Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed back Tuesday on a report in the New York Times that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is low on ammunition and prepared to seek a ceasefire in Gaza that allows Hamas to survive.
The Times reported:
Israel’s top generals want to begin a cease-fire in Gaza even if it keeps Hamas in power for the time being, widening a rift between the military and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has opposed a truce that would allow Hamas to survive the war.
The generals think that a truce would be the best way of freeing the roughly 120 Israelis still held, both dead and alive, in Gaza, according to interviews with six current and former security officials.
Underequipped for further fighting after Israel’s longest war in decades, the generals also think their forces need time to recuperate in case a land war breaks out against Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia that has been locked in a low-level fight with Israel since October, multiple officials said.
The sources for the story were unnamed. But it is true that the Biden administration has been withholding arms and ammunition from Israel, despite congressional approval for the delivery — a fact that burst into the open last week when Netanyahu publicly criticized the Biden administration for holding back the weapons Israel needs.
In a statement responding to the Times report, Netanyahu said:
Anonymous sources briefed The New York Times that Israel will be prepared to end the war before all of its objectives are achieved.
I do not know who these anonymous sources are, but I am here to make it unequivocally clear: This will not happen. The war will end once Israel achieves all of its objectives, including the destruction of Hamas and the release of all of our hostages.
The Government directed the IDF to achieve these war objectives and the IDF has all the means to achieve them. We will not capitulate to the winds of defeatism, neither in The New York Times nor anywhere else. We are inspired by the spirit of victory.
The Israeli military is nearly done with an operation in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, to eliminate the last four Hamas battalions. But there are still hundreds of miles of underground tunnels, where Hamas’s leaders are thought to be hiding — together with over 100 Israeli hostages, dead and alive, and the terror group’s remaining ammunition.
The Israeli military, tough and effective though it is, is said by conservative critics to be led by generals who take their cues from the Biden administration, which is also trying to encourage Netanyahu’s civilian opponents to oust him.
