Division arises in Israel over the Gaza war

After almost fifteen weeks of war, sharp divisions within Israel over the way forward in the Gaza Strip are increasingly coming to light.

A member of Israel's war cabinet, a general who lost a son in the conflict, urged in a television interview late Thursday that the country would pursue an extended ceasefire with Hamas to free the remaining hostages, a rebuke of 'total victory'. pursued by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

And in a sign of the growing exasperation among parts of the Israeli public over the government's inability to free the hostages, relatives and supporters of the prisoners partially blocked traffic on a major highway in Tel Aviv before dawn on Friday, prompting police to detain people for short periods of time. seven for 'participation in disorderly conduct and unlawful conduct'.

Israel's emergency ruling coalition is under intense and competing pressure as the war rages on. Right-wing politicians are urging the military to act more aggressively in Gaza, even as Israel faces outrage around the world over the massacre and decimation of much of its territory. At the same time, the hostages' families are pushing for concessions to secure their return.

The divisions between Israel and its closest ally, the United States, are also increasingly exposed. Netanyahu on Thursday appeared to rule out a long-stated U.S. foreign policy goal: a postwar peace process that would lead to the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state.

“Israel must have security control over all territory west of the Jordan,” Netanyahu said at a news conference on Thursday, referring to an area including occupied territory that Palestinians hope will one day become their independent state. “I tell this truth to our American friends, and I put the brakes on the attempt to force us into a reality that would endanger the State of Israel,” he said.

President Biden spoke with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Friday in their first conversation in nearly a month, as the two leaders increasingly disagree over the course of the war and the future of Gaza once the fighting ends.

The White House confirmed the call in a brief statement, saying only that the two leaders spoke “to discuss the latest developments in Israel and Gaza.” And in Yemen, the U.S. military hit three Houthi missiles and launchers, John F. Kirby, a National Security Council spokesman, told reporters on Friday, a pattern of attacks that the White House said will continue until the militant group attacks. on land strike. Shipping in the Red Sea.

The Israeli official who criticized the prosecution of the war, Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, a retired military chief of staff, has exposed some of the lingering tensions within the wartime government. General Eisenkot said Israeli leaders must formulate a vision on how to end the war in Gaza, and on its desired outcome. Only a deal with Hamas would secure the release of the hostages, he said, adding that Israel has so far failed in its stated goal of destroying Hamas. On October 7, more than 240 people were taken hostage and approximately 130 people remain imprisoned in Gaza.

“We did not overthrow Hamas,” General Eisenkot told Uvda, an Israeli news program, in a pre-recorded interview. “The situation in Gaza is such that the war goals have yet to be achieved.”

General Eisenkot's views carry weight in Israel in part because of the personal price he paid in the war: his 25-year-old son, Master Sgt. Gal Meir Eisenkot was killed last month during fighting in Gaza, as was a cousin.

During the hour-long broadcast, he appeared willing to make a deal to free the hostages even if Israel had to accept an extended ceasefire with Hamas. He regretted that a weeklong ceasefire last November, under which groups of hostages were released daily in exchange for captured Palestinians, had expired, saying it would be difficult to reach a similar arrangement a second time. come.

Since the conflict began, at least 25 hostages have been killed in captivity, including at least one in a failed rescue attempt, according to Israeli officials. In December, soldiers misidentified three hostages as fighters and shot them dead.

General Eisenkot said a heroic rescue mission – like the 1976 Entebbe attack, in which Israeli commandos saved the lives of 103 people aboard a hijacked plane in Uganda – “will not happen” because the hostages were dispersed and largely held underground.

Tamir Pardo, former head of the Mossad, Israel's intelligence service, echoed General Eisenkot's message in a television interview on Friday evening. Those in Israel who talked about returning the hostages while eliminating Hamas were “blatantly lying,” he said.

While there is broad support among Israelis for the Gaza campaign, many have become increasingly irritated by the Netanyahu government's lack of progress in returning the hostages.

At a press conference on Thursday, some relatives of prisoners accused Israel's war cabinet of dragging its feet, and called on the government to strike an international deal for the hostages. “Stop lying to us,” said Shir Siegel, whose 64-year-old father, Keith Siegel, is one of the hostages. “You don't do everything you can.”

Underscoring the divisions in the war cabinet, General Eisenkot said Netanyahu bore “sharp and clear” responsibility for the country's failure to protect its citizens on October 7, when about 1,200 people were killed in the Hamas-led attack. He urged new elections “within months.”

While elections could threaten wartime unity, “the Israeli public's lack of confidence in its government is no less acute,” he said.

As Israel's internal debate has grown louder, some world leaders have grown increasingly alarmed about the suffering of civilians in Gaza and the death toll there, which now exceeds 23,000, according to Gaza health officials.

This was said by a top official of Unicef, the UN children's fund a statement On Thursday he said conditions there were “some of the most horrific” he had ever seen, describing seriously injured children having to undergo operations in dangerous conditions.

“UNICEF has described the Gaza Strip as the most dangerous place in the world to live as a child,” said the official, Ted Chaiban, the agency's deputy executive director. “We said this is a war on children. But these truths don't seem to be sinking in.”

Mr Chaiban said his recent three-day trip to Gaza included a visit to the Nasser Hospital in the southern town of Khan Younis, where the Israeli army says it is trying to crush a Hamas stronghold. The hospital has been overrun by people injured in airstrikes, and dozens of people sheltering there have fled in recent days as fighting rages around the complex.

He described meeting a child in the hospital whose spleen had been removed after shrapnel cut through her abdomen. The spleen plays an important role in the body's immune system, so the child must recover in isolation, Mr Chaiban said, because she is in “a war zone full of diseases and infections”.

A 13-year-old boy in hospital, Mr Chaiban said, had developed gangrene from a hand injury and had to undergo surgery to amputate his arm – without anaesthesia.

The United Nations has described dire conditions in the enclave, with scarce water, poor sanitation and many children who are malnourished and sick. Only 15 of Gaza's 36 hospitals are even partially functional, according to the World Health Organization, which has said that Nasser Hospital alone treated 700 patients on Monday, more than double the typical caseload.

Nadav Gavrielov And Adam Ragon reporting contributed.