A former prime minister says “destroying Hamas” is unrealistic
FEW ISRAELIS have anything close to Ehud Barak’s experience of operating in Gaza. In 2000 he was prime minister and defence minister when the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising, erupted in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Before that he was the commander of the Israel Defence Forces when Israel carried out its first major pullback from the cities in the Gaza Strip as part of the first Oslo Accords signed in 1993.
One of America’s aircraft carriers is now looming off the coast of Lebanon, sending a signal to Hizbullah, and to its sponsor, Iran. Although Mr Barak strongly supports a ground campaign in Gaza, he is critical of talk of “destroying Hamas” by Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, as well as ministers in his government and some generals. “What does it even mean?” he says. “That no-one can still breathe and believe in Hamas’s ideology? That’s not a believable war aim.
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