Former head of the Israeli intelligence service (Mossad) Ephraim Halevy said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed to subjugate the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and should leave now.
Halevy confirmed in statements to the British newspaper The Times that the head of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Yahya Sinwar, and Hamas fighters have not lost the will to fight, and that is why they refuse to negotiate.
He indicated that he believes Israel’s losses are “painful,” explaining that he was invited to meet with the current Mossad chief, David Barnea, several times.
In a related context, Nahum Barnea, chief analyst for the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, said that any statements from those responsible for the defeat of Hamas “do not reflect reality.”
Barnea wrote, “For 3 months, we have been hearing news about the destruction, defeat, and elimination of Hamas, but unfortunately, they do not reflect reality.”
War without end
He considered that Netanyahu’s decisions and policies had condemned Israel to an “endless war.”
He explained that there is a huge discrepancy between what was achieved in the Gaza Strip and the elimination of Hamas, noting that Netanyahu set “expectations that there is no way to achieve.”
The book emphasized in its article that blowing up any tunnel in Gaza is an achievement, but this does not mean “destroying all the military and governmental capabilities” of the Hamas movement.
In the context of trying to understand what happened in the Al-Aqsa flood battle that affected Israeli society, Barnea described what happened at that time as saying that Israel “fell into a deep hole, and since that day we have been standing at the bottom of the hole and asking many questions: how far have we fallen, why have we fallen, Where is the enemy that brought us down, and how will we destroy it?
In his attempt to answer these questions, he pointed out that “getting out of this hole means “returning the kidnapped people (prisoners of the resistance), restoring security and a sense of security to the residents of the south and north, releasing reserve soldiers to their homes, and trying to end the war.”
He called for postponing the reckoning with Hamas and stopping the war to return the prisoners, because their death “will be an indelible stain on the conscience of Israeli society and its cohesion, and because we are not currently ready to open a front in the north (a war with Hezbollah), and because we depend on America, the reckoning with agitation”.
According to the writer, Hamas’ condition of stopping the war and releasing Palestinian prisoners means the continuation of Hamas’ rule in the Gaza Strip, considering that for Israel this constitutes an “unspeakable and complete defeat.”
