The editor of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz described the current military operation in Gaza as the most unsuccessful and stupid war waged by Israel by analogy with the Second Lebanon War and the previous Gaza wars.
Aluf Benn stressed, in his analysis, that what happened was "a serious military and diplomatic failure that exposed the major military failures in the Israeli army's preparations and performance and the political confusion of leading a confused and helpless government."
The writer called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to give orders to immediately stop this war, instead of "wasting time in a futile effort searching for an imaginary victory, despite the death and destruction that this causes in Gaza and the endangering of lives in Israel."
If we were in a better world, the writer adds, it would have been appropriate to urge Netanyahu to order a thorough cleaning of the Israeli army’s interior home. However, “the criminal suspect Netanyahu, who is struggling to keep his official residence on Balfour Street in Jerusalem, (referring to the prime minister) does not have the authority. Nor is the political power to lead such a required change, "as the writer quotes.
Aluf Benn identified 5 aspects of the most important failures that have been revealed so far in the preparations and conduct of the war:
First, Israel has focused its military attention over the past decade on the north and the conflict with Iran. And considering Gaza as a secondary front that can be dealt with through economic measures, while Hamas was only viewed as a bad neighbor, but it is a weak and isolated neighbor, and the only issue of concern to the Israeli public opinion in Gaza remains the periodic discussion about the return of Israeli prisoners and the bodies of soldiers. No intelligence official has warned, according to what is known at least, that Hamas could, with a simple effort, escape from the cage that Israel placed in it and take the lead in the Palestinian struggle for Al-Aqsa, not to mention its success in widening the rift between Israel and the administration of the new US President, Joe Biden.
Secondly, and because of the intelligence failure to assess Hamas’s intentions and capabilities, which is considered a tactical intelligence failure, it became clear that the Israeli army had no idea how to paralyze and neutralize Hamas’s capabilities, and if we assume, for debate, the killing of 100, 200, or even 300 fighters in the current war, it will not fall. This is the rule of Hamas and its leadership systems, and it will not paralyze its ability to fire rockets at Israel.
Third, Hamas has severely damaged the fabric of life in Tel Aviv and the south, and the army does not seem able to stop this after a week and a half of the shooting.
Fourth, the Israeli ground forces only played a marginal role in trying to deceive, confuse and push the enemy to go into the tunnels in the hope of being besieged by air strikes, which seems to have not succeeded, as large numbers of Hamas fighters were not inside the tunnels that were bombed.
Fifthly, the writer mentioned the warning of Major General (res.) Yitzhak Brick, the most vocal critic of the Israeli army officers in recent years, who warned that the next war will be on the home front, and that Israel may not find a way to respond to attacks with thousands of missiles and that its ground forces are unable to Fighting, indicating that he was talking at the time about the war with Hezbollah, and here Hamas, which has modest capabilities compared to Hezbollah, believes that leader's predictions, according to the writer.
The writer concluded his lengthy analysis by saying that it is better for Netanyahu now, in the face of these modest accomplishments, to give Biden an opportunity to achieve an achievement - albeit a small one - by calling for an immediate ceasefire that the US President was seeking.