The cabinet is faced with three alternatives, all of which are difficult, but a decision must be made.

By Hezy Laing

In a recent radio interview Brigadier General (ret.) Efi Eitam detailed three possible options for continuing the war in Gaza.

“The cabinet is faced with three alternatives, all of which are difficult, but a decision must be made. The first alternative is to surrender.

That means returning to the October 7 lines, leaving Gaza and essentially announcing that Hamas remains in the Strip, is the sovereign, is in control. That would be a security and national lawlessness of the first order.

There is a chance that it will bring us the 20 hostages alive, but that is its price. It is a surrender of the State of Israel, of the IDF.”

“A second option is to give the IDF an order to storm what is left of the Hamas pockets in the central camps and in Gaza.

The fighting will be difficult, it will last about three to four months, and at the end the State of Israel will hold 95-99 % of the territory.

The fighting will not be easy, the chance that the hostages will be rescued alive or most of them is low.

In the midst of the fighting, in the end there will be a tunnel with three to fourteen guards guarding five hostages, and when the first soldier is within sight of the tunnel, they will murder them like they did in Rafiah.”

“A third option, which I have been recommending for quite some time, is to encircle the two remaining pockets.

These are relatively small pockets, encircle them – there is no one coming in, no one coming out.

The advantage of this method is that we will need less soldiers, we will endanger the hostages less, and, in the end, we will collapse Hamas if the siege is really aggressive.”