Israeli Analyst: Netanyahu Made the Decision to Allow Aid 'Frightened and Hasty'

SadaNews - The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, made the decisions regarding the entry of aid into the Gaza Strip yesterday, Saturday, "Frightened and hasty," after more than four months of violating the ceasefire with Hamas and resuming the war. "Israel was forced to recognize that it had put itself in a deadlock," stated Amos Harel, a military analyst for the newspaper "Haaretz," on Sunday.

He pointed out that the negotiations for a ceasefire and prisoner exchange "have completely stalled. Hamas realized it had gained superiority following global outrage against Israel" due to the increasing number of Palestinian casualties and images of famine in Gaza, which led to "Hamas's insistence on its positions in the negotiations."

Harel added that after Israel and the United States announced the cessation of negotiations in Doha, and their commitment to explore other ways to advance the negotiations, it "led to nothing practical. The international community is now preoccupied with finding quick means to alleviate the suffering in Gaza and pressing Israel to stop the war. Perhaps Netanyahu's government has realized that this is not the right time for a military assault."

He noted that the Israeli Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, and Netanyahu's media outlets "ignored warnings about the inability of the humanitarian institution in Gaza to achieve its ambitious goals, as it has few distribution centers (for aid) in the southern part of the sector. They knew that the road to these centers is dangerous and that there is a terrible field chaos occurring, much of it caused by Israeli military operations, but they focused on the dream of complete Israeli control over the sector and the aid, hoping it would ultimately lead to a 'voluntary migration' of Palestinians from Gaza through Sinai."

Harel stressed that Netanyahu is the "central responsible party. He knows there is no military way to rescue the kidnapped alive, and that Hamas is neither worried nor feels responsible for the fate of the population, and that the current Israeli operations are only prolonging the war without goal or benefit."

He added that "Netanyahu has ignored since the beginning of this year the opportunities to end the war, because the fate of his coalition was more important. Now the Prime Minister is fabricating solutions under increasing global pressure. It is likely that it is too late. Hamas will entrench its positions more deeply, following international support for the Palestinians, and the Israeli government will face a dilemma between a pointless escalation of military operations and yielding to a ceasefire dictated to it, without succeeding in bringing back 20 kidnapped alive and 30 killed at the hands of Hamas."