netanyahu’s lack of a clear strategy, pointing out that the Israeli military had reentered northern Gaza, an area it claimed to have cleared in Ja He warned that unless there was a plan to set up some kind of non Hamas government in these areas, the IDF would have to keep repea these kinds of operations endles Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav G has gone further, publicly criticizing the prime minister, pointing out that the day after will only be achieved by actors who replace Hamas. And declaring that he would not permit Israel to try to govern Gaza directly. The New York Times reported on o within the Israeli military, making similar criticisms as and Schultz writes in Haaretz These briefings to the press have been synchronized as part as what can only be a coordinated briefing against the prime minister. The reason for these extraordinary dissents at a time of war is that Israeli officials have begun to realize what American officials have been warning them about for months, that without a strategy to creat stable governance in Gaza, they will face a continuing insu just as the US did in Afghanistan and Iraq. There is evidence it is already happening. Israeli forces have been forced into Jabalia twice and they have returned three times today to the recent and controversial raid on the al-Shifa hospital. Was the second effort showing that the initial success was not lasting? US Secretary of State Antony Blinken noted last Sunday We’ve seen in areas that Israel has cleared in the n even in Khan Yunis. Hamas coming back. Much has been written about whether the Israeli military is being careful or callous in its concern for civilian casualties. When conducting its attacks in G But the larger point has to do with its counterinsurgency strategy itself. In America’s only successful counterinsurgency campaign in recent memory, the surge in Iraq, its strategy was designed to protect the civilian population, isolate the insurgents, and then crush them. To that end, General David Petraeus worked tirelessly with Iraq’s Sunnis, the community spawning the insurgency to win t give them a stake in Iraq’s gove and thus isolate the insurgents and the militias. He then used lethal force against those militias. This is almost the inverse of Israel’s strategy which has been first and foremost to go after Hamas guns blazing with very little regard for winning the hearts and minds of Gaza’s civilian pop Prime Minister Netanyahu’s argument against postwar plans and operat is that the war isn’t over, and in his words, there is no alternative to military victory. The attempt to bypass it with this or that claim is simply detached from reality. Bebe has repeatedly said that he would continue the war until he achieves total victory, by which he presumably means either a surrender by Hamas or its total eradication. The Biden administration has, from early on in the war, believ that Bibi’s strategy was flawed because there was no way to defeat Hamas militarily without a political strategy to isolate it and offer an alter that had some credibility and le That was why the Biden administr wanted to begin discussions with the Palestinian Authority and a group of Arab states like Egypt and Saudi Arabia to make plans for reconstruction and governance in a non Hamas Ga Netanyahu has refused to consider any such plans. Bibi Netanyahu refuses to talk a the postwar because he knows that his own postwar future is bleak. Many Israelis continue to hold him responsible for the policies that led to the October 7th atta Were new elections to be called? He would likely lose office and then face an ongoing prosecu as well as potential inquiries about the failures that led to October seven. All of this can be pushed off as long as he insists on a Hamas surrender, which he will not get, but which will keep the war going on indefinitely. It is a strategy not designed to secure Israel’s but rather his own. Go to CNN dot com slash Fareed for a link to my Washingt Post column this week. And let’s get started. So you heard what I had to say. What does a better war strategy for Israel look like? Joining me now is former CIA dir and retired U.S. Army General David Petraeus, whom I mentioned in my take. He commanded American and coalition troops both in Iraq and Afghanistan tim David, welcome. First, let me ask you to explain you know, what was the heart of your strategy in Ir which worked. You were battling an insurgency, a bunch of terrorists. You know, militias call them what you will. And your US had not been able to to really eradicate those terror What did you do? Well, first and foremost, we committed to making life better for innocent Iraqi civili And we pledged that we would get an extremist group, irreconcilable, similar t out of their midst. We would clear their neighborhoo their cities of Al Qaida and then we would keep them out of those cities and neighborhoods would create gated communities, 12 of them alone in Fallujah, which is already completely encircled by cement to keep them And then you have biometric ID c We would flood the area immediat with humanitarian assistance, then restore basic services, and then go about the comprehensive Recon and rebuilding, all of the damaged infrastructur restoring schools, markets, clin bridges, roads that had been blown up by Al Qai and by the other of the most dangerous Sunni insurgent groups. And then keep the pressure on those groups constantly going after them, after having cleared comprehensi from the populated areas. But the key was the hold and the build we’re seeing in Ga the clearing. The problem is if you don’t hold keep the people separate from, in this case, Hamas, which is, again, an extremist group akin to the Islamic State, it’s irreconcilable. But if you don’t separate them from the population and keep them separate, you have to go back and re clear extremist groups, if they’re not kept out, will reconstitute. We saw it ultimately at the end of the three and a half year period after the which drove violence down by nea and it continued to go down even as we drew down in the subs three and a half years until the withdrawal of our final combat forces. And Prime Minister Maliki taking highly sectarian actions that took his security forces eyes off the Islamic State, they were able to reconstitute i And of course, within two years you had the first ever Islamist extremist caliphate in northern Iraq and northeaster Look, I want to see Israel succe I believe Hamas does need to be destroyed. What they did on October 7th was absolutely ba and horrific and unspeakable. And it’s an example that you’ve got to get them out of control of the people and out of the governance of Gaz And obviously, there has to be then some kind o for what the future will be. And, of course, it’s interesting to see the minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, and then also the chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Forces, calling for the establishment of for a mid term and then a longer because if you don’t know where you’re going, as they say, any road will take you there.

As President Joe Biden and some Israeli officials call for a viable post-war plan for Gaza’s governance and reconstruction, Fareed argues Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hasn’t offered one because continuing the war against Hamas will allow him to stay in power and avoid a looming prosecution.
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