The Biden administration fears that Israel will disastrously squander its opportunity for victory against Hamas, losing its best chance to eliminate the group’s hold on Gaza and its threat to the Israeli people.
Senior officials are publicly calling Israel’s strategy in Gaza self-destructive and likely to open the door to the return of Hamas – a level of criticism of the Middle East ally not seen since the war began in October.
Officials say the Israeli government failed to control parts of Gaza after clearing them, that it turned the civilian population and the rest of the world against it with widespread bombing and inadequate humanitarian aid, and that it he allowed Hamas to recruit more fighters.
For months, the United States has kept any criticism confidential, quietly pushing Israel to change how it retaliates against Hamas for its October 7 attack that sparked the war. But the frustration of Israel’s refusal to change course has increasingly spilled into the open, with each side a crowbar widening the divide between Washington and Jerusalem.
“We want to encourage a deeper focus on the connection between ongoing military operations and, ultimately, the strategic endgame,” said a senior administration official, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive internal discussions. “We will continue to emphasize this point.”
The official added that national security adviser Jake Sullivan used his visit with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Israel last week to discuss how their operation could lead to “achievable and lasting” success against Hamas. .
In an interview with CNN on Tuesday, Netanyahu said: “We have to get rid of Hamas. Otherwise, there is no future for Gaza.” But recent US intelligence is fueling growing concern that such an outcome is impossible.
Although Hamas’s communications and military capabilities have been degraded, only 30 to 35 percent of its fighters – those who were part of Hamas before the October 7 attack – have been killed and about 65 percent of its tunnels are damaged. still intact, according to American intelligence. noted.
Biden officials are also increasingly concerned that Hamas may have recruited thousands of wartime personnel in recent months. This allowed the group to withstand months of Israeli offensives, according to a source close to US intelligence.
These and other pieces of intelligence likely inspired recent striking comments from senior administration officials.
Last week, Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said a “total victory” for Israel against Hamas was unlikely. Then on Monday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and General CQ Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, criticized Israel for failing to protect civilians in Gaza and for preventing Hamas from returning in force to the places he once controlled.
Both Pentagon leaders are known to be discreet professionals and reluctant to air their grievances.
“Not only do you have to go in and eliminate the opponent you’re facing, but you also have to go in there, hold the territory and then stabilize it,” Brown told reporters. If this doesn’t happen, it “allows your opponent to repopulate areas if you’re not there, making it more difficult for them as they need to be able to achieve their goal of militarily power.” . destroy and defeat Hamas.
The comments followed others from Secretary of State Antony Blinken who predicted last week that the eventual withdrawal of Israeli forces could leave “a void likely to be filled by chaos, anarchy and, ultimately, again by Hamas.”
It’s a sentiment shared by former senior officials with extensive experience in similar campaigns.
“Everyone understands that Hamas must be destroyed… but then? said retired Gen. Joseph Votel, who headed U.S. Central Command at the height of the fight against the Islamic State. “What is the plan to take care of the 2.5 million Palestinians left behind? What is the plan to deal with the rest of the Hamas fighters? It feels incomplete and I just don’t think they communicated or thought about this as well as I would have hoped.
Dana Stroul, a former senior Pentagon Middle East official who resigned in January, recently wrote that the United States is sharing with Israel the lessons of its failures in Iraq — namely how an insurgency grew out of occupation botched American campaign – but that Israel did not do it. heed these warnings.
“Not only has Israel refused to learn from this body of knowledge and experience about the sequence of activities aimed at avoiding the worst consequences for post-conflict societies, but it also appears that Israel is on the right track to repeat the same mistakes,” she lamented in a press release from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. essay published Monday.
Western officials believe that even as Israel has degraded Hamas’ capabilities in Gaza, the militant group has managed to protect thousands of its fighters, many of whom operate and hide inside a sprawling tunnel network. Others would be mixed with the civilian population.
The result is that Hamas is still holding strong and retaining significant capabilities, even after Israel’s nearly eight-month all-out war.
“Israel has the right and responsibility to defeat Hamas, but its current strategy of large-scale conventional military operations will backfire and undermine that goal,” Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colorado) said in an interview. “The United States has learned over decades that unless it focuses on humanitarian needs and the protection of civilians in conflict, its military objectives will fail. We see this first hand as Hamas quickly resurfaces after IDF operations and maintains its capabilities despite months of fighting. »
One reason is that humanitarian aid has not arrived in Gaza in sufficient quantities, spreading famine-like conditions throughout the enclave and angering Palestinians who must constantly flee violence or risk to be killed like thousands of other civilians. Between deteriorating conditions and allegations that Israel deliberately delayed delivering aid to those in need, the risk is growing that Gaza residents will be thrown into the arms of Hamas.
“That’s part of the challenge, the operations and the conduct have probably become much more radicalized, certainly young people are looking at this and wondering, ‘what’s going on?'” Votel said. The Israelis are “not helping their cause here.”
Recent military activities by the Israel Defense Forces have also caused confusion among Western officials. Israeli troops moved towards Rafah, forcing the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people – an operation they said they had to carry out in order to target Hamas leaders in the tunnels. But the IDF also had to send troops north to strike militant targets in the Jabalia neighborhood.
Retired Gen. Frank McKenzie, who led US Central Command from 2019 to 2022, said Israel had not deployed a large enough force to clear, capture and hold dense urban areas inside Gaza . In these areas of insecurity, “people will probably try to come back” and Hamas will then move in and re-establish a presence there.
“It’s a classic guerrilla strategy,” he said.
A key part of the U.S. plan to defeat ISIS in Iraq and Syria was relying on a partner force to secure areas once the military operation ended, said Votel, the other retired general. “If you don’t, you’ll find yourself going back to those areas and cleaning them up and fighting them again,” Votel said.
Finding a reliable partner force is not an easy task, especially in Gaza, but Votel criticized Israel for not contacting Arab countries to help in the “morning after” scenario from the start of the operation.
“There should have been more deliberations up front about how they were going to run this part of the campaign, and now they are where they are,” he said.
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