(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Netanyahu's Gaza War Has Failed [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-12-22 The long reign of Netanyahu has been a disaster for Israel. It has had a dangerously corrosive effect on Israeli society, governance, and security. His coalition is a band of incompetent racist thugs who are no better at government than the MAGA morons in the US Congress. October 7th showed that the once-vaunted Israeli intelligence and security services had become a shell of its former self under Netanyahu. At the heart of the security disaster that Netanyahu has created for Israel are two long-standing policies. The first is the weakening of the Palestinian Authority (who would recognize Israel in exchange for a Palestinian state) and providing funding and support to Hamas, which is bent on the destruction of Israel. The second is the aggressive expansion of settlements in the West Bank and the violence and restrictions that make life impossible for Palestinians in the West Bank. With Gaza under Hamas and a weak, ineffectual PA in the West Bank, there would be ‘no partner for peace’. The settlements dividing up the West Bank into tiny Palestinian Bantustans make the formation of a state impossible. Netanyahu’s policies ensured there would never be a Palestinian state, and Netanyahu and his settler allies could continue with the slow and steady ethnic cleansing of the West Bank and expansion of settlements. Meanwhile, a deal with the Saudis, with the rest of the Gulf states to follow, would further finish any Palestinian hope for self-determination or an end to occupation. The world had written off the Palestinians as a lost cause. Even the Saudis were ready to toss the Palestinians overboard in exchange for an American security agreement. Netanyahu has always been an arrogant jerk. He has bragged about how easy it is for him to manipulate the USA and how he has been able to push the envelope farther each year as to how much criminal abuse he can subject the Palestinians to without blowback from Western allies. Netanyahu was confident that the huge imbalance of power and his strategic brilliance would limit Hamas to ineffective attacks that might cost a few Israeli lives. There would be just enough dead Israelis to serve Netabyahu’s purpose but not enough to threaten his tough guy security bona fides. That strategy blew up in Netanyahu’s face on October 7th. Israeli security officials spent months trying to warn Mr. Netanyahu that the political turmoil caused by his domestic policies was weakening the country’s security and emboldening Israel’s enemies. The prime minister continued to push those policies. On one day in July he even refused to meet a senior general who came to deliver a threat warning based on classified intelligence, according to Israeli officials. — NY Times It should come as no surprise that Nentanyahu’s prosecution of the war has been as much of a disaster as his pre-October 7th policies. While Netanyahu continues to attempt to gaslight the world, the IDF narrative on the progress of the war has been showing lots of cracks. On 12 December, there was a skillful triple ambush staged by Hamas paramilitaries in a part of Gaza supposedly controlled by Israeli forces. An IDF unit was ambushed and took casualties. Further troops were sent to aid that unit, and they were then ambushed, as were reinforcements. Ten IDF soldiers were reported killed and other seriously wounded, but it was their seniority that counted, including as it did a colonel and three majors from the elite Golani Brigade. That Hamas, supposedly decimated and with thousands of troops already killed, could mount such an operation anywhere in Gaza, let alone a district reportedly already under IDF control, should raise doubts about the idea that Israel is making substantial progress in the war. — Guardian How is it possible that Hamas still has the operational capacity to keep the location of over 100 hostages secret despite Israel’s hi-tech intelligence and all those troops on the ground There are other, wider indications of the IDF’s problems. Official casualty figures have shown more than 460 military personnel killed in Gaza, Israel and the occupied West Bank and about 1,900 wounded. But other sources suggest far greater numbers of wounded. Ten days ago, Israel’s leading daily, Yedioth Ahronoth, published information obtained from the ministry of defence’s rehabilitation department. This put casualty numbers at more than 5,000, with 58% of them classed as serious and more than 2,000 officially recognised as disabled. — Guardian The "Dahiya Doctrine" is an Israeli military strategy that employs the use of overwhelming and disproportionate force, the targeting of government and civilian infrastructure, and the collective punishment of civilian populations. The resulting terror, which has been taken to unprecedented levels in Gaza, is supposed to have a deterrent effect. However, US counterinsurgency experts seem united in the opinion that it has the opposite effect. “The lesson is not that you can win in urban warfare by protecting civilians. The lesson is that you can only win in urban warfare by protecting civilians,” "In this kind of a fight, the center of gravity is the civilian population. And if you drive them into the arms of the enemy, you replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat," Austin said, drawing on his experience as a four-star general overseeing the battle against Islamic State militants. "So I have repeatedly made clear to Israel's leaders that protecting Palestinian civilians in Gaza is both a moral responsibility and strategic imperative." - U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin The President and Secretary of State have both repeated these concerns about indiscriminate bombings and the shocking number of civilian deaths leading to a strategic defeat. . But what if your goals are better served if Palestinians embrace terrorism? Netanyahu’s greatest fear is that post-war Gaza and the West Bank could be under a unified Palestinian Authority that is ready to negotiate for peace and a two-state solution, with the USA doing everything it can to make those negotiations a success. All those years spent dividing Palestinians, supporting Hamas, and weakening the forces for peace would be for naught. Netanyahu’s war policy has been as disastrous for the future security of Israel as his pre-war policy. Bibi is losing this war because his priority is not peace and security or eliminating Hamas; it is the prevention of the possibility of a peace agreement that would result in a Palestinian state. That agenda caused the greatest security failure in Israeli history, and it is now proving as big a disaster in his war plan. Hamas has already achieved its goals. The plight of the Palestinians had disappeared from the world stage. The abuse of Palestinians in the West Bank and the slow strangulation of Gaza were not even footnotes in the Western press. When Netanyahu addressed the US Congress, he didn’t even mention the 7.5 million Palestinians under Israeli rule. That all changed after October 7th. The Palestine issue is now front-page news and a top priority for every Western power. The Saudi deal is dead. After the Arab Spring, even the Saudi royal family has to be wary of the anger of the Arab street. With daily images of dead children and the ongoing terror in Gaza, doing a deal with Israel now would be suicidal for any Arab government. The image of the invincible Israeli security apparatus has been punctured. Hamas is still fighting and causing IDF casualties despite the historically unprecedented bombardment and Israel’s vast superiority in weapons and technology. Israel’s Gaza war is destroying its brand and isolating Israel. The wave of support and sympathy following the atrocities of October 7th has been replaced by horror and condemnation over the atrocities in Gaza. It confirms the Palestinian narrative of the conflict and destroys the image Israel had so successfully cultivated in Western media for years. Most concerning is a severe drop in support for Israel in US polls. In a recent poll, only 31% of poll respondents said they supported sending Israel weapons, while 43% opposed the idea. The slaughter of children and civilians is radicalizing a new generation inside of the occupied territories and across the Muslim world. The median age of the Palestinian population is 19.6 years old—millions of young people who could fuel a fire that could rage out of control for a generation. It no longer matters how many Hamas militants are killed; Israel is creating a far larger number of replacements. The Israeli government’s “killing rage” in Gaza poses a threat to the country’s moral and legal authority and will fuel conflict for another 50 years, the former UK defence secretary Ben Wallace has warned. — Guardian Yes, military action was necessary to eliminate the immediate threat and the ability of Hamas to operate at the scale of October 7th. But military action can not eliminate Hamas, and the current Israeli war on children will have the opposite effect. The only thing that can eliminate Hamas and make sustainable peace and security possible is the one thing that Netanyahu will never agree to — Justice for Palestinians. President Biden has been a loyal friend to Israel for his entire political career, and he has done everything he can in public and behind the scenes to ensure Israeli security. But to succeed in that effort, the President must confront Netanyahu. A confrontation that Biden needs to win if Israel and American democracy are to be secure. Because now there is more at stake than the fate of Israelis and Palestinians. Biden’s association with Netanyahu’s war crimes could threaten his reelection chances, and the President cannot let Bibi drag down both Israel and US democracy. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/12/22/2213202/-Netanyahu-s-Gaza-War-Has-Failed?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/