For months, reports had swirled about growing divisions between Israel’s military and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the direction of the war in Gaza. This week, that rift spilled into the open.
It began with unusually direct comments from the armed forces’ chief spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, who in an apparent rebuttal to Mr. Netanyahu’s repeated promises of “absolute victory” over Hamas, said: “The idea that it is possible to destroy Hamas, to make Hamas vanish — that is throwing sand in the eyes of the public.”
In an interview with Israel’s Channel 13 that aired Wednesday evening, he added: “If we do not bring something else to Gaza, at the end of the day, we will get Hamas.”
That prompted a swift rejoinder from Mr. Netanyahu’s office, which said that the Israeli cabinet had set “the destruction of Hamas’s military and governing capabilities” as one of the war’s aims, and that the Israeli military was “of course committed to this.”
The public back-and-forth reflected the widening divisions between Mr. Netanyahu and his military leadership — as well as allies including the United States — in the ninth month of the war. Mr. Netanyahu has faced growing criticism from the Biden administration and members of his own government for not specifying who will fill the vacuum in Gaza left by the Israeli military’s devastating campaign against Hamas.
While Mr. Netanyahu has vowed since the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7 that the war would not end until Israel destroys the armed group, top Israeli military officials like Admiral Hagari have generally eschewed such rhetoric.
In the interview aired Tuesday, Admiral Hagari indicated that it might take a long time to build an alternative to Hamas in Gaza, saying that the group was “an idea” as well as a political movement that was “planted in people’s hearts.” But there was no path to weaken Hamas for the long term without an alternative, he repeated.
In the meantime, Palestinians in Gaza face rising anarchy. With no police to enforce law and order, armed gangs are attacking and stripping aid convoys. Public services like trash collection barely exist. Schools have been closed since the beginning of the war.
The security is so bad, particularly in southern Gaza, that thousands of tons of desperately needed humanitarian aid have been stranded on the Gaza side of the main Israeli border crossing even after Israeli forces paused daytime combat operations this week — because aid groups say it is too dangerous to retrieve and deliver the goods.
Admiral Hagari’s remarks reflected growing concern among Israeli military leaders that they might be handed responsibility for administering Gaza, said Amir Avivi, a retired Israeli brigadier general who chairs a hawkish forum of former security officials.
“That is the last thing they want,” said General Avivi, who supports long-term Israeli control in the enclave.
Some of the military’s top leaders, believing that the war’s main aims had been achieved as much as possible, were eager to wind down the campaign in Gaza in order to turn their focus to rising tensions with Hezbollah, the Lebanese armed group, on the country’s northern border, said General Avivi.
But there is little consensus on what should come after Hamas. U.S. officials say they want to install Hamas’s rival, the Palestinian Authority, which administers some areas of the occupied West Bank. Mr. Netanyahu and his far-right allies have ruled out such a scenario.
The differences with the defense establishment have been simmering for months. Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defense minister, in January floated a postwar plan that called for Israel to maintain military control of Gaza’s borders while a multinational group oversaw reconstruction and economic development. That proposal, widely seen as a trial balloon, did not gain traction.
Mr. Gallant, in a speech last month, said that Mr. Netanyahu’s indecision was moving Israel inexorably toward two unappealing outcomes: either an Israeli military regime in Gaza or Hamas eventually returning to power.
“We will pay in blood and many victims, for no purpose, as well as a heavy economic price,” Mr. Gallant said at the time.
Myra Noveck and Rawan Sheikh Ahmad contributed reporting.
