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Netanyahu later got support from experts and commentators who claimed that overthrowing the Hamas regime would aggravate the chaos in Gaza and that the current situation of two rival Palestinian governments in Gaza and Ramallah is ultimately better for Israel’s security.
If Israel were to try to overthrow the Hamas regime in Gaza, it would serve the anti-Israel agenda of Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, according to this line of thinking.
Abbas demands Hamas hand over power in Gaza and has taken all sorts of boycott measures against Gaza to realize his dream of a united Palestinian front in Gaza, Judea and Samaria – which would also resuscitate the so-called Two-State Solution effectively abandoned by the Netanyahu government.
In this context, it is also important to note that the Trump Administration is reportedly pushing for the preservation of a separate Palestinian entity in Gaza which would come under the supervision of Egypt and would largely be financed by Qatar.
Another consideration which probably played a role in Netanyahu’s decision not to start a new ground war in Gaza is that he doesn’t see Hamas as an existential threat to Israel. The Israeli PM apparently wants to prevent the IDF’s hands becoming tied to Gaza while Israel has to deal with an ever growing real existential threat on the northern front.
Hezbollah with its 140,000 missiles, which can reach every city in Israel, and the Iranian-backed Shiite militias in Syria, which number 80,000 fighters today, pose a much greater threat to Israel.
Iran is furthermore using its proxies Hamas and Islamic Jihad to weaken Israel via the relentless terror campaign which started at the end of March five months after Hamas and the Islamic Republic re-conciliated in Tehran but apparently doesn’t want a new Gaza war at this point in time.
Netanyahu and the IDF seriously consider the possibility that Iran could start a three front war against Israel in the future via its proxies in Lebanon, Syria and Gaza. The Israeli military is constantly holding massive drills in the north of the country in preparation for this war.
There is, however, serious doubt about the ability of the Israeli army to manage such a three front war, let alone win it.
A recent report from Maj. Gen. (res.) Yitzhak Brick, the military ombudsman in Israel, claimed that the IDF isn’t prepared enough for such a war. It led to the establishment of an experts panel which was given 45 days to investigate Brick’s claims.
The Israeli Ombudsman warned of “deep problems” within the IDF and called on the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee of the Knesset to investigate the matter.
This is apparently “the overall picture of Israel’s security” the Prime Minister referred to during his speech on Wednesday.
The behavior of the government and the IDF high command is is criminal. Relevant to their policy is Winston Churchill’s description of the Chamberlain government’s appeasement policy: “They chose peace with dishonor and got dishonor and war.” Also relevant here is member of the Duma Pavel Milyukov’s question concerning the Russian government’s mismanagement of World War I during the Rasputin era–“Is this stupidity, or is this treason?” The Russian people swept away the government dominated by the Empress Alexandra and Rasputin within a few months of Milyukov’s dramatic speech. Israel needs a revolution just as thorough, although non-violent, to sweep away the lawyers who now command every unit of the IDF down to the battalion level, and who are pacifists and enemy sympathizers. The deeply entrenched appeasers and collaborators in the IDF, Mossad, the Shin Bet, the regular police, the Foreign Ministry, and above all on the Supreme Court and Attorney General’s office, must all be house-cleaned away if Israel is to survive.
Israel has two options. Either let Hamas run Gaza so that the Gaza and Ramallah governments can continue to duke it out with each of them needing Israel’s support but only giving it aggravation in return or to retake Gaza and encourage its militants to leave, reseeding it with settlements to establish a permanent Israeli presence. As for me, I think that only the latter will succeed in holding onto peace. The pity is the amount of resources it would take to clean up the strip. The benefits include removing the dagger at Israel’s heart.