Since the start of the war, numerous top defense sources have told The Jerusalem Post that there was a subtle division between the defense establishment and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the war’s goals.
That division has now become a massive gulf, the Post understands.
In public, everyone said that by attacking and destroying Hamas, the terror group would be more likely to give up hostages to obtain even temporary periods of quiet.
In that sense, the war’s two main goals, to defeat Hamas and return the hostages, could be seen as complementary, and there was no conflict.
But this was always an artificial formula.
As the war continued and it became clear that the IDF would not pull off some kind of Entebbe miracle by rescuing all the hostages in one fell swoop (it has pulled off three amazing rescue operations, but the total number of rescued live hostages is still only seven), it also became clear that most live hostages would only be returned, if at all, through a deal or deals with Hamas (see the November 23-30 deal).
Once that became clear, top sources told the Post that the war’s two goals could sometimes be complementary but sometimes conflicting.
They were complementary up until the point that Hamas was serious about cutting a deal. But once Hamas was serious about cutting a deal, any pause or other concessions that Israel would make to get the hostages back would, in some way, hamper or slow down the war, and could even end it.
Even as early as November, some top IDF officials started hinting to the Post that they would be ready to allow Hamas’s leader and their forces to escape Gaza and be expelled to a third country, like Qatar. This was at the same time that in public, all officials were talking about the certainty that they would soon kill Gaza Chief Yahya Sinwar.
In December, many top Israeli officials even started trying to leak that Sinwar was already dead in an attempt to intimidate the Hamas forces to surrender en masse or get some of his subordinates, who were holding hostages, to give them up to save their own skin. This was despite the fact that Israeli intelligence sources at the time told the Post that all senior Israeli officials knew that Sinwar was alive and controlling the hostage negotiations.
In any event, certainly at the time, Netanyahu said that such a deal was out of the question and even tried to reduce public discussion of such an option.
By January-February, top defense officials were still ready for a deal with Hamas surviving and being expelled, but they had moved on to another controversial break with Netanyahu.
They were willing to cut another deal with Hamas even at the price of a much longer ceasefire than in November, and they wanted to immediately inject Palestinian Authority security forces into Gaza to replace the security vacuum left when the IDF routed Hamas from various areas.
Once again, Netanyahu vehemently rejected any consideration of involving the PA. He rejected the idea not only because of his ideological opposition to giving the PA any positive role or momentum, but also because he did not want to hint that the war was slowing down; injecting the PA into northern Gaza to manage a future peacetime period would signal a wrapping up of the war.
And yet, all of this pales in comparison to the current gulf about which sources have been telling the Post and others in off-the-record briefings behind the scenes, but which The New York Times made much more public on Tuesday.
The majority of the IDF and the defense establishment have lost patience with Netanyahu’s unwillingness to get the remaining, or most of the remaining, hostages back by stopping the war, including an IDF withdrawal.
By May 20, the IDF had succeeded in taking over most of Rafah and believed it could wrap up that last major battle in Gaza within months or less.
There was a clear follow-up implication to completing the Rafah operation, which was to end the major operations of the war.
In truth, most of the war ended in February, when the IDF finished off Hamas in both northern Gaza and Khan Yunis.
From early February until early May, with the exception of a brief re-invasion of Shifa Hospital in mid-March, there was almost no intense war going on. There were mopping-up operations, and tunnels and rockets were found and destroyed all over the place, but the number of IDF soldiers inside Gaza at one point fell from tens of thousands to around 1,000, with zero in Khan Yunis.
Netanyahu was not talking about this, but even without getting the hostages back, defense officials viewed this as critical for the IDF, both to give a rest period to the majority-reservist army, with many soldiers and their families experiencing meltdowns, and because, in any case, until Netanyahu and the US green-lighted a Rafah invasion, there was no large Hamas force left to fight.
Not much left to do
In truth, Rafah has been mostly down now for a week or more.
The IDF updates discuss killing a few Hamas fighters at a time per day, but there are no large battles.
When the Post was in Rafah a week ago, there was almost no gunfire or bombings as compared to when it visited Gaza City and Khan Yunis earlier in the war.
Hamas fled from the IDF in Rafah in record numbers, with only around 600 killed out of 3,000-8,000 fighters.
Most defense officials wonder: If the IDF has no one to fight, why not stop the war?
Sinwar has made it clear that he will release all or most of the hostages if the IDF withdraws from Gaza.
Of course, it would have to be done in stages to make sure that the IDF does not carry out a full withdrawal before already getting many hostages.
But that is not what Netanyahu wants.
He wants a blurry line of merely declaring an end to major operations while keeping the mop-up, low-intensity conflict with Hamas open indefinitely.
On those terms, there has been no deal with Hamas for months, and this has angered top IDF officials.
Moreover, top IDF officials want to officially shift their attention and forces to the North to stare down Hezbollah or invade it if need be.
Beyond focusing strategic and human resources on Hezbollah, a secondary consideration is to ensure that there are enough weapons to overwhelm the Lebanese terror group and not waste them on Hamas, a far less formidable enemy.
The IDF has kept most of its air force parked or in the air near the Lebanese border throughout the war, so munitions are not the primary issue, but they do raise concerns about the IDF’s ability to fully focus on Lebanon while there is still significant conflict in Gaza.
Why is Netanyahu holding out to keep the war open when there really is no one to fight (there are 5,000-10,000 Hamas fighters who faded in with the civilian population, but there is no way of locating them en masse), and nine months have seemed to show the futility of finding Sinwar in the almost endless web of Gaza tunnels – or finding him before all the hostages are dead?
Netanyahu’s supporters say it is a strategy and a focus on saving future Israeli victims from the nightmare of letting Hamas return, even if it means sacrificing some or many of the hostages.
Notice that Netanyahu has been talking more about bringing back hostages “dead or alive,” as opposed to just “bringing the hostages back.”
His critics say that he just wants to keep the war going to keep his government from falling, which, in turn, he is using to try to keep himself out of jail from his criminal trial problems.
Regardless of his motivations, the New York Times article has revealed to the public what was previously only an open secret: the IDF is prepared to withdraw and hand over control to Hamas to free the hostages. Netanyahu is not. Where this will go is anyone’s guess.