Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett shared his thoughts on the current government's approach to the multi-front war Israel faces in an interview with Bret Stephens of The New York Times in August.
Bennett, throughout the Israel-Hamas war, had created a four-part plan concerning the presence of the Hamas terrorist organization in the Gaza strip: take hold of Gaza's peripheries and not their cities, provide the civilians with sufficient humanitarian aid, continue with precisely targeted attacks on Hamas, and provide the groundwork for the release of the hostages.
According to Stephens, the Netanyahu government has achieved none of its original objectives regarding the survival of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the hostages still in captivity, and the tens of thousands of evacuees who have yet to return to their homes.
When asked about Netanyahu's conduct of the war, Bennett answered, “I see words that send one message and actions that are contrary,” hinting also at Netanyahu's approach to Iran and its nuclear threat.
Bennett's approach to the war in Gaza mentioned two possibilities; the first is a quick and sudden increase of military action with the goal of wiping out Hamas.
“If you’re in a boxing ring and you just hit your opponent, and he’s just wobbling, you zero in and give him another punch." The second option is a hostage deal and ceasefire, which, simply put, would be to defer an impending revival. In Bennettt's words, Israel would “fight another day.”
Bennett's Criticism
Bennett has been openly critical of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's approach to the war, criticizing his slow-moving strategy without a clear destination.
“I know there is a body count of Hamas combatants,” Bennett said. “When you count bodies, you are assuming a finite number of combatants. But you have a population of one million to draw on,” he added, referring to Hamas. “They could have recruited another 10,000 in the meantime. That’s not how you win a war.”
The ‘Iranian octopus,’ an expression coined by Bennett, has proven its capabilities over the last 10 months. “[Iran] builds proxies and tentacles across the Middle East and the world, for that matter, and funds, arms and directs them, yet hardly pays the price.”
Israel has found itself trapped, surrounded by the well-established tentacles of Iran, Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, and Iraq. However, despite Bennett's warning to Netanyahu years earlier, the prime minister's focus had remained sternly on the Iranian nuclear threat.
“Tehran built an empire of rockets and terror”
Bennett stated that the only option for reversal of the current threat is “to topple the Iranian regime before it fully acquires a nuclear weapon.”
"The head of the octopus is much weaker, much more vulnerable, and feeble than its arms. So how foolish are we to engage in war with the arms when we could engage with the head?” hinting at significant and well-implemented economic sanctions. According to Federal Reserve Economic Data, Iran currently exports close to four times the amount of oil it did four years ago.
When asked about the timing of the assassination of the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, Bennett elaborated, “It’s very hard to cherry-pick particular actions if there’s no broad strategy.”
He added that Iran has “huge vulnerabilities, especially in its energy sector, which is highly concentrated in a few bottlenecks that can be dealt with. They should be afraid right now and not the 10 million Israelis. This passive method in which our enemies take the lead is not the Israeli way.”
According to Stephens, it is not far-fetched that we will see Bennett back in the ring for elections, promoting renewal and replacement of the entire senior leadership of Israel, with the steady goal of Israel's long-term survival at heart.