The Cabinet decision, which was anticipated due to discussions in preceding days and the prime minister's interview in a foreign language hours before the Cabinet meeting, where he effectively announced the decision, has ushered in a new era for us.
The five-point decision perhaps indicates the general intention, but it is very far from achievable – both in time dimension and in essence. The clause about "dismantling Hamas from its weapons," for example, is a clause open to interpretation. Some will see it as war until the last terrorist, bunker, and tunnel – "eternal war," if you will. On the other hand, the chief of staff can say, with considerable justification, that Hamas as an organized entity has already been dismantled from its infrastructures and capabilities, certainly relative to the point from which we started.
The wording of the last clause, which aims for "a civilian administration that is not Hamas or the Palestinian Authority" that will come after Israeli "security control" (temporary? for years?), is also open to interpretation that each side can understand as they wish, according to their belief or perception – ranging from military administration to annexation and return to Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip.
The clause about "releasing all the hostages" appears in the Cabinet summary only, so we won't say later that we didn't "fight" for their return. This is contrary to all assessments that an operation of this type will last many months and endanger the living hostages, when we have seen in recent videos what time means for most of them, and after the chief of staff recommended to the Cabinet, and not in defiance, to remove the release of the hostages from the war objectives – because he truly knows what this move means.
Israel lost its leverage
Even after the Cabinet meeting that declared we are going all the way to defeat Hamas and return the hostages, we remain with the same big question marks and with even greater skepticism. Will this move, which we haven't tried yet, be the one that brings change?
First, it's not at all certain we'll reach the implementation stage of the Cabinet directives. The beginning of the ability to take control of Gaza City depends on stages that will take a long time – evacuating slightly less than a million Gazans to another place, preparing infrastructure to absorb them, recruiting tens of thousands of reservists again and preparing them for the new plan - time that could constitute a window for renewed negotiations under US and mediator pressure.
Second, the Cabinet decision comes after 22 months of war in which its objectives were not achieved, after trying different forms of combat management – from raids to takeover, from conquest to cleansing; from stopping humanitarian aid to removing all restrictions and allowing humanitarian aid by any country or organization that just wants to provide it; from unwillingness to stop the war, through negotiations only under fire, to giving 10 hours of ceasefire per day for humanitarian aid.
Thus, consistently, Israel lost every leverage it had in negotiations with Hamas, and even though we dismantled its battalions and brigades, after we eliminated almost all its senior officials and after we damaged many of its capabilities, it hasn't budged from its demands.
This is also a decision made against the recommendation of the chief of staff and the security establishment, so embarking on such a significant move at such a problematic time – in the context of the hostages, in the context of the international arena and also in the domestic arena in Israel – will make it difficult for the political echelon to shift responsibility to the military echelon if the move doesn't succeed (assuming we even reach its launch).
Since the political echelon is the one that brought the recommendation and pushed for action, it will only be left to "blame" the military echelon for not meeting the goals set for it – "releasing all the hostages." We haven't tried this direction yet!
