Israel lost war against Hamas in Gaza: Ex-military commander

JERUSALEM

Israel has lost its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, a former Israeli military commander said on Sunday.

“You can't lie to many people for a long time,” Yitzhak Brick, a former ombudsman major general, said in an article in Maariv newspaper.

“What is happening in the Gaza Strip and against Hezbollah in Lebanon will blow up in our faces sooner or later,” he warned.

Brick said the Israeli home front “is not prepared for a regional war, which will be thousands of times more difficult and serious than the war in the Gaza Strip.”

The former military commander criticized Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, saying he is “detached” from reality.

“He lost control of the ground a long time ago, but he started appointing colonels and lieutenant colonels in his likeness,” he said.

“This is the most serious scandal since the establishment of the army,” he said. “We have already lost the war with Hamas, and we are also losing our allies in the world at a dizzying rate.”

Israel has waged a deadly military offensive on the Gaza Strip since a Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed nearly 1,200 people.

More than 31,600 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have since been killed in Gaza, and nearly 73,700 others injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities.

Israel refuses to halt its war on Gaza until the return of more than 130 hostages held by Hamas since last October.

“If we fail to return some of the abductees alive, this war will enter the public consciousness as the worst failure in Israel's wars since the founding of the state, both from the terrible blow we suffered from Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023 and from the agonizing failure in the fighting in the Gaza Strip,” Brick said.

The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid a crippling blockade of most food, clean water and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to ensure its forces do not commit acts of genocide, and guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

* Writing Ikram Kouachi