Not recently, but several months ago, Israel’s war on Gaza plunged into a dark and apparently endless tunnel and has stayed there ever since.

I am using the word “tunnel” in a purely metaphorical sense and am not referring to “the tunnels” under Gaza whose existence or otherwise has been bandied about throughout the war. Rather, the dark tunnel here denotes the lack of vision, ideas, and plans for the future on the part of the parties involved in the war.

Does Israel have an answer to the question of when the war will end? What stage must it reach before it is able to take the decision to stop the war?

The latter question was the focus of one of the rounds of altercation that has taken place within the Israeli military throughout the war, as represented by the military members of Israel’s War Cabinet. It is the reason why former generals Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot left the Coalition Government in Israel, and the question about the end to the war and the ruinous failure to conceive of at least some of its aspects touches the very marrow of the strategy of the Israeli state.  

As a result, Israel’s military leaders, due to the nature of their jobs, reluctantly agreed to crush this dispute over an end to the war like other major contradictions beneath the treads of Israel’s war machine, which of course continues to grind on in Gaza today. It was a little easier for Gantz and Eisenkot, since they are not now military men but instead are political party leaders.

However, they too decided to resign from the Israeli Coalition government, a decision which was thrown into relief by the fact that the former had been serving as defence minister while the latter had been one of the most prominent military chiefs-of-staff in the history of the Israeli army.

This underscored the fact that their decision to resign concerned a lack of guiding principles for handling a situation as complicated and consequential as a war against the Palestinians, the main headache of the Israeli state. As this matter also involves other threats, it is hardly secondary, and it has direct bearings on the Israeli army’s security doctrines.

Gantz and Eisenkot had to take the step they did. Despite the political losses they incurred in doing so, the deeper and more far-reaching implications of the situation left them with no choice but to state their position in an unequivocal way.

Within days of resigning from the government, Gantz urged the setting out of a timeframe for ending the war on Gaza as soon as possible, so that the main thrust of the Israeli military effort could be shifted to the northern front with equal speed.

In his view, shared by Eisenkot, that front had not been dealt with seriously, and it would take long and extensive efforts to restore the Israeli deterrence there to its previous levels. The failure to do so on this front has led to the displacement of more than 200,000 people from towns and settlements in northern Israel. Both former military commanders fear the development of long-term strategic threats against the backdrop of the open-ended war on Gaza and insufficient attention paid to the entrenchment of concrete situations on the ground by the Iranian axis, which aims to keep northern Israel hostage even after the war on Gaza.

As the standoff over Israel’s grand strategic vision continues, other former and current political and military leaders have entered the fray. Undoubtedly, they are keen to promote what they believe to be the best formulas for Israel’s security, but they cannot help but point out the troubles the country’s army is having in Gaza and increasingly also in the West Bank.

Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, outspoken since the early stages of the war, has described the current situation as the “most dangerous” in Israel’s history, with the root of the problem residing in an incompetent and unqualified government and prime minister. The crisis is worsening and expanding by the day without an end in sight, he said.

Barak has a long military career behind him that led to the highest levels of command. While praising the bravery and sacrifices of Israel’s officers and soldiers, he has described the aggression against Gaza as one of the least successful wars in Israel’s history due to the “strategic paralysis” of the political leadership.

When such assessments are aired by individuals who, like Barak, Gantz, and Eisenkot, have decades of military and political experience behind them, they must be taken seriously. All three men have been closely involved in the formulation and development of Israel’s key military policies and therefore contributed to bringing that country to where it stood on the eve of 7 October last year. Their views have an authority to them that is missing from those of other critics who have not reached decision-making circles.

Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert is another person of this calibre. He recently joined Nasser Al-Qudwa, a former Palestinian foreign minister and nephew of former Palestinian president Yasser Arafat, in drafting a proposal called “Working Together to Achieve Peace in the Middle East” that was signed on 17 July after several months of collaboration by Olmert and Al-Qudwa in versions in Arabic and English.

The Israeli media broadcast some excerpts of the English version, while Al-Qudwa submitted both the Arabic and the English versions to Josep Borrell, EU high representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, a few days ago. The EU will clearly be interested in such a document and the individuals involved in it.

The Olmert-Al-Qudwa proposal is essentially based on implementing the two-state solution in the framework of the 1967 borders. It calls for a land swap, in which 4.4 per cent of the West Bank would be annexed to Israel in exchange for some Israeli territory, and it stresses the need for a land corridor linking Gaza with the West Bank.

Both men have expressed their support for US President Joe Biden’s roadmap for Gaza and for UN Security Council Resolution 2735 calling for a ceasefire and hostage/prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas. They also agree that a “Council of Commissioners” should be appointed to govern Gaza after Israel withdraws its forces.

The Olmert-Al-Qudwa proposal is noteworthy and merits closer study with an eye to assessing its feasibility under current conditions. I will turn my attention to it in my next column.

The writer is director of the Egyptian Centre for Strategic Studies (ECSS).

* A version of this article appears in print in the 19 September, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly