Something very unusual
is happening in Israel.
Senior military officials
have begun voicing
criticism of Prime Minister Benj
Netanyahu's conduct of the war i
Israeli media has been reporting
on a weekend security
meeting
at which the chief of staff
of the Israel Defense Forces,
General Halsey
Halevi, criticized Netanyahu's
lack of a clear strategy,
pointing out
that the Israeli military
had reentered northern Gaza,
an area
it claimed to have cleared in Ja
He warned that
unless there was a plan
to set up
some kind of non Hamas
government in these areas,
the IDF would have to keep repea
these kinds of operations endles
Israel's Defense Minister Yoav G
has gone
further, publicly
criticizing the prime minister,
pointing out that the day after
will only be achieved by actors
who replace Hamas.
And declaring
that he would not
permit Israel
to try to govern Gaza directly.
The New York Times reported on o
within the Israeli military,
making similar criticisms
as and Schultz writes in Haaretz
These briefings to the press
have been synchronized
as part as what can only be
a coordinated briefing
against the prime minister.
The reason
for these extraordinary
dissents at a time of war
is that Israeli
officials have begun to realize
what American officials
have been warning them
about for months,
that without a strategy to creat
stable governance in Gaza,
they will face a continuing insu
just as the US did
in Afghanistan and Iraq.
There is evidence
it is already happening.
Israeli forces have been forced
into Jabalia twice
and they have returned
three times today to the recent
and controversial raid
on the al-Shifa hospital.
Was the second effort
showing that the initial success
was not lasting?
US Secretary of State
Antony Blinken noted last Sunday
We've seen in areas
that Israel has cleared in the n
even in Khan Yunis.
Hamas coming back.
Much has been written about
whether the Israeli military
is being careful
or callous in its concern
for civilian casualties.
When conducting its attacks in G
But the larger point has to do
with its counterinsurgency
strategy itself.
In America's only successful
counterinsurgency campaign
in recent memory,
the surge in Iraq,
its strategy
was designed to protect
the civilian population,
isolate the insurgents,
and then crush them.
To that end,
General David
Petraeus worked tirelessly
with Iraq's Sunnis,
the community
spawning the insurgency to win t
give them a stake in Iraq's gove
and thus isolate the insurgents
and the militias.
He then used lethal force
against those militias.
This is almost
the inverse of Israel's strategy
which has been first
and foremost to go after
Hamas guns blazing
with very little regard
for winning the hearts
and minds of Gaza's civilian pop
Prime Minister
Netanyahu's argument
against postwar plans and operat
is that the war isn't over,
and in his words,
there is no alternative
to military victory.
The attempt
to bypass it
with this
or that claim
is simply detached from reality.
Bebe has repeatedly said
that he would continue the war
until he achieves total victory,
by which he presumably means
either a surrender by Hamas
or its total eradication.
The Biden administration has,
from early on in the war, believ
that Bibi's strategy was flawed
because there was no way
to defeat Hamas militarily
without a political strategy
to isolate it and offer an alter
that had some credibility and le
That was why the Biden administr
wanted to begin discussions
with the Palestinian Authority
and a group of Arab states
like Egypt and Saudi Arabia
to make plans
for reconstruction
and governance in a non Hamas Ga
Netanyahu has refused
to consider any such plans.
Bibi Netanyahu refuses to talk a
the postwar
because he knows that
his own postwar future is bleak.
Many Israelis continue
to hold him responsible
for the policies
that led to the October 7th atta
Were new elections to be called?
He would likely lose office
and then face an ongoing prosecu
as well
as potential inquiries
about the failures that led
to October seven.
All of this can be
pushed off
as long as he insists
on a Hamas surrender,
which he will not get,
but which will keep the war
going on indefinitely.
It is a strategy
not designed to secure Israel's
but rather his own.
Go to CNN dot
com slash
Fareed for a link to my Washingt
Post column this week.
And let's get started.
So you heard what I had to say.
What does a better war
strategy for Israel look like?
Joining me now is former CIA dir
and retired U.S.
Army General David Petraeus,
whom I mentioned in my take.
He commanded American
and coalition troops
both in Iraq and Afghanistan tim
David, welcome.
First, let me ask you to explain
you know,
what was
the heart of your strategy in Ir
which worked.
You were battling an insurgency,
a bunch of terrorists.
You know, militias
call them what you will.
And your US had not been able to
to really eradicate those terror
What did you do?
Well, first and foremost,
we committed to making life
better for innocent Iraqi civili
And we pledged that we would get
an extremist
group, irreconcilable, similar t
out of their midst.
We would clear their neighborhoo
their cities of Al Qaida
and then we would keep them
out of those cities
and neighborhoods
would create gated communities,
12 of them alone in Fallujah,
which is already completely
encircled by cement to keep them
And then you have biometric ID c
We would flood the area immediat
with humanitarian assistance,
then restore
basic services,
and then
go about the comprehensive Recon
and rebuilding,
all of the damaged infrastructur
restoring schools, markets, clin
bridges, roads
that had been blown up by Al Qai
and by the other
of the most dangerous
Sunni insurgent groups.
And then keep the pressure
on those groups
constantly going after them,
after having cleared comprehensi
from the populated areas.
But the key was the hold
and the build we're seeing in Ga
the clearing.
The problem is if you don't hold
keep the people separate from,
in this case, Hamas,
which is, again,
an extremist group
akin to the Islamic State,
it's irreconcilable.
But if you don't separate them
from the population
and keep them separate,
you have to go back and re clear
extremist groups,
if they're not kept out,
will reconstitute.
We saw it ultimately
at the end of the three
and a half year period after the
which drove violence down by nea
and it continued to go down
even as we drew down in the subs
three and a half years
until the withdrawal
of our final combat forces.
And Prime Minister Maliki
taking highly sectarian actions
that took his security forces
eyes off the Islamic State,
they were able to reconstitute i
And of course, within two years
you had the first ever
Islamist extremist caliphate
in northern Iraq and northeaster
Look, I want to see Israel succe
I believe
Hamas does need to be destroyed.
What they did
on October 7th was absolutely ba
and horrific and unspeakable.
And it's an example
that you've got
to get them out
of control of the people
and out of the governance of Gaz
And obviously,
there has to be then some kind o
for what the future will be.
And, of course, it's interesting
to see the minister
of Defense, Yoav Gallant,
and then also the chief of staff
of the Israeli Defense Forces,
calling for the establishment of
for a mid term and then a longer
because if you don't know
where you're going, as they say,
any road will take you there.