Entering politics, ex-IDF general blasts 3 years of war without a ‘decisive result’

Hawkish former IDF general Ofer Winter, who is gearing up to launch a new party next week, aired a video on Thursday slamming Israel’s current multi-front war as indecisive and urging a change in Israel’s security policy.

“For three years, there has been a war here that, alongside big achievements, hasn’t yielded a decisive result on any front,” Winter said, urging a change from “reactiveness and rounds [of conflict] to initiative, decisiveness and victory.”

The ex-general, who is one of many figures launching parties aimed at right-wingers disappointed with the current hardline conservative government, decried the endless reserve duty many Israelis have served over the past three years in Gaza, Lebanon, the West Bank and Syria. He added: “You can’t send soldiers to a three-year war without ending it with victory.”

In his castigation of the government’s policy, however, he endorsed a policy backed by some of its most prominent far-right members, saying, “There won’t be a decisive result without massive emigration by the Gazans.”

Human rights experts have said encouraging any migration of Palestinians from Gaza would be considered a form of ethnic cleansing, and efforts by the government to push for such a move have hit repeated roadblocks.

Winter, however, claimed that he will “do everything in my power to insist on this. This is a historic opportunity that will maybe never repeat itself.”

The former general argued that the misguided strategic and security approach that enabled Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught “is still here, and we must stop this way of thinking right now.”

“So I believe we can achieve a decisive result — not over one another, but over the enemy,” he concluded.

Winter has declared that he will launch his as-yet-unnamed party at an event on Tuesday in Jerusalem, joining a crowded field of new center-right to right-wing factions positioning themselves as an alternative to the parties in the current ruling coalition.

He is among the more controversial figures taking a shot at a political run ahead of the October 27 election, following a long military career marked by multiple scandals.

He was released from the military in 2024 after being passed over for a promotion.

Winter came under considerable criticism during the 2014 Gaza war for a letter to his subordinate officers in which he described the operation as a religious war against a “blasphemous” foe.

The former Givati Brigade commander was later accused of passing along sensitive information about the war effort to then-economy minister Naftali Bennett, who was then thought of as being on the hardline right, bypassing the usual chain of command.

Winter also commanded the forces in the bloody “Black Friday” battle in the city of Rafah in southern Gaza on August 1, 2014. The fighting there became a central issue in a United Nations report on the war, with accusations that war crimes had been committed. In its own investigation, the Israeli military identified failures in how the battle was waged, but no criminal acts.

He was eventually denied a promotion to major general, angering many on the right, before being released from the army.

Winter’s party is reportedly set to consist of religious and secular candidates who are all new to politics and not “tainted” by the failures surrounding Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught, or by the decades-old blanket military exemptions for ultra-Orthodox men.

Reports in recent days have indicated that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is urging Winter to merge with the far-right Religious Zionism party, something the ex-general is said to firmly oppose.

Winter has also reportedly been in contact with Gilad Erdan, a former minister from Netanyahu’s Likud party who is now head of the new Unity party, but has ruled out teaming up with him, preferring to only partner with political newcomers.

Channel 12 news reported this week that Winter is in talks with right-wing Arab-Israeli influencer Yoseph Haddad, who recently registered a party under the name Brave Israel, and Laly Derai, the mother of slain IDF soldier Staff Sgt. Saadia Derai, for them to join his party.

Sam Sokol, Emanuel Fabian and Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.