Israel-Hamas War Live Updates: Frustration Grows in Israel Over Fate of Gaza Hostages

Israel-Hamas War Live Updates: Frustration Grows in Israel Over Fate of Gaza Hostages

A member of Israel’s war cabinet has exposed deep internal divisions, criticizing the prime minister and urging a longer ceasefire with Hamas to free the remaining hostages, while saying bluntly that Israel had not yet fully achieved its military objectives. in Gaza.

“We did not overthrow Hamas,” Cabinet member Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot told Uvda, an Israeli news program, in an interview broadcast Thursday night, adding: “The situation in Gaza is such that the war objectives have not yet been met.” to achieve.”

General Eisenkot, a retired military chief of staff, is a non-voting member of Israel’s five-person war cabinet, which has been making many of the most important decisions related to the combat in Gaza. He joined Israel’s wartime emergency government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, from an opposition faction after the Hamas-led terrorist attack on October 7.

General Eisenkot’s views carry additional weight because of the personal price he has paid in the war: his 25-year-old son, Master Sgt. Gal Meir Eisenkot died while fighting in Gaza last month, as did his nephew.

The televised interview, which was pre-recorded, laid bare some of the lingering tensions within the emergency government.

General Eisenkot said Netanyahu bore “clear and clear” responsibility for the country’s failure to protect its citizens on October 7. Netanyahu has generally avoided joining other senior officials in taking responsibility for the attack and its aftermath, saying the time to investigate the failures would come after the war.

The general also said that Israel’s leaders must define a vision for how to end the war in Gaza and the desired outcome. His comments contrasted with statements by other Israeli officials, including Netanyahu, who said Thursday that the war would last many more months.

General Eisenkot said that only an agreement with Hamas could secure further releases of people who were taken hostage in the October 7 attacks. Israeli authorities say about 130 people remain captive in Gaza.

“For me there is no dilemma,” he said. “The mission is to rescue civilians, rather than kill an enemy.”

Netanyahu has insisted that Israel remains focused on freeing the hostages, even as the Israeli military, under pressure from the United States and other supporters to ease the fighting, withdraws some forces from Gaza. Since the start of the conflict, at least 25 hostages have died in captivity, according to Israeli officials, including at least one in a failed rescue attempt. In December, soldiers mistakenly identified three hostages as combatants and shot them dead.

General Eisenkot said that a heroic rescue mission, like the 1976 raid on Entebbe, in which Israeli commandos saved the lives of 103 people aboard a hijacked plane in Uganda, “will not happen” because the hostages were scattered and in mostly held underground.

His comments touched on one of Israel’s central dilemmas in the war: whether it should continue hitting Hamas, risking the lives of hostages, or accept a ceasefire in exchange for its freedom.

Throughout the hour-long broadcast of the interview, he appeared to lean toward reaching a deal to free the hostages, even if Israel had to agree to a longer truce with Hamas. He lamented that a week-long ceasefire last November, during which groups of hostages were freed daily in exchange for Palestinians detained in Israel, had lapsed because he said reaching a similar deal a second time would be difficult.

The general also appeared to confirm that some senior officials, early in the war, had pushed for pre-emptive strikes against Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese militia with which Israel has clashed almost daily since October 7. The war on the front has long worried American and Israeli military planners deeply, and General Eisenkot said he believed his party’s presence in the emergency government prevented a full-blown conflict with Hezbollah, which he said He said, it would have been “a very serious strategic error.”

The general also spoke of the public’s loss of confidence in the Israeli government and urged new elections to be held “within a few months.” Netanyahu’s coalition of right-wing parties still has a majority in Parliament outside the emergency government, giving it influence over when elections could take place.

Although elections could threaten wartime unity, “the Israeli public’s lack of faith in its government is no less serious,” he said.