Victory means total destruction, occupation, expulsion, and settlement' - Former Knesset Deputy Speaker

Eliyahu Tulshinski

October 20, 2023

Former Knesset Deputy Speaker Moshe Feiglin has set a “condition” for politicians to meet before sending Israeli teens and young men into Gaza - a commitment to complete victory.

Knowing history

Feiglin is keenly aware of the dissonance between Israel's political leaders and the soldiers who serve them.

In the First Lebanon War, the Marxist revolutionary PLO was expelled from Jordan for fomenting revolution began raining missiles down on northern Israel from southern Lebanon. The IDF chased the PLO halfway up Lebanon to its capital city Beirut, where Israel surrounded them in a small neighborhood. President Ronald Reagan distanced himself from the battle by announcing a vacation. But Israel's prime minister asked Reagan to send UN Navy ships to save the PLO and escort them to Tunisia. Years later, another Israel prime minister brought them to Gaza and Ramallah.

Israel again snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in the Second Lebanon War. The final 60 hours of that battle saw then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert give the go ahead for a costly operation to push Hezbollah north of the Litani River to create a buffer zone protecting northern Israel from missile attacks. The order was given even though a cease fire was imminent and would require Israel to fully retreat not only from the river but from all of Lebanon. The troops were kept unaware of the ceasefire and kept fighting even after Olmert signed on.

Olmert placated a nation distraught from the deaths of dozens of soldiers who fought for territory immediately abandoned with unrealistic assurances promising that, “Hezbollah won’t continue to exist as a state within a state.”

Hezbollah today boasts a far larger and better armed force than ever, stationed all along Israel's northern border, and is now killing Israelis with guided missiles.

Each of the Gaza wars till now has been similarly fought without victory as a goal. Israel warns residents of buildings housing Hamas leaders before each “surgical” airstrike and agrees to cease fires just as Hamas runs out of rockets and is on the verge of collapse. The ceasefires are then followed by massive aid to Gaza, which is routinely seized by Hamas.

Knowing the present

Israel's Defense Minister Yoav Gallant laid out the plan for this war at a Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee meeting. “We are in the first phase, in which a military campaign is taking place with [airstrikes] and later with a [ground] maneuver with the purpose of destroying operatives and damaging infrastructure in order to defeat and destroy Hamas,” said Galant. He continued that In a second phase the army will work to “eliminate pockets of resistance.”

Gallant did not say whether he will demand that Gaza surrender and turn over all weapons and remaining Hamas members for war crimes trials. Nor did he promise to take permanent control of Gaza, indicating that some percentage of Hamas members will continue to live in Gaza after a regime change:

The third step will be the creation of a new security regime in the Gaza Strip, the removal of Israel’s responsibility for day-to-day life in the Gaza Strip, and the creation of a new security reality for the citizens of Israel and the residents of the [area surrounding Gaza].

Despite the Hamas pogrom and the ease with which the IDF could conquer Gaza were it to use its full force, Gallant clarifies that there's no intent to conquer Gaza. Former Prime Minister and current leader of the opposition Yair Lapid not only agrees that Israel should not conquer Gaza, he offers the PLO as the new leadership:

I think in the end the best thing is that the [PLO subsidiary] Palestinian Authority goes back into Gaza. It’s not ideal, and if you ask me what the exit strategy should be, it should be helping the international community help [the Palestinian Authority take control]. This is the way things were before. [Emphasis added].

Frontline News and Feiglin himself predicted the PLO would be offered the new governing authority days before Lapid's announcement. This is a logical inference from the fact that Israel's policy for decades has, curiously, been that the PLO is the only legitimate representative of the population of the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and Gaza. This is the same PLO that has turned the West Bank into a war zone, where Israeli police arresting PLO and Hamas members have been killed by remotely detonated mines, rocket propelled grenades and heavily armed Palestinian Authority officers.

Knowing what to do

Based on the past and present, Feiglin is wary of sending young troops into danger without a clear commitment by politicians to change course and now seek full victory. He posted the following message on Facebook:

Level

Gaza now

and only afterwards

enter

Feiglin listed the facts behind his reasoning:

The Prime Minister announced that:

1. There will be no occupation of Gaza.

2. There will be no prolonged stay in Gaza.

3. It's going to be long - could last maybe months.

Feiglin added that Israeli troops are in added danger because Joe Biden offered support for Israel only in exchange for Israeli commitments to prioritize reducing Gaza civilian deaths over reducing Israeli deaths and to allow water and food into Gaza despite the fact that Hamas controls everything that enters. Feiglin then explained his analysis of the three facts he listed:

The meaning:

1. If there is no conquest, there is no collapse [of Hamas].

2. If there is no prolonged stay there is no victory.

3. If it takes months and the abducted citizens are still there, we will pay a very high price and finally we will escape.

[Conclusion]: It is prohibited to enter Gaza if there is no intent to win! [Emphases added].

Feiglin sees no reason to pay that “very high price” in soldiers' lives without committing to victory, but does offer conditions in which entering Gaza would be justified. He first demands far more air attacks and truly cutting off food, water and electricity to Hamas. Then he wants a declaration of an intent to achieve full victory, which he defines:

Victory means total destruction, occupation, expulsion and settlement.

Anything less than that kicks the can down the road till the next pogrom, which will be even bigger than the previous one, waiting at the door for our children.

In this state of affairs - it is absolutely forbidden to let our soldiers into Gaza! [Emphases added].

Soldiers' families concerned

Many Israelis are expressing the same wariness — of a war without assurances that politicians are seeking a full victory — as Feiglin. Shosha Grinfeld, the sister of a soldier who died in the Second Lebanon War, recently shared the eulogy she gave her brother 17 years ago as a message to today's young Israelis. In it, she describes her last phone conversation with her brother, in which she begged him to come home rather than be used as "cannon fodder" for politicians in a "show war."

Yehuda, my dear, beloved, innocent brother, with the big blue eyes, the good looks and the gentleness of the soul. I will tell the story of your life, your beauty. But right now I choose to tell the story of your death. In our last phone call, I told you:

“Don't go to become cannon fodder. . . . Go home, you have a historic opportunity to refuse, so that the pogrom [of forcibly evacuating the Jewish community] in Gush Katif [in Gaza] won't come to you in your house in Michmash.”

“Go home,” I told you . . . "So that . . . once the fighting ends with an absurd ceasefire [they won't uproot you from your house [like in Gush Katif] . . .

I beg you before all your friends . . . go home now, before you come back in a coffin in this show war . . . maliciously putting the soldiers into death traps . . .

Just after his death, Grinfeld's fellow soldiers were told to retreat back into Israel and abandon the buffer zone he gave his life to acquire.

Fake denial?

Israelis are demanding that politicians follow a different script this time. The pressure has reached the prime minister, who offered a carefully phrased denial that IDF soldiers are working to turn Gaza over to the PLO:

All talk of decisions to hand over the Gaza Strip to the [PLO subsidiary] Palestinian Authority or any other party is a lie.

Notably, Netanyahu only denied that a “decision” had already been made to give Gaza to the PLO. He did say that it will not happen and did not even deny that it was one of the possibilities being pursued.

See our additional coverage of Israel's deep state: