Israel’s goal is to ‘destroy Hamastan’
Former head of the country’s Defense Intelligence outlines strategic aims and challenges in Gaza war
“On October 7, Israel’s defense doctrine collapsed.” This phrase marked our conversation with the former head of the Israeli Defense Intelligence (AMAN), on how Hamas managed to sow terror in southern Israel. Now, while the Israeli troops operating inside Gaza, cutting off the north from the south, Kathimerini spoke with Major General (Ret.) Amos Yadlin, president of MIND Israel. Fifty years and two weeks after the Yom Kippur War, the veteran officer who was on the front lines of the war in 1973 and decades later managed to lead Israel’s most powerful military service, outlines the mistakes and omissions of the Israeli forces, while explaining the strategic objectives of Operation “Iron Swords.” “Our goal is to destroy the neighboring state we call ‘Hamastan,’” he says, using the Israeli neologism for Hamas’ rule in the Gaza Strip.
Fifty years after the Yom Kippur War and despite warnings from third countries, Israel failed to foresee the upcoming attack. What went wrong?
What we had on October 7 was a trilateral failure. It was an intelligence failure; an operational failure and it was a leadership failure or political failure. All three of them aligned in the worst possible way that led to the catastrophe and the intelligence disaster of October 7. We will have to investigate what the failure was, a part of it is already known, meaning the issue of the wrong paradigm that Hamas is not willing to go to another war. We thought that Hamas cared a lot for the citizens of Gaza, for their welfare, and their standard of living. And Hamas wants the Qatari money and wants the workers from Gaza to be employed in Israel, while, additionally, have not joined the two confrontation rounds with Islamic Jihad. Therefore, the general paradigm in the intelligence and political echelon was that they did not want to go to war and every signal was referring to an exercise that they were drilling, a scenario that they would never execute. The question of whether there were signals in all the noise that could change the parameter is still to be investigated.
Once defense intelligence receives a signal or noise, how is it transmitted and evaluated?
Look, there are so many signals and so many intelligent sources. There are so many times that Hamas helped the analyst to conclude that this is only an exercise, a vision that will never happen. I have to mention that Hamas is not the number one formidable enemy of Israel. Israel has concentrated in the last 20 years on Iran and its nuclear program, which can be an existential threat to Israel. On the other side, Hezbollah built up its capabilities in the north, as well as Syria vis-a-vis Hamas, and Israel became addicted to the quiet periods. Hamas was number four of our enemies. We will have a round of fire exchange every four to five years, but this is not a real threat.
The second failure of Israel was on the operational defense concept. Israel was very successful against Hamas tunnels, by blocking them and against Hamas’ rockets by developing the best missile defense system in the world, intercepting 95% of the rockets. So, in those two areas, the defense was very strong, but above the ground, it seemed like the fence and the obstacles easily broke down. Therefore, when the intelligence failure comes with the wrong operational concept, you get this catastrophic result.
With the Israeli army advancing into Gaza, what are the strategic objectives of the operation?
There are two main objectives that the government of Israel ordered the IDF. First, to destroy Hamas militarily and end Hamas from being the ruling force in Gaza. So, we are going to destroy the country called “Hamastan,” which is on our border. This is the number one goal, and at the same level is the goal to bring back the 240 Israelis and others who were kidnapped from the territory of Israel on October 7. Hamas cannot be annihilated as an idea, as a religious belief, or as a jihadist ideology. But Israel will not be paying attention anymore to the intentions of Hamas. We will make sure that the military and the governance capabilities of Hamas will not be there. This is the goal of the war.
By cutting off the northern part of Gaza, Israel seems to be planning to create a buffer zone. Will Israel remain in Gaza?
Israel has no desire to occupy Gaza and to have another 2 million Palestinians under its control. So, it is not a future buffer zone, it is part of an operational move, cutting the Gaza Strip in half and basically asking the civil population, who is not part of Hamas, to evacuate northern Gaza down to the southern part of the Gaza Strip. A siege was created around the northern part and the IDF was ordered to destroy every Hamas command post, tunnel, company, or battalion. And this is what the IDF is doing.
‘The bottom line, Hamas is a special combination of jihadists and the Muslim Brotherhood and Turkey supports them. And it is not a disappointment for Israel because we know who Erdogan is’
Regarding the day after, we will see what will be the result of the war and what will be the possibility of having another government in Gaza. But we are not there yet. I remind you that it took five years for the Americans to destroy ISIS. So, we do not have five years, but it will take at least five weeks to collapse Hamas and up to five months to destroy it totally. Therefore, I think after cleaning the north, Israel will have to decide whether they are doing the same in the south. There are a couple of clocks ticking about how much time Israel has, with the humanitarian crisis that is developing in Gaza and with a possible deterioration of the Israeli economy.
Hezbollah is using war speeches against Israel but does not seem to want more active participation in the war. Do you think that they will eventually be forced to get involved?
Nobody can force them. Only the supreme leader of Iran. At that time, he did not tell Nasrallah what to do and Nasrallah decided that he would not destroy Lebanon the way Gaza is destroyed, and he would give help to Gaza on a very low level. A few days ago, the Israeli chief of staff said that half of the air force is ready to launch a very strong attack on Hezbollah as well as Lebanon as a state. Israel will not differentiate between Hezbollah and Lebanon if we are attacked by Hezbollah. Lebanon as a state will pay a high price and Beirut may look like Gaza.
With the Muslim world reacting and Turkey calling Israel a “war criminal,” how do you evaluate Ankara’s stance?
We can define four camps in the Middle East. First is the Iranian-led “Shia radical” axis of evil: Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, Turkey belongs to the second camp in the Middle East called “political Islam.” This axis includes Turkey, Qatar, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Hamas. But the part of Hamas is even worse than ISIS, which is the third camp, it is the “Sunni jihadists.” So, we have “Shia jihadists,” “Sunni jihadists,” and the Muslim Brotherhood-led by Turkey. Therefore, we are not surprised that Turkey supports Hamas. Israel belongs to the fourth camp, which is the pragmatic, pro-Western camp. This camp includes Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Israel. We have no expectations from Turkey. However many Sunni Arab states want Hamas to be destroyed because Hamas belongs to their enemies. The Muslim Brotherhood is an enemy of Egypt, an enemy of the UAE, and an enemy of the Saudis. The bottom line, Hamas is a special combination of jihadists and the Muslim Brotherhood and Turkey supports them. And it is not a disappointment for Israel because we know who Erdogan is and every time that we have a clash with Hamas in Gaza, he supported the terror organization that controls “Hamastan.”
Considering that Israel has invested billions of dollars in fences, drones and other fortifications, is it expected that the Israeli doctrine of deterrence will be revised after the end of the war?
There are four pillars to the Israeli defense doctrine. First, it is deterrence, then early warning, defense, and decisive victory. All of these failed on October 7th. There was no deterrence against Hamas, no early warning and the defense was defeated, but the decisive victory is still ahead of us. Now we need to rebuild these four essential pillars of the defense doctrine and deterrence will be achieved if, at the end of the day Hamas is destroyed, their capital becomes a place you do not want to live in, its leaders are killed and the Palestinian people may feel again the winds of Nakba. This will, I think, re-establish the deterrence.
However, we are not conducting this war only to reestablish deterrence. The goal of this war is to make sure that there is no military army in a Palestinian state close to us, meaning “demilitarization,” which was part of the Oslo Accord. Prime Minister Rabin never agreed to a Palestinian army. And this is one of our largest mistakes that Netanyahu’s government allowed them to build an army. So never again a Palestinian army on our border. We will rebuild our defense doctrine, we will learn the lesson of why the intelligence failed and we are going to build a better defense and we will win this war decisively.
