Israel army's invasion of the city of Rafah does not guarantee the return of Israeli hostages held by Palestinian factions, a former Israeli official said.
In an interview on Thursday to local radio station FM 103, Amos Gilead, the former director of policy and political-military affairs at the Defense Ministry, said: “Our entry into Rafah does not guarantee the return of the hostages."
Despite growing international opposition, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to invade Rafah, home to more than 1.4 million displaced Palestinians.
The Israeli army radio reported on Thursday that Israel is looking into alternatives to its planned invasion of Rafah, located at the southern tip of the Gaza Strip.
“If we enter Rafah without coordination with the Egyptians and Americans, we will not provide a solution to the north (Lebanon front), and there will be a long-term war that will extend to all of Israel where we will lose our strategic alliances,” the former official said.
“This will make us lose the ability to deal with the main threat (Iran), which is much greater than Hamas leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar, as he is simply not the main power here in the Middle East,” Gilead said.
He added that “the main threat is Iran, and if Sinwar sits and sees a rift between us and the United States and arrest orders from international courts there will be no regional alliances.”
“Sinwar wants us to leave Gaza so that he can restore his evil rule,” said Gilead.
“He considers himself to have many strategic achievements and believes that he is capable of pushing us into a complete withdrawal,” Gilead added.
- 'Government has no strategy'
"While the Israeli army is doing a good job, the government has no strategy,” said the official.
“How can we eliminate Hamas if the government does not link the strategy to military achievements,” Gilead said, adding that “we need to rehabilitate Gaza and give them (Palestinians in Gaza) a strategic axis to join as a response to Iran.”
He stressed on “returning the hostages.”
“Sinwar must be declared a target until his regime collapses, even if it takes years,” he added.
Gilead's statements come after Al-Qahera, a private news channel, citing a high-ranking Egyptian source reported on Thursday that there was "positive progress" in the ongoing indirect negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian factions regarding a hostage exchange and a cease-fire deal in the Gaza Strip.
Israel has waged a deadly military offensive on Gaza since the Oct. 7 Hamas incursion, which killed around 1,200 people.
Tel Aviv, in comparison, has killed nearly 34,600 Palestinians and wounded over 77,800 others amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities in the Palestinian territory.
More than six months into the Israeli war, vast swathes of Gaza lay in ruins, pushing 85% of the enclave's population into internal displacement besides a crippling blockade on food, clean water, and medicine, according to the UN.
Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, which has ordered Tel Aviv to ensure its forces do not commit acts of genocide and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.
