Isaac Chotiner
On Friday, President Joe Biden publicly called on Hamas to agree to what he said was an Israeli ceasefire proposal that would bring the war in Gaza to an end. Since then, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has given conflicting signals about whether he even supports the deal, which, if accepted, could cause right-wing ministers in the Knesset to leave Netanyahu’s coalition, resulting in its collapse. Moreover, last month, Benny Gantz, the retired army general and centrist Israeli politician, announced that he would leave Netanyahu’s war cabinet if the Prime Minister did not announce a plan for post-war Gaza by June 8th. (Biden’s publicly announced proposal mentions the need for reconstructing Gaza.) Israel’s military campaign has been going on for eight months, and despite an enormous number of Palestinian deaths—more than thirty-five thousand, by current estimates—Israel is continuing its invasion of the city of Rafah. Netanyahu has still offered no plan for what to do when the war eventually concludes. (Several members of his far-right coalition have spoken in favor of permanently occupying Gaza.)
I recently spoke by phone with Ofer Shelah, a military analyst and onetime member of the Knesset who helped lead the government’s coronavirus response in 2020. Shelah also helped found the Blue and White coalition, which tried to unseat Netanyahu in 2019; he was a co-founder of Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid, a centrist party, which Shelah eventually left. He is currently at the Institute for National Security Studies, in Tel Aviv, where he analyzes political and defense issues.
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