Netanyahu’s Reflections on War

Nov. 25 2014

A group of historians recently visited Israel’s current prime minister with a commemorative volume of documents about his predecessor Menachem Begin. A conversation about the late prime minister, known to have expressed great agony over the deaths of Israeli soldiers, led to Netanyahu’s sharing his own feelings about making life-and-death decisions of the kind that fall to heads of state. Yaacov Lozowick recounts:

There is a profound difference between hearing about bereaved families, and actually being in one: [Netanyahu] knows about that difference, and understands it from personal experience. But to his surprise—this was my impression—sending soldiers to their death turned out also to be hard to a degree that one cannot appreciate in advance. . . .

[Netanyahu said,] “And every night I’d get home in the wee hours, and my wife would be awake, waiting for me. She spent the days visiting the bereaved families. I only spoke to them on the phone, with each and every one of them, but she sat at their side, and at night she would tell me about them. We must send them, and we must bring them back, and I didn’t appreciate how hard it would be. A leader who loses the understanding of how difficult it is ought to lose his job.”

“I thought a lot about Begin this summer.”

Read more at Yaacov Lozowick’s Ruminations

More about: Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli military, Menachem Begin, War

Expand Gaza into Sinai

Feb. 11 2025

Calling the proposal to depopulate Gaza completely (if temporarily) “unworkable,” Peter Berkowitz makes the case for a similar, but more feasible, plan:

The United States along with Saudi Arabia and the UAE should persuade Egypt by means of generous financial inducements to open the sparsely populated ten-to-fifteen miles of Sinai adjacent to Gaza to Palestinians seeking a fresh start and better life. Egypt would not absorb Gazans and make them citizens but rather move Gaza’s border . . . westward into Sinai. Fences would be erected along the new border. The Israel Defense Force would maintain border security on the Gaza-extension side, Egyptian forces on the other. Egypt might lease the land to the Palestinians for 75 years.

The Sinai option does not involve forced transfer of civilian populations, which the international laws of war bar. As the United States, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and other partners build temporary dwellings and then apartment buildings and towns, they would provide bus service to the Gaza-extension. Palestinian families that choose to make the short trip would receive a key to a new residence and, say, $10,000.

The Sinai option is flawed. . . . Then again, all conventional options for rehabilitating and governing Gaza are terrible.

Read more at RealClear Politics

More about: Donald Trump, Egypt, Gaza Strip, Sinai Peninsula