An Israeli general has warned that the regime has failed to meet its “unrealistic” task of “destroying Hamas” and is sinking into the “mud of Gaza.”
In an opinion piece run by the Ma’ariv newspaper, Yitzhak Barik said on Monday that Israel is caught in a “vicious circle” and slammed the regime for ignoring the “facts on the ground” and “living in a simulated reality.”
“As time goes by, we are further and further from achieving the goals of the war: the eradication of Hamas and the release of the [captives], and we are sinking more and more into the mud of Gaza,” Barik noted.
He said he believed that Israel has no intention of entering Rafah in southern Gaza, where Hamas exercises complete control because it is “terribly crowded” due to Israel’s ever-expanding evacuation orders which have displaced over 2 million Gazans.
“It is therefore impossible to attack these camps, and in a word, it is impossible to eradicate Hamas there whose soldiers are mixed in with the refugees,” he added.
According to Barik Israel’s failure to eradicate Hamas rule in Rafah and failure to take control of the tunnels under it means that it has not met the main task it set for the war, to “overthrow Hamas rule.”
Therefore, he said, the continuation of the fighting does not add to the achievement of the goals of the war.
“The opposite is true, this fighting brings us heavy losses every day: from explosives and traps that the [resistance fighters] plant for us and anti-tank missiles that shoot at us,” he added.
Barik said that the Israeli regime “must reconsider” the situation in war.
“Some of the ministers and members of the Knesset also understand that this is an unrealistic goal at this stage,” he said, adding, “but are afraid to voice their opinion lest they be accused of harming the fighting spirit of the fighters and the … goal of destroying Hamas.”
“A vicious circle is thus created from which there is no way out,” he said.
He warned that in case Israel insists on continuing the war or seizing control of Gaza, it will “lose the support of the world in general and the support of the USA in the war.”
He added that the “radical approach” will also result in a “war of attrition” with Lebanon’s Hezbollah which could spill over into the region.
Since the beginning of the war on Gaza on October 7, nearly 22,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli aggression. Palestinians in Gaza are forced to flee on a near-daily basis towards the south as Israel’s intensified assault continues into 2024.
