The entrenched - at least so far - upper echelons of the Israeli Defense Establishment have come out in public defying the government's stated policy, claiming - as they have done in similar situations in the past with tragic results - that full retreat from the Gaza Strip is manageable.
With Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu about to meet with various American officials and address Congress, with Biden saying that he wants to end the Gaza War, Channel 11 reported that the Israeli defense establishment confidently told reporters that "the IDF can retreat completely from the Gaza Strip for 6 weeks - should a new agreement be signed to release the hostages."
The unnamed IDF establishment members asserted that such a small period of time would not enable Hamas to recuperate in a critical manner via new weapons or the construction or renovation of smuggling tunnels.
However, the IDF has just reentered Khan Yunis because Hamas was doing just that. One wonders, are these armchair military "experts" incapable of learning anything from their failure to predict October 7th's massacre, let alone mobilize to stop it? Do our soldiers' lives matter to them at all - or is it all about being in the media and contradicting Netanyahu?
Please note that
We are absolutely CLUELESS on the following:
#1 How many intact tunnels cross from Egypt to the Gaza Strip today.
#2. How many new tunnels are currently under construction nor how close they are to completion.
So these retreat supporters have absolutely no basis to know the volume of military equipment which Hamas can bring into the Gaza Strip over the course of six weeks.
The members of the Israeli defense establishment are PLAYING FAST AND LOOSE WITH THE LIVES OF IDF SOLDIERS AND ISRAELI CIVILIANS.
Three possibilities come to mind:
#1. They aren't the sharpest tools in the shed. Judging by their lack of judgment before the Oslo Accords as well as Resolution 1701 in Lebanon, and their reliance on the electronic fence at the Gaza border, that seems plausible.
#2. They discount future losses at such a high discount rate that the death of soldiers and civilians six weeks from now is "worth" only a small fraction of the "value" of an unknown number (at most, less than a hundred) of live hostages.
#3. They are "secular messianics" who believe that a ceasefire will lead to the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state which will, in turn, herald a utopian peace.
And a technical note: Anyone who thinks that after we make a full retreat from the Gaza Strip for 6 weeks that we can then simply invade Gaza again with elections in America just around the corner demonstrates such a profound cluelessness of the ways of the world that they have no business making policy recommendations.
But their cluelessness has never stopped the establishment before, so this is not surprising.
The IDF succeeds because of the intelligence and dedication of its Division and Brigade commanders and the courage of the officers and soldiers they lead, not its upper echelons. Let the government make the decisions and let the IDF upper brass express its opinions only in meetings with that government.
Dr. Aaron Lerner heads IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis, since 1992 providing news and analysis on the Middle East with a focus on Arab-Israeli relations.