Mr. Prime Minister,
Today you visited the Southern Command and met with the Chief of Staff and other senior officers who presented to you the General Staff's plan to move to Phase 3 of the fighting in the entire Gaza Strip.
According to this plan, the IDF will withdraw most of its forces from the Gaza Strip, completely stop the fighting phase of the war, and from now on will only operate against Hamas with targeted raids and air strikes.
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You surely understand well that the war plans that the General Staff presented to you throughout the war and that you approved, failed to achieve the war's goals. After nine months of fighting, the longest war since the War of Independence, the IDF was unable to collapse Hamas' civilian government and eliminate its military capability.
You probably also understand that the IDF will never achieve these goals through the 'entry-exit' strategy it has employed since the beginning of the war, and certainly not through a 'Phase 3' that would bring about a cessation of the intense fighting. Even in Rafah, where the General Staff is soon to declare "victory," the IDF did not enter most parts of the city nor did it subdue all of the Hamas battalions there.
By the way, Hamas, which had already understood that the General Staff's failed strategy was to bring forces into the area, take control of it, and then withdraw from it, ordered many of its fighters in Rafah to move to Khan Yunis until the end of the Israeli offensive. Thus, after the IDF leaves Rafah, Hamas forces will return and retake control of the city in a short time. You could already see the results of the General Staff's failed strategy in Jabalia and the Zeitoun neighborhood, and now in Shagaiyya.
Do you remember how in late December the IDF announced that after 81 days of fighting it had "succeeded in defeating Hamas's Shuja'iya battalion," and had killed 935 Hamas terrorists out of the 1,100 fighters of the Shuja'iya battalion and the reinforcements that Hamas sent to its aid? Well, in the months since the IDF left Shuja'iya, Hamas continued to pay salaries to its operatives who remained there and recruited hundreds of new fighters to fill the ranks of the local battalion. Hamas also took full control of the distribution of humanitarian aid to the residents of Shuja'iya, and even provided them with municipal services.
And when IDF forces returned to Shajaiyah in recent days, they encountered hundreds of Hamas fighters who had prepared explosive sites, snipers, and dozens of anti-tank squads for them.
What happened in Shajaiyah, and before that in Jabaliya and Zeytun, will happen there again, and will happen in Rafah after the IDF forces leave the city, and will happen throughout the Gaza Strip, after the General Staff moves to Phase Three.
Hamas will reestablish its rule, recruit tens of thousands of young Gazans to replenish its ranks, and prepare for raids that the IDF will organize against it.
The Israelis are showing how not to do counterinsurgency, a senior American official recently said, and he was right. It is very unfortunate that, like the Chief of Staff and the Minister of Defense, you did not listen to the American Chief of Staff, General Charles Brown, and retired General David Petraeus, who explained that only by holding the territory (i.e. occupying the territory) and creating civilian rule (i.e. establishing a temporary military government), will Israel be able to win.
But you preferred to approve the plans that the Chief of Staff presented to you, and which brought Israel one step closer to a strategic defeat that it has never suffered before. If you continue to approve the General Staff's plans and do not order the necessary strategic change, you will bear not only ministerial responsibility for the defeat, but also operational responsibility.
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When you testified before the Winograd Commission that investigated the Second Lebanon War, you brilliantly defined the role of the prime minister in times of war, as the one who must decide and guide the army, not the other way around, and you correctly explained that "you cannot appoint someone as prime minister in the State of Israel without having the ability to shape a political and security concept, because then the systems control and not the systems control.".
Prime Minister, now is the last moment to stop with the 'entry-exit' strategy that the General Staff presented to you and that you approved, to abandon the Chief of Staff's plan to move to 'Phase Three', and to order the army to occupy the Gaza Strip and establish a temporary military government there in order to achieve the main goal of the war - toppling the Hamas regime and eliminating its military capability.
If you do not take responsibility and instruct the defense establishment to move to a strategy of decisiveness instead of escaping from decisiveness, then, even by your own definition, you will be responsible not only for the mega-failure of October 7, but also for Israel's decisive defeat in the war.
