Afrasianet - Munir Shafiq - Netanyahu's plan to occupy Gaza City preceded a project aimed at occupying the entire Gaza Strip, and he was forced to withdraw from it, due to the opposition of IDF Chief Eyal Zamir.

The reasons for Zamir's protest to force this retreat on Netanyahu were not disclosed. But it was certainly related to the army's inability to accomplish it, or at least the size of the expected losses, for a decisive battle of this magnitude.

This allows us to conclude that the army has become weaker than many imagine, after 21 months, from a ground war in the Gaza Strip, a war of human annihilation, near-total destruction, and last, but not least, with a war of starvation to death on the Palestinian people, especially thousands of children.

There have been many reports about the lack of response of the reserve forces to join the army and go to Gaza. Heavy losses in tank and vehicle warfare were noted. It is also about the estimated numbers of mental illnesses among soldiers who served in ground battles.

Hence, the army commander's hesitation and fear, and therefore the uncertainty of the outcome of a war, is explained by such comprehensiveness and breadth, including if it is confined to Gaza City.

However, the most important thing that can be inferred from the balance of power is what dozens of articles and assessments issued by historical military commanders who served in the army, the Shin Bet, and the Mossad, all of which hinted that the war that Netanyahu has fought since October 7, 2023, is useless.

Some have come to consider the military policies ordered by Netanyahu over the past months to be destructive to the Zionist entity, both internally and externally, and in particular to harm the entity's reputation in the eyes of world public opinion. Incidentally, few experts have supported Netanyahu in what he has been claiming in terms of victories and achievements.

For this reason, most military and political experts have expressed pessimistic fears in the event that Netanyahu is thrown into the army in a war aimed at occupying the Gaza Strip, or even Gaza City, alone. 

Hence, there is no need to know the reasons given by the army commander, Eyal Zamir, for not carrying out the full occupation of the Gaza Strip. This is because it can be concluded that it has been directed in the direction of the dangers that await the Zionist army militarily if it pushes its ground forces to occupy the entire Gaza Strip.

This, if pessimism does not reach the expected outcome, the possibility of a military defeat in the army, especially if clashes occur, which may prompt some soldiers to flee.

Desertion in armies, if it occurs, is contagious to other soldiers, just as it is contagious with the plague.

Limiting the goal to occupying Gaza City necessarily carries all the dangers or reservations that the commander of the enemy's army carried to Netanyahu from the comprehensive occupation, and that bargaining over the occupation of Gaza City does not change anything. Even in this bargaining, the army leadership may be as reluctant to occupy the entire Gaza Strip as it is to occupy the entire Strip.

Of course, it is not excluded that Netanyahu focused on the hope of pressuring and intimidating Hamas, and not reaching the implementation stage, in order to pass the decision to occupy Gaza City.

Throughout the experience of the ground war, on the one hand, and the war of extermination and starvation, on the other, Netanyahu cannot be considered as the perpetrator of the military's destructive mistakes when he introduced him into the experiment in which he introduced him and its results on the ground, where he could not defeat the resistance and could not avoid the bad reputation of the Zionist entity in the eyes of world public opinion. and the strategic losses that will accompany it in the future.

There is no explanation for this stubbornness, of committing mistakes, of crimes, and of self-destruction, other than Netanyahu's keenness to remain in power, in order to preserve his alliance with Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, the foolish players in politics. Then he was keen not to be tried and imprisoned, if he stopped the war and lifted Trump's cover from him.

But this stubbornness, with all these mistakes, crimes, and cover-ups, as well as its international isolation, especially in Europe and internally in the United States, would not have continued, if the pressure exerted on it was not enough to break this stubbornness.

However, this equation will not last long, especially with the growing international opposition, even from its allies. This is due to the strategy of the complete occupation of Gaza City.

Perhaps one of the manifestations of this development to break Netanyahu's stubbornness is the recent statement of the eight European countries, and what the Europeans have been announcing a cessation of arms shipments and the threat of sanctions, which embarrasses Trump, as it is no longer useful to leave Netanyahu to continue practicing his stubbornness, which is inevitably a loser.

What will allow this expectation to be strengthened by breaking Netanyahu's stubbornness in the days to come is the military achievements that the resistance has been achieving on the ground every day. What they have begun to show is their adherence to their demands, and their just and just conditions, for the signing of an agreement to end the war.

This means that the position of both the resistance and the people constitutes an impregnable barrier and a mighty wall that will not be defeated if Netanyahu commits the crime of occupying Gaza City.

In summary, if we try to summarize the relationship between the position assessors or political analysts, over the course of a year and ten months, in evaluating Netanyahu's policies and practices in the Gaza war, we would find that at every stage, he proposes a military program to attack, to resolve the war, and to escalate the war every time, giving the illusion, after each failure, that he is now in the process of a new plan that will come up with the solution he proposes. 

This is what is happening now, at this stage, when Netanyahu has announced the strategy of occupying Gaza City. This is where estimates or analyses will vary, as each time.

But without taking the basic lesson from previous experiences, which is that Netanyahu does not have a well-thought-out strategy, but rather adopts a strategy that compensates for the failure of the previous strategy by suggesting that it is a new hellish plan. Netanyahu adopts this iterative approach, because he does not admit that there is a careful analysis of the balance of power that thwarted his previous plans.

This, and Netanyahu still has in Gaza, what is failing his strategy of occupying Gaza City. Of course, unless you fail, before you start.