TEL AVIV — It’s little wonder that U.S.-led diplomatic efforts to persuade Israel to wind down its military campaign in Gaza are falling short when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet is so split over what the war can achieve.
Netanyahu’s ministers are locked in intense disputes over whether Israel should agree a permanent ceasefire and prioritize the return of 136 hostages held by Hamas militants, or push on with the goal of annihilating Hamas, which some suspect cannot be fully accomplished.
A string of stormy meetings in recent days has failed to patch over the fault line, with Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant opposed to accepting a deal Egypt and Qatar are trying to broker that would see a permanent ceasefire.
According to Israeli media reports, confirmed by a senior Israeli official who spoke to POLITICO on the condition of anonymity, Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, centrist opposition politicians who joined the war cabinet in a display of national unity, are arguing the hostages, among them dual U.S. citizens, must be the priority.
Qatari and Egyptian go-betweens have been struggling for weeks to finalize a hostage deal, with Hamas insisting Israel should agree a permanent halt to the military campaign. A temporary ceasefire, after which Israel would resume the war, is not acceptable.
Israel has dismissed the condition demanded by Hamas, but both Gantz and Eisenkot have questioned that approach. Eisenkot, a former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces and a member of the Gantz-led National Unity Party, told a weekend cabinet meeting that Israel should stop deluding itself about its capacity to eradicate Hamas.
“We have to stop lying to ourselves, to show courage, and to lead to a large deal which will bring home the hostages,” he told the meeting, as reported by Israel’s Channel 12 News and the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper.
Waiting in the wings
Eisenkot’s words carry extra weight, as he is respected across the political spectrum and was one of the authors of the so-called Dahiya doctrine, a military strategy calling for Israel to use disproportionate force against foes, including destroying civilian infrastructure. The doctrine has governed Israel’s military campaign in Gaza in response to the October 7 attack by Hamas that killed some 1,200 Israelis.
Eisenkot also commands widespread sympathy because his son and nephew have been killed fighting in Gaza.
Gantz is concerned about the lives of the Israelis who remain in the hands of Hamas, and is emerging as the Israeli politician most likely to call time on Netanyahu’s long political career. He and Eisenkot attended a Sunday rally in Tel Aviv to demand the release of the hostages after 100 days in captivity.
At that rally, opposition leader Yair Lapid argued that while defeating Hamas and bringing back the hostages are equally important goals, they are not equally urgent. “Our hearts broke on October 7,” he said. “As long as there is one Israeli hostage in the tunnels of Hamas, our hearts will remain broken.” Bringing the hostages home must come first, he emphasized.
Netanyahu, whose political survival appears linked to a longer war, is holding firm on the need for more fighting to eradicate Hamas. He reiterated that position on Sunday, saying “one of the things that has become clear beyond all doubt is that we must conduct this war, and it will yet take many months.”
He and Gallant argue that the original war aims of demolishing Hamas and securing the release of the hostages aren’t mutually exclusive, and are in fact linked. Only continued military pressure on the militant group will secure the freedom of the captives, they say.
In remarks at the start of a government meeting to approve the 2024 state budget, Netanyahu said: “One hundred days ago, the Hamas monsters invaded the State of Israel and massacred us. They raped and burned our citizens and took them hostage. We have returned half of them. We are not giving up on anyone. We are doing everything to bring them all back home. I emphasize: All of them, without exception.
“These efforts are continuing at all times, even at this moment. We will complete them at the same time as the completion of the other goals of the war.”
Hostage deal
Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, a bitter critic of Netanyahu, told POLITICO that Israel is at a crossroads, and that he senses public pressure is growing to prioritize the hostages. “We are in the middle of a big doubt as to whether the goal of the operation in the first place — the annihilation of Hamas — was realistic, and on the other hand fear of the possible loss of the hostages,” he said.
Olmert believes that Israel has already won by inflicting grave damage on Hamas, and that the goal of eradicating the Palestinian group was always an overreach — a position he took at the outset of the war, but that is “now becoming apparent to others,” he said.
Some in Gantz’s National Unity party are frustrated and believe he and Eisenkot should pull out of the war cabinet, in which Gantz has full membership and Eisenkot has observer status but takes part in deliberations. “We’re between a rock and a hard place. But the situation can’t go on this way,” a National Unity lawmaker told the Haaretz newspaper.
As Netanyahu debates next steps, Israeli military operations in Gaza have been reduced in scale as forces have thinned to allow reservists to return to their jobs and to enable re-deployments to reinforce northern Israel, said Michael Milshtein, the former head of the Palestinians affairs department at Israel’s Defense Intelligence agency.
“Israel is at an intersection,” he said. “Enough with all the slogans and all the ideas of let’s have a third gentler phase of the war. There are two options: to negotiate about the hostages and get a deal, but be aware that means we accept the continued existence of Hamas, or take full control of Gaza.”
With the war cabinet split, hostage negotiations are stalled, confounding Qatari and Egyptian interlocutors.
Second front: Lebanon
It isn’t only a hostage deal and the Gaza war that are dividing Israel’s leaders — they’re also split on what to do about Lebanon’s Hezbollah and whether a far-reaching military response is needed in the north.
The lack of clarity in Israeli strategic thinking is making it more difficult for Amos Hochstein, President Joe Biden’s handpicked negotiator, to broker a deal to calm the skirmishing across Israel’s northern border.
Hezbollah and the IDF have been trading missiles and rockets across the border daily since October 7, while the Israeli government is under pressure from the nearly 100,000 Israelis who have been evacuated from the north to ensure their safety so they can return home.
U.S. officials have been at pains to prevent the Gaza war from spilling over to Lebanon, thereby broadening a conflict that could inflame the whole region. Hochstein held meetings last week in Israel and Beirut “to advance discussions to restore calm” along their mutual border, according to a spokesperson for the U.S. National Security Council.
But Hochstein’s efforts have so far been thwarted by Israel’s lack of clear strategic thinking.
Israel launched a missile strike deep inside Lebanon on Sunday, with a military spokesman saying the IDF had hit Hezbollah targets in the country in response to an anti-tank missile attack on Kfar Yuval in northern Israel that killed a member of the town’s local security team and his 76-year-old mother in their home.
“The price for this will be exacted not only tonight, but also in the future,” IDF spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said. Israeli jets targeted Hezbollah command centers and other infrastructure used by the group, he added.
Israel is insisting that Hezbollah withdraw all its forces north of Lebanon’s Litani River, 18 miles from the Israel-Lebanon border, as stipulated under U.N. Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah. Israeli leaders have warned that if diplomacy fails, they will compel Hezbollah themselves by force.
But Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah indicated in a weekend televised address that he has no intention of ordering his forces to withdraw north while the war in Gaza rages. The envoys sent to Lebanon, he said, had sought to “extinguish” the Lebanon front by delivering a warning that if the group didn’t cease its attacks “Israel would launch a war on Lebanon.”
He added that Hezbollah was acting to “stop the aggression against Gaza,” and that “rather than providing a remedy to the symptoms, they [the envoys] should treat the cause.”
Lebanon’s prime minister has also hardened his position, suggesting Western pressure and Israeli demands for Hezbollah to withdraw are misconceived.
A month ago, Prime Minister Najib Mikati suggested Hezbollah would be ready to implement the old U.N. resolution on the border, although he said that would involve Israel’s trading disputed territory it still occupies.
But last Thursday, at the start of a cabinet meeting, Mikati said that calm along Israel’s northern border would not be possible while Israel continues fighting in the Gaza Strip, and that he had informed Hochstein that discussing calm in Lebanon alone is “illogical.”