Israel’s longest war | Opinion

The war in Gaza has been raging for almost a year now – longer than any previous Israeli-Arab war since 1948, and the end is still not seen on the horizon.

This is quite a strange situation for Israelis, who have been traditionally accustomed to short campaigns: In six days only in 1967, Israel had defeated the armed forces of Egypt, Syria and Jordan, and now it doesn’t seem to be able to defeat a relatively small terror organization using tactics of guerrilla warfare.

Such a protracted war, with no decisive results, naturally breeds a public debate, where people start wondering what is the point in carrying on.

Which reminds me of the Korean War in the 1950s, when Gen. James van Fleet, commander of the U.S. Eighth Army in Korea, was interviewed during a prolonged lull in the fighting. Time Magazine quoted the following incident from Lt. Col. Melvin Voorhees’ book, Korean Tales:

Reporter: General, what is our goal?

Van Fleet: I don’t know. The answer must come from a higher authority.

Reporter: How will we know, General, when and if we have achieved victory?

Van Fleet: I don’t know, except that somebody higher up will have to tell us.

This was not supposed to be the Israeli case, because four months after the fatal attack of Hamas on the south of Israel, which prompted the strong Israeli response, “somebody higher up,” no other than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself, clearly outlined his thinking about the war in Gaza. “Our security and the prospects of peace in the Middle East depend on one thing: total victory over Hamas,” he said in a statement. “At the start of the war, I outlined three goals: destroy Hamas, free the hostages, and ensure that Gaza doesn’t pose a threat to Israel in the future…But peace and security require total victory over Hamas. We cannot accept anything else.”

After almost a year of fighting, with hundreds of Israeli soldiers and tens of thousands of Gazans killed, the time has come to ask how close we are to achieving Netanyahu’s goals. Indeed, Hamas is severely beaten but definitely not destroyed; 107 Israelis are still kept hostages in Gaza and who knows how many of them are still alive; and Gaza will always continue to pose some threat to Israel, as long as the people there see no hope for themselves and their children. In light of this, is “total victory” still a viable aim, and what exactly does it mean anyway?

Instead of giving an armchair expert’s answer, here is what another “somebody higher up,” quite high up, actually, had to say about this matter. In a classified meeting with the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s talk of “total victory” over Hamas is “nonsense.”

Since war is as old as humanity, it is always worth quoting the great Thucydides, the Greek historian of the Peloponnesian War, who, two and a half millennia ago, wrote: “It is a common mistake in going to war to begin at the wrong end, to act first, and wait for disaster to discuss the matter.”

Time has come to discuss the matter indeed. After a long war with questionable results, Israel should temporarily stop the war in Gaza, which will lead to the release of the hostages.

We can always return to Gaza if it keeps harassing us. All attention must be switched now to the threat from Hezbollah and Iran.

Our defense minister and the chiefs of the IDF believe so. Therefore, Netanyahu should drop the rhetoric of “total victory” over Hamas.

As long as he doesn’t do so, it is obvious that he is prolonging the war to promote his own political interests.

Uri Dromi was the spokesman of the Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres governments from 1992-1996.