TEL AVIV—Israeli officials have disavowed a plan by former high-ranking military commanders to starve out Hamas terrorists in the northern Gaza Strip.
But according to four prominent advocates of the "Generals’ Plan," the Israeli military had started carrying out elements of the proposal before the Biden-Harris administration came out against the moves in the past week. As called for by the plan, Israel earlier this month completely cut off humanitarian aid to northern Gaza and ordered the evacuation of all residents.
"Two weeks ago, it looked like this was the beginning of the plan," Hezi Nehama, a former Israeli colonel who co-authored the Generals’ Plan, told the Washington Free Beacon. "But we are not strong enough to stand up to the U.S. So our soldiers will keep fighting and dying, and the Palestinians will keep suffering, and we won’t solve the problem. We won’t defeat Hamas."
The advocates of the Generals’ Plan agreed that it—and Israeli victory in Gaza—would likely have to wait for a friendlier U.S. administration.
"Today, the tension between Israel and the United States is so high that I don't think that there is any American official who is ready even to listen to us," Giora Eiland, the face of the plan and a former Israeli major general and head of Israel’s National Security Council, told the Free Beacon. "Maybe if Donald Trump wins reelection this will change."
With the U.S. presidential election weeks away, the Biden-Harris administration has launched a last-minute push to restrain Israel’s successful monthlong counteroffensive against Iran and its terrorist affiliates. Senior U.S. officials have publicly pressed Israel to scale back airstrikes against Hezbollah terrorists in Beirut and to limit an anticipated retaliatory strike on Iran. The administration has gone furthest in response to Israel’s war with Hamas.
Secretary of state Antony Blinken and defense secretary Lloyd Austin warned Israel in a letter on Sunday to significantly increase humanitarian aid to Gaza and end the "isolation" of the north of the strip within 30 days or risk losing crucial U.S. weapons supplies. Also on Sunday, vice president Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, called on Israel to "urgently do more to facilitate the flow of aid to those in need" in Gaza, citing a U.N. report days earlier that Israel had sealed off humanitarian aid to northern Gaza since Oct. 1.
Israeli defense officials have denied any plans to withhold humanitarian aid from northern Gaza.
"Israel is not implementing the Generals’ Plan," a spokeswoman for defense minister Yoav Gallant told the Free Beacon in a statement.
COGAT, Israel’s civilian coordination agency for the Palestinian territories, said last week, "Israel has not halted the entry or coordination of humanitarian aid entering from its territory into the northern Gaza Strip." According to COGAT data, 465 aid trucks entered all of Gaza between Oct. 1 and 12, a fraction of the daily average over the course of the war.
A spokesman for the Prime Minister’s Office declined to comment.
Israel may not have formally adopted the Generals’ Plan. But last month, members of Israel’s parliamentary defense committee endorsed the plan, and senior government and military leaders reportedly considered it.
Meanwhile, the top brass approved elements of a "very similar" internal proposal that they had previously rejected in full, according to Nehama, who led a battalion in the Gaza war and has remained in daily contact with high-ranking officers in the military’s Southern Command and on the ground in Gaza.
"You have to understand, [the Generals’ Plan] is not something genius. If I went to any company commander who was in training and asked, how do we defeat Hamas, this is roughly what he would come up with as a solution," Nehama said. "After we came out with our plan, and everyone was talking about it, the army had to do something."
After blocking aid to northern Gaza at the start of the month, the Israeli military last Sunday issued sweeping evacuation orders for the up to 400,000 Palestinians who have been estimated to remain in the area.
Eiland noted that his plan called for acting in the reverse order: evacuation of civilians followed by a siege. He blamed Israel's rollout in part for the "bad PR" the plan has received.
Following the backlash from the Biden-Harris administration in recent days, Israel immediately began ramping up humanitarian aid to Gaza again, according to the advocates of the Generals’ Plan. Few residents of the north have followed Israeli orders to move through evacuation corridors to an expanded humanitarian zone in the south, with some reporting intimidation by Hamas.
"Only this plan or a version of this plan can lead to victory," Ishay Sfez, a Gaza war veteran and advocate for Israel’s defeat of Hamas who has continued to receive high-level military briefings, told the Free Beacon. "But two weeks is not enough time to create any pressure on the population to leave."
Menachem Kelmanson, a hero of Oct. 7 who has advocated Israeli victory in Gaza in the name of Hamas’s victims, told the Free Beacon that during a meeting with Gallant on Tuesday, he challenged the defense chief to explain why Israel had so quickly abandoned the Generals’ Plan.
"Gallant responded that he is not prepared under any circumstances to touch humanitarian aid for two reasons,"Kelmanson said. "One, he does not want the military to get stuck governing Gaza, and two, he said that Hamas leverages the resulting international pressure, and immediately, the Americans say, ‘We are stopping the weapons supply.’"
"What I understood is that Gallant and the Americans plan to put Hamas in charge of Gaza with a different name and slightly different leadership, and see what happens," Kelmanson added.
The spokeswoman for Gallant declined to comment on the meeting.
Gallant has vowed to prevent Israeli military rule of Gaza and dismissed talk of "total victory" over Hamas. But last month, he declared that Hamas "no longer exists" as a military force and Israel could safely withdraw from Gaza as part of a ceasefire deal to bring home the remaining hostages taken on Oct. 7.