How the IDF got PM to invade Gaza, Lebanon, but cannot convince him to stop

Netanyahu claims he was always the aggressive party, but top defense officials say the opposite until mid-2024.

By YONAH JEREMY BOB NOVEMBER 19, 2024 14:43

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fires Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for the second time (illustrative) (photo credit: FLASH90, REUTERS/AMIR COHEN)

On Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and various lieutenants again went on the attack against his recently ousted defense minister Yoav Gallant and the other leaders of the defense establishment, including IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi and Shin Bet Director Ronen Bar.

One of his main claims was that he, throughout the war and especially regarding invading Rafah, was always pushing for more aggressive military action and that the top defense officials were always trying to restrain him out of fear of angering the US.

Multiple attempts to get more specifics from Netanyahu in the past and again on Tuesday regarding his claims were not responded to, leaving this account based on his public statements and the accounts of a range of top defense officials.

The problem is that according to most top defense officials in their comments to The Jerusalem Post and some comments to some other outlets, with a few exceptions and regardless of what Netanyahu was saying in public - the opposite was true when it came down to actually making the real decisions in war cabinet meetings. Namely, they say Netanyahu often tried to veto or delay attacks under pressure from defense officials to move forward.

Although many specifics still cannot be made public at this stage of the war, the Post has, in some cases, been shown or given some specific evidence to support some defense officials’ claims.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at Knesset, July 17, 2024. (credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)

Gallant, former war cabinet member and current opposition official Benny Gantz, and various top IDF officials have said that Netanyahu vetoed or tried to delay:

·        Israel from attacking Hezbollah on October 11, 2023, when Gallant and the IDF demanded it privately as well as in June 2024, when Gantz publicly demanded it

·        Israel from attacking Gaza for 20 days from October 7-27, 2023, from attacking Khan Yunis in fall 2023 until the hostage negotiations with Hamas broke down on November 30, 2023, Israel from attacking Rafah from October 2024 until mid-Spring 2024 (Israel finally attack Rafah on May 6, 2024)

An interesting twist in all of this is that Gantz’s ally, former war cabinet observer and top opposition official Gadi Eisenkot, was ready to extend the hostage negotiations in November 2023, even as Hamas was altering which hostages it would return and in what order. He also may have been ready to end the war in January 2024 and a phased Gaza withdrawal in exchange for a return of all of the hostages. But it seems he was an outlier at that stage, given that the other defense officials were gung-ho about invading Khan Yunis and were unwilling then to let Hamas change the hostage exchange terms.

Some top defense officials have acknowledged to the Post that once May 2024 came around and there was a potential hostage deal in hand in exchange for Israel halting the war and withdrawing from Gaza in stages, they were ready to support that and that Netanyahu, at that point, preferred to continue the war than to cut such a deal.

---

---

By late June 2024, 22-23 out of Hamas’s 24 battalions had been taken apart by the IDF, and the military was also deep into destroying much of Hamas’s cross-border weapons smuggling tunnels between Egypt and Gaza at the Philadelphi Corridor.

Unequivocally, Gantz, Gallant, Halevi, Bar, and also Mossad Director David Barnea were in cabinet meetings and in some cases publicly, were in favor of cutting a hostage deal in exchange for ending the war and a phased withdrawal from Gaza in July 2024, with Netanyahu vetoing that in order to continue the war.

There is also an unclear debate among defense officials, which the Post has previously revealed, about whether Gallant and the IDF were in favor of launching the beeper attack on Hezbollah in mid-September 2024 – which Netanyahu has now taken credit for.

Gallant claims he was in favor, though he would not deny that he wanted to calibrate the timing and rollout of the attack with any potential impact on the US.

Other top defense officials who spoke to the Post have supported Netanyahu and broke with Gallant on the timing of the beepers attack, saying he tried to hold back that attack, which would be ironic given that he led the push to launch an all-out attack on Hezbollah as early as October 11, 2023.

In September 2024, Gallant was more concerned about maintaining US arms transfers, given how badly Israel’s reputation has been wounded (however unfairly) in America and worldwide, and in October 2023, he believed Jerusalem could have “gotten away with” almost anything because the world was still on the Jewish state’s side after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 slaughter of 1,200 Jews.

That said, whereas Netanyahu and his aides called the Biden administration on October 11, 2023, to essentially ask permission to attack Hezbollah and were given a veto and then backed off, Gallant did not call, warn, or ask advance permission for the beeper attack against Hezbollah, and especially not for the assassination of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah.

The Jerusalem Post and others previously reported that Gallant’s decision not to warn US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in advance of the assassination of Nasrallah led to likely the harshest conversation of the war between the two defense officials who have usually been close allies, speaking well over 100 times by phone during the war.

None of this is a black-and-white picture, and many parties shifted their positions back and forth depending on constantly evolving factors and circumstances, but what emerges is certainly a picture in which, earlier in the war, Netanyahu was more hesitant to use force and top Israeli defense officials were often pressing him to do so.

In contrast, the picture that emerges later in the war is that a growing number of defense officials wanted to end the war in Gaza months ago.

Netanyahu is overwhelmingly the main party who has kept the war going.

Depending on your politics, there is a split about why Netanyahu has kept the war going.

Supporters say it is because it is the only way to keep Hamas from coming back to power until a third party agrees to take over Gaza from Israel under terms Jerusalem approves.

Critics say it is out of naked political and personal calculations to hold his coalition together, including Betzalel Smotrich and Itamar ben Gvir, who have threatened to quit if the war stops, and to try to avoid having to testify at his public corruption trial on December 2.

Those same critics would add that the Palestinian Authority, along with the UAE, Egypt, the CIA, and NATO, could have taken over Gaza in February 2024 but that Netanyahu has blocked this for the same naked political calculations.

Supporters would say that letting the PA into Gaza would be a prize for the October 7, 2023 mass terror attacks and increase the likelihood of a Palestinian state, which they oppose, even if other parties were also involved.

Likewise, in Lebanon, most top IDF officials told the Post and other media that they wanted the invasion to be over by mid-late October.

By that time, the IDF had already achieved the invasion’s objectives of clearing out Hezbollah and its weapons from the nearby border villages, in order to enhance security for Israeli border towns.

For the last month since then, the IDF has been extremely slowly advancing from 2 kilometers from the border to around 5 kilometers from the border, but much more of the weapons were in the closest villages than are in the farther away villages.

Moreover, advancing a few more kilometers does nothing to stop Hezbollah’s ongoing rocket fire which has killed and wounded large numbers of Israelis, including last night in the Tel Aviv-Ramat gan area, multiples times in the last week or so.

Top defense officials have faced a wall from Netanyahu about ending the war with Lebanon, despite them believing the IDF has achieved much of what it can strategically and their belief that Hezbollah is only getting better at fighting Israel and striking the Israeli home front as it has more time to calculate and plan.

Newly installed Defense Minister Yisrael Katz stunned Halevi a few days ago when he said Israel would continue the war until reaching a certain undefined point of disarming Hezbollah – a war aim which would require a much longer and larger war in Lebanon than Netanyahu has endorsed.

Already from mid-October, Hezbollah had changed its tune to agreeing to a separate ceasefire which would not need to include Gaza and to a withdrawal to the Litani River under Un Resolution 1701 – terms it had rejected for a year.

With Lebanon, the question is whether Netanyahu really believes that a few more weeks or months of bombing will get Hezbollah to agree to terms which it has said it would never agree to: endorsing Israel’s right to bomb and invade Lebanon going forward if Hezbollah violates the ceasefire. Or whether he is holding out agreeing to a ceasefire to delay his trial or until Donald Trump becomes president in two months, thinking Trump may get him better terms.

In contrast, IDF defense officials would likely be ready for an immediate ceasefire as long as the US gives unofficial support for IDF action in Lebanon against Hezbollah violations, even if the “official” deal does not mention that.

Summing up, most top defense officials would say that at the start of the war, they had trouble getting Netanyahu to invade, but as the war dragged into the second half of 2024, they have been unable to get the prime minister to stop.