After reports began circulating that IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir opposed the security cabinet’s decision to capture Gaza City, many began deriding him as a leftist and defeatist. But that’s far from the case, as I explained in my Shabbat column for Israel Hayom, an excerpt of which is below.
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Is IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir a leftist in disguise, a Kaplan protester in costume, an opposition figure in uniform? That’s the widespread impression since the last security cabinet meeting. The branding is the work of two factions that formed an ad hoc coalition: frustrated right-wingers who want to cast Zamir as the one who prevented a decisive victory in Gaza, and left-wing agitators who want to recruit him into the “Stop the War” camp.
Well, that’s not the case. The chief of staff did indeed speak in the cabinet about a “death trap,” but not due to the plan to capture Gaza City itself. Rather, he warned about the method proposed by Benjamin Netanyahu: “operational control,” meaning seizing the city above ground. In the meeting, Zamir presented a grim slideshow with staggering numbers: the previous maneuver in the city carried out in a similar fashion, at the end of 2023, cost 122 soldiers’ lives. The Jabalia maneuver: 56 dead. In Rafah: 55. By contrast, the systematic, slow clearing of Rafah, Khan Younis, and Beit Hanoun in Operation Gideon’s Chariots ended with 40 casualties altogether.
Zamir, for one, is convinced that Gideon’s Chariots was the war’s most successful operation, albeit accompanied by the worst public relations campaign.
A Gideon’s Chariots-style maneuver in Gaza City, however, cannot be completed within two months, hence Zamir’s view that there is currently neither enough manpower nor sufficient international legitimacy to do it. Indeed, he did stress the matter of the hostages, but Kaplan protesters won’t like to hear that the chief of staff is firmly opposed to the so-called “all for one” deal, viewing it as a strategic defeat. For now, the IDF is trying to “execute the cabinet’s decision” in a way that will avert disaster.
The main dispute is around the possibility of controlling the population. As long as talk of Gazan emigration to South Sudan, Somaliland, and Puntland remains on paper, the army has a basic aversion to a postwar scenario where the population and the army are mixed together.
To push home this concern, the cabinet was shown a video documenting tens of thousands of Gazans swarming aid trucks, very close to IDF bases. From a drone’s perspective, it looked like a zombie invasion.
The encirclement plan proposed by Zamir is not temporary but permanent: Beit Hanoun, near Sderot; the Ali Muntar ridge overlooking Gaza; and Khirbet Khiz’ah, adjacent to the neighboring kibbutzim. In the IDF’s view, these will remain under Israeli control forever.
With all its problems, don’t be surprised if in a few months the security cabinet adopts it as well.
