Israel lacks ‘realistic goals’ in campaign against Hamas: Ex-government adviser

ISTANBUL (AA) – There are voices within Israel critical of the actions taken by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government in response to the Hamas’ October 7 attack.

Daniel Levy, a former senior adviser during ex-Premier Ehud Barak’s government, says it is “important to call out lies … (that) are justifying the mass killing of people.”

“Very clearly the death toll among civilians is undeniable,” Levy said.

“Even if one pretends that there is not a history of Israeli criminality in the way it so-called acts in self-defense, even if we don’t remember the crimes perpetrated against civilians during the Nakba, even if we don’t remember the crimes perpetrated against Palestinians in Gaza in the previous rounds of fighting, even if we do think history began on October 7 and we just look within the narrow framework of this conflict, we have now the proof that Israeli strikes are overwhelmingly killing, displacing, injuring civilians.”

For Levy, the objectives set out by the Netanyahu government are themselves not “realistic” or “achievable.”

The Israeli leadership has defined this as a campaign to destroy Hamas, both in terms of military and governance, he said.

“They have defined this in very dramatic terms, as a fight for Israel’s existence, as a second war of independence … But the goals that have been defined are simply not achievable militarily,” said Levy, who now heads the US/Middle East Project policy institute.

“We have been here before, not only in Palestine, but around the world. You can’t crush a people fighting for their rights militarily. There will only be a political way out of this. So, Israel has not defined for itself realistic goals.”

Another point he made was that Netanyahu’s positioning gives a sense of extreme fragility in Israel.

“Has the permanent occupation so corroded the Israeli system? Is Israel really so fragile? Is there so much decomposition that really an organization trapped in this tiny part of territory, blockaded for a decade and a half, they pose a threat to your existence?” he said.

“So, actually, it’s a very strange thing for an Israeli leader to say, even if a lot of this is psychological propaganda politics, which is not unique to Israel.”

– ‘America has made a very serious miscalculation’

The US has been Israel’s staunchest supporter in the current situation, using its diplomatic, financial and military power to back its closest regional ally.

According to Levy, the US has “guaranteed that Israel has impunity” and “is not held accountable for its treatment of Palestinians.”

“We only got to this place because of the American role. The parties themselves are primarily responsible, but America played an incredibly unhelpful role,” he said.

“I think America has made a very serious miscalculation in this conflict.”

He said a large part of the world is seeing a “hypocritical, lying, warmongering America, and it’s a terrible place for America to be.”

“The rest of the world looks at America and they say, ‘Wait a minute, weren’t you the guys who were telling us just last week, just last month, in fact for the last 20 months, that we need to respect the rules-based order?’” said Levy, referring to Washington’s repeated stance on the Russia-Ukraine war.

The US position has everything to do with geopolitics, domestic politics, and how the “very outdated” President Joe Biden sees things, he added.

“But interestingly enough, this could be costly for Biden in his domestic politics … Biden may pay a price because the American public and the Democrat voting public are apparently not happy,” he said.

Levy also pointed out how there has been a “massive ramping up of the defense armaments industry in America.”

“We’re kind of seeing an economic policy of military Keynesianism, where some of the industrial base of America is being rebuilt with Ukraine, and now with this (conflict) as well, by massive subsidies, investment, state spending on the military industrial complex,” he said.

– ‘An occupying power versus a stateless, occupied people’

To analyze the current situation, Levy emphasized the need to “understand a little bit of history.”

“When Palestinians and Israelis went to sleep on October 6, they lived in very different realities. Palestinians for generations have been denied their most basic rights by Israel, by the Israeli occupation, by a regime of structural violence and inequality, which has been credibly defined as a legal regime of apartheid by Palestinian and Israeli and international blue-chip human rights organizations,” he said.

“When Israelis went to sleep, they were living in an advanced, high-tech economic military powerhouse – an occupying power versus a stateless, occupied people.”

Most of the Palestinians living in Gaza “were displaced in an act mostly of ethnic cleansing, when Israel was established in what is known to Palestinians as the Nakba in 1947 to 1949,” he said.

Children born in Gaza since 2006 or 2007 have come of age in an area that Israel has blockaded for years and is described as an open-air prison, he added.

“The reality going into October 7 was an abnormal reality and we have to be able to understand three things simultaneously. The first is this context of the reality of Palestine and Israel. The second is that an occupied people have the right to resist, but they do not have the right to operate outside of international law,” said Levy.

“What was done against Israel was a crime, was in contravention of international law … Any power in responding, in asserting the right to self-defense, can also not violate international law and international humanitarian law. And what Israel is doing is a crime. Disproportionality, collective punishment, indiscriminate bombing, cutting food, fuel, water, electricity and humanitarian supplies are a crime.”