After nearly 15 weeks of war, sharp divisions within Israel
over the path forward in the Gaza Strip are increasingly coming into the open.
A member of Israel’s war Cabinet — a general who lost a son
in the war — urged in a television interview broadcast late Thursday that the
country pursues an extended cease-fire with Hamas to free the remaining
hostages, a rebuke of the “total victory” being pursued by Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu.
اضافة اعلان
And in a sign of the growing exasperation among parts of the
Israeli public over the government’s failure to free the hostages, relatives,
and supporters of the captives partially blocked traffic on a major highway in
Tel Aviv before dawn Friday.
Israel’s emergency governing coalition is under intense and
competing pressures as the war drags on. Right-wing politicians are urging the
military to act more aggressively in Gaza, even while Israel is contending with
outrage across the globe over the carnage and decimation of so much of the
territory. At the same time, the families of hostages are urging concessions to
secure their return.
“UNICEF has described the Gaza Strip as the most dangerous place in the world to be a child,” said the official, Ted Chaiban, the agency’s deputy executive director. “We have said this is a war on children. But these truths do not seem to be getting through.”
Divisions between Israel and its closest ally, the United
States, are also increasingly on display. Netanyahu on Thursday appeared to
rule out a long-stated goal of US foreign policy: a postwar peace process that
would lead to the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state.
“Israel must have security control over all the territory
west of the Jordan,” Netanyahu said at a news conference Thursday, referring to
an area including occupied territory that Palestinians hope will one day become
their independent state. “This truth I tell to our American friends, and I put
the brakes on the attempt to coerce us to a reality that would endanger the
state of Israel,” he added.
President Joe Biden spoke with Netanyahu on Friday in their
first conversation in nearly a month, as the two leaders increasingly diverge
over the conduct 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 Kirby, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, told
reporters Friday, a pattern of strikes that the White House says will continue
until the militant group halts its attacks on Red Sea shipping.
The Israeli official who criticized the prosecution of the
war, Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, a retired military chief of staff, has laid bare
some of the persistent tensions within the wartime government.
Eisenkot said Israel’s leaders must define a vision for how
to wind down the war in Gaza, and for its desired outcome. Only a deal with
Hamas would secure the release of the hostages, he said, adding that Israel had
so far failed in its stated aim of destroying Hamas. More than 240 people were
taken captive on Oct. 7, and about 130 people remain captives in Gaza.
“We didn’t topple Hamas,” Eisenkot told Uvda, an Israeli
news program, in a prerecorded interview. “The situation in Gaza is such that
the war aims have yet to be achieved.”
Eisenkot’s views carry weight in Israel in part because of
the personal price he has paid in the war: His 25-year-old son, Master Sgt. Gal
Meir Eisenkot was killed while fighting in Gaza last month, as was a nephew.
Throughout the hourlong broadcast, he appeared to come down
on the side of making a deal to liberate the hostages, even if Israel had to
accept an extended truce with Hamas. He lamented that a weeklong cease-fire in
November, during which groups of hostages were released daily in exchange for
imprisoned Palestinians, had lapsed because he said reaching a similar
arrangement a second time would be difficult.
Since the beginning of the conflict, at least 25 captives
have been killed, according to Israeli officials, including at least one in a
botched rescue attempt. In December, soldiers misidentified three hostages as
combatants and fatally shot them.
Although there is broad-based support among Israelis for the
Gaza campaign, many have become increasingly exasperated by the lack of
progress by Netanyahu’s government in bringing the captives home.
At a news conference Thursday, some relatives of captives
accused Israel’s war Cabinet of dragging its feet and called on the government
to hammer out an international deal for the hostages. “Stop lying to us,” said
Shir Siegel, whose 64-year-old father, Keith Siegel, is among the captives.
“You are not doing everything you can.”
Underlining the divisions in the war Cabinet, Eisenkot said
Netanyahu carried “sharp and clear” responsibility for the country’s failure to
protect its citizens on Oct. 7. He urged a new election “within months.”
Although elections could threaten wartime unity, “the
Israeli public’s lack of faith in its government is no less dire,” he said.
As Israel’s internal debate has grown louder, a range of
world leaders has sounded rising alarm about the suffering of civilians in Gaza
and the death toll there, which now exceeds 24,000, according to Gaza health
officials.
A top official of UNICEF said in a statement Thursday that
the conditions there were “some of the most horrific” he had ever seen,
describing badly injured children enduring surgeries in dangerous
circumstances.
“UNICEF has described the Gaza Strip as the most dangerous
place in the world to be a child,” said the official, Ted Chaiban, the agency’s
deputy executive director. “We have said this is a war on children. But these
truths do not seem to be getting through.”
The U.N. has described dire conditions in the enclave, with
water scarce, sanitation poor, and many children malnourished and sick. Only 15
out of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are even partly functional, according to the World
Health Organization, which has said that Nasser Hospital alone treated 700
patients Monday, more than double its typical caseload.
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