GOLDSTEIN: Critics say Netanyahu doesn't want war with Hamas to end

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The greatest threat to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political future isn’t Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran or criticism by Prime Minister Mark Carney and his support for a Palestinian state.

Rather, it’s hundreds of past and present Israeli military and security officials who publicly oppose his plan to re-occupy Gaza City, now in its early stage, along with a growing portion of the Israeli public, including the families of many Israeli hostages.

Eyal Zamir, chief of the general staff of the Israel Defence Forces, has publicly clashed with Netanyahu over his plan. He argued that attacking Gaza City, where 1.1 million Palestinians lived at the start of Israel’s war with Hamas, would further overextend Israel’s military, already exhausted from the 22-month conflict, and that it isn’t necessary for Israel’s security.

Zamir said it will endanger the estimated 20 hostages who are still alive after being kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023. Thirty others held by Hamas, declared a terrorist organization by Canada in 2002, are believed to be dead.

In a recent open letter to Donald Trump, 600 former Israeli security officials, including heads of Shin Bet and Mossad — Israel’s internal and external security services — urged the U.S. president to pressure Netanyahu to end the war in Gaza, stating that in their professional judgement, “Hamas no longer poses a strategic threat to Israel.”

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In a video accompanying the letter, Ami Ayalon, the former director of Shin Bet, said: “At first this war was a just war, a defensive war, but when we achieved all military objectives this war ceased to be a just war,” adding that it is now “leading the state of Israel to lose its security and identity.”

The letter said the Israeli military has already accomplished the two objectives achievable by force — destroying Hamas’ “military formations and governance,” but “the third and most important (objective) can only be achieved through a deal: Bringing all the hostages home,” while “chasing remaining senior Hamas operatives can be done later.”

Netanyahu — whose minority coalition government relies for its survival on political parties that support re-occupying all of Gaza, which Israeli military forces withdrew from in 2005, as well as further expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank — has condemned such criticism of his military policies as defeatism.

He argued it will doom the remaining hostages and allow Hamas to re-arm to resume terrorist attacks on Israel like the one on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas murdered 1,200 Israelis and took 250 civilian hostages in the worst one-day loss of Jewish lives since the Holocaust.

Netanyahu has denounced his military and security critics for failing to stop the attack and senior officials in both have resigned in its wake.

But his opponents say Netanyahu, who bills himself as Israel’s “Mr. Security,” bears the ultimate responsibility for Hamas’ attack and for ignoring warning signs leading up to it because he was distracted by his government’s campaign to limit the powers of Israel’s Supreme Court.

They alleged Netanyahu is prolonging the war to delay his ongoing trial on charges of fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes and to avoid creating an independent commission to examine the security failures that led to the Oct. 7, 2023, attack.

Polls show Netanyahu’s ruling coalition faces the potential of falling apart in the fall and that if an election was held today — it’s not scheduled until October 2026 — his Likud party could lose to a coalition of opposition parties.