Netanyahu is waging war on senior Israeli military commanders: Report
6 Min Read
The Israeli political command is ignoring the recommendations of senior officers increasing the pressure on the regime that is nearing collapse.
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, fifth right, President Isaac Herzog, fourth right, First Lady Michal Herzog, third right, and Israeli Chief-of-Staff Herzi Halevi, second right, attend a ceremony in occupied al-Quds, occupied Palestine, on May 13, 2024 (AP)
Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is launching a war on the Israeli military command and not Hamas or Hezbollah, senior military correspondent for the Israeli broadcaster Channel 13, Alon Ben David, wrote for Maariv.
The Israeli newspaper's columnist criticized Netanyahu's tactics that aim to defame the Israeli military's Chief-of-Staff Herzi Halevi and top spokesperson Daniel Hagari.
According to the renowned Israeli journalist, "The Prime Minister is not fighting against Hamas or Hezbollah, but stands alone against the heads of the army."
The article was published after news emerged of Netanyahu forging documents regarding an alleged al-Qassam Brigades smuggling operation. These forged documents aimed to justify the presence of Israeli occupation forces along the Palestinian-Egyptian border in the Gaza Strip, or what is known as the Philadelphi Corridor, by accusing the movement of attempting to smuggle the captives through the border area to Egypt and then to Iran.
Ben David criticized Netanyahu's supporters who lambasted their military in the past week, saying that such negative remarks "are no less than an attempted rebellion of the [Israeli] soldiers against their commanders, and the citizens of Israel against their senior army officers."
It is worth noting that the Israeli military command is facing a series of crises involving reservists, soldiers serving in the southern Gaza Strip, and most importantly the top Israeli political command.
Issues such as investigations into rape crimes, strategic objectives, and decision-making have pitted Israelis against each other in the past months. This has been aggravated by Netanyahu's instance on occupying points along the Philadelphi Corridor, which the core of the Israeli military command objects to.
The Israeli Minister of Security, Yoav Gallant, is seen as a representative of senior military officers, and his recent singled-out vote against the occupation of the Philadelphi Corridor is proof of the deep division between Netanyahu's coalition government and the military.
No free time to deal with burning north
As put by Ben David, Gallant is working on shifting the focus of the Israeli regime on northern occupied territories, after the military command declared its supposed victory in the Gaza Strip.
However, Netanyahu "has no free time to deal with the burning north," Ben David explained. He said that the prime minister is busy waging a war on a "more dangerous enemy"; Israeli occupation forces.
"The Prime Minister is determined to continue the eternal pursuit of 'complete victory' in Gaza," the military correspondent said.
On the other hand, senior Israeli military officers believe that victory in Gaza is impossible if the government does not make key decisions regarding the future of security and civilian affairs in the besieged territory.
Read more: Gantz urges war focus on Hezbollah, dismisses IOF Gaza failures
Israelis will be dragged into confrontation at a disadvantage
"But as long as the Prime Minister insists on an eternal war in Gaza, and two of the IDF's three decisive divisions are invested in the Gaza Strip - the IDF is not prepared to start a broad offensive in the north," the Israeli analyst wrote.
Moreover, he stressed that wide-scale confrontations in the north will eventually come, however, that will not be up to the Israeli regime to decide. Instead, he believed that the other side would "drag us into it against our advantage."
"Every day there is a creeping escalation in the war of attrition [on the Northern Front]," Ben David wrote.
"This week, Rosh Pina and its rivers fully entered the range of the war, and it will continue and go down south - until something bad happens," he said in reference to areas in the southern Safad subdistrict in lower al-Jalil.
Read more: Hezbollah matches Israeli escalation, focusses on Rosh Pina area
Coalition policies push West Bank to boiling point
Highlighting the mounting multi-front pressure faced by the Israeli settler colonial project, Ben David shifted his criticism to the policies of Netanyahu's government in the occupied West Bank.
"But now, when we are on the way to war in the north and possibly also with Iran, another front has opened that can change the picture," he warned
For Ben David, the West Bank is "approaching a boiling point," a situation that senior Israeli military and security officials are trying to avert.
Security officials believe that a series of policies are aggravating the security situation in the West Bank. This includes cutting taxes levied from the occupied territory to the Palestinian Authority, which has basically put it into a financial crisis, banning Palestinians from working in '48 occupied territories, weakening the PA, and altering the status quo in the Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound where extremists and fanatics desecrate holy sites.
"Perhaps it goes without saying that their recommendations fell on deaf ears," Ben David underlined.
Representatives of "Jewish terrorism," as put by Ben David, within the Israeli government are pushing for increased violence in the occupied territories. However, senior officials within the security apparatus have made the ramifications clear: a flare-up in the West Bank would immediately pull most of the Israeli military’s ground forces from other fronts, severely limiting its ability to conduct offensive operations in Gaza or the North.
Ben David's wrap-up of the current standoff between the military command and Netanyahu's coalition government underlined the unsustainable trajectory of the current Israeli strategy of maximum pressure across several fronts. As key decisions about Gaza remain unresolved, the threat of a confrontation in the north and potential upheaval in the West Bank risk overwhelming the Israeli military's limited human resources and systems. The Israeli leadership now faces the growing challenge of managing multiple conflicts without the full backing of its senior officials, as well as rising tensions among decision-makers, officials, and settlers.
Read more: Ex-Israeli PM Ehud Barak says war with Hezbollah 'strategic mistake'
