Netanyahu’s Growing Rift With Israel’s Military Raises Questions About Gaza War’s Future

Growing divisions between Israel’s military commanders and the civilian government over the war in Gaza spilled into the open this week, raising questions about how Israel will conduct the next phase of the war.

The rift has grown quietly for months, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies have at times appeared to blame the Israeli security services for the failure to prevent the Hamas-led surprise attack on Oct. 7. More recently, the military has been frustrated by the Netanyahu government’s fight to maintain the exemption from service enjoyed by ultra-Orthodox Jews, at a time when Israeli forces are stretched thin.

But the sharpest and most public break came on Wednesday, with unusually blunt comments from the armed forces’ chief spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, reflecting fears among military leaders that the government’s failure to articulate a vision for a postwar Gaza could squander the gains made against Hamas. “If we do not bring something else to Gaza, at the end of the day, we will get Hamas,” he said in an interview with Israel’s Channel 13.

“Who is that someone else, what is that thing?” he asked. “The political leadership will decide. But in order to reach a situation in which we really weaken Hamas, that is the path.”

Admiral Hagari also appeared to criticize Mr. Netanyahu’s oft-repeated call for “absolute victory” over the Palestinian armed group. “The idea that it is possible to destroy Hamas, to make Hamas vanish — that is throwing sand in the eyes of the public,” he said.

That prompted a swift rejoinder from Mr. Netanyahu’s office, which said that the Israeli cabinet had set “the destruction of Hamas’s military and governing capabilities” as one of the war’s aims, and that the Israeli military was “of course committed to this.”