Former senior Israeli officials and writers called for an end to the war waged by the occupation army on the Gaza Strip, given the impossibility of achieving victory and eliminating the Hamas movement.

Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert urged an immediate halt to the war, because the goals set by Benjamin Netanyahu's government could not be achieved. Olmert said in an article entitled: “Stop the war in exchange for the return of the kidnapped alive,” published by Haaretz newspaper on Friday, that the claims of Netanyahu and members of his government that the Hamas movement can be eliminated through military operations are “unrealistic.”

Olmert argued that Netanyahu himself does not believe that this goal can be achieved, pointing out that the prime minister is acting like a "stage actor", all that means escaping the consequences of responsibility for failing to prevent the implementation of the "Al-Aqsa Flood" operation on the seventh of last October.

He added that Netanyahu, who is driven by internal political considerations, "is aware that there is no realistic ability to achieve the goal of eliminating the Hamas movement, but from the first moment he was not preoccupied with the war on Gaza, but rather with his own personal war of survival."

Olmert pointed out that Netanyahu, by emphasizing the goal of eliminating Hamas despite its unreality, is concerned with holding his partners in the government, army leaders, and intelligence establishment responsible for the end of the war without achieving this goal, claiming that he has always remained committed to achieving it.

The former Israeli Prime Minister added, "Today it appears clearly that although the Israeli army is fighting boldly, decisively, and with the required caution, and is suffering painful human losses, there is no possibility that the expectations enshrined by Netanyahu will be fulfilled, and the Hamas movement will not be eliminated."

Olmert stressed that Israel has two options: “Either it agrees to a ceasefire and returns its prisoners from Hamas through an exchange deal, or it continues fighting so that the war ends without achieving the goal of eliminating Hamas and without recovering the prisoners.”

“Every day deep inside Gaza will deepen the failure.”

For his part, former Minister of Foreign Affairs and Internal Security, Shlomo Ben-Ami, believed that Israel cannot achieve victory over Hamas.

In an analysis published by Haaretz newspaper, Ben Ammi pointed out that since the end of World War II, countries with regular armies have not been able to achieve victories over armed organizations in disproportionate wars.

Ben Ammi considered that, given the geographical and demographic reality in the Gaza Strip, “any modern army, no matter how powerful it is militarily or technologicaly, cannot achieve victory over the Hamas movement, just as the Americans failed in their wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan and the Soviets failed in Afghanistan.”

Ben Ammi believes that, unlike the United States and the Soviet Union; The two countries that could manage a long war, Israel cannot fight long wars.

Ben Ammi rejected the opinion that Hamas launched Operation “Al-Aqsa Flood” for unrealistic motives, pointing out that the movement achieved strategic achievements through this operation, represented by “pushing the Palestinian issue once again to the top of the priorities of the international community, and braking the path of normalization between Israel and the Arab regimes, and forcing Israel to rely in an unprecedented manner on the American military umbrella to avoid the risk of a multi-area war breaking out, in addition to the fact that the movement succeeded in giving itself the main position in the Palestinian national liberation movement.”

He expected that at the end of the war, Hamas would be able to liberate all Palestinian prisoners from occupation prisons.

In this context, writer Hillel Schocken called on Israel to acknowledge defeat against Hamas. He wrote in an article published by the newspaper "Haaretz": "We will not win, even when we are united. We lost the current battle over our right to a national homeland in the Land of Israel on October 7."

According to Schocken, every day that the ground operation continues deep into the Gaza Strip “will deepen the Israeli defeat and failure,” pointing out that Israel will emerge from the current war with a reality “worse than it was before.”

Source: Alaraby Aljadeed