Eisenkot charges Israel’s plan for Gaza war ‘went very seriously wrong’ due to ambitions of far-right lawmakers

National Unity lawmaker Gadi Eisenkot suggests that Israel’s plan for its war against Hamas in Gaza “went very seriously wrong,” and accuses the government of having lost its way, 14 months after the October 7 terror onslaught in southern Israel sparked the ongoing fighting.

He tells the Israel Democracy Institute that the reason the war is still ongoing, and that Israel’s stated goals have not been met is because “there are people sitting in the room who do not want to see the war end.”

Rather than focusing on the stated goals of the war — dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities, ensuring that there is no longer a threat to Israel on the Gaza border and rescuing the hostages — he says the government’s decisions were clouded by the “overt and covert war goals held by [Bezalel] Smotrich, [Itamar] Ben Gvir and part of the Likud.”

Among the many things that the far-right coalition members have called for is the resettlement of the Gaza Strip.

According to Eisenkot, this phenomenon “explains quite a few of the decisions regarding the ‘day after’ and the hostages, and the duality of Netanyahu, who says that there will be no settlements and no military government, yet in practice, they have released a paper that shows otherwise.”

With regard to the governance of the Gaza Strip after the war against Hamas finally ends, Eisenkot says that as things currently stand, “the IDF will be responsible for the distribution of aid, a military government will be established, the State of Israel will have complete responsibility. This is a very serious mistake.”