Netanyahu party member acknowledges Israel’s error in slowing down Gaza operation

Longtime Israeli politician and diplomat Danny Danon believes his country made a mistake in dragging out its military campaign in Gaza to satisfy outside interests.

Danon, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party and former ambassador to the United Nations, told the Washington Examiner that Israel changed “the mode of operation” after the weeklong ceasefire in late November 2023 to a slower pace to meet the requests of outside voices.

“I think we made a mistake,” he said. “Now we are acting slower. I think we should have continued full force ahead like we started the war. We could have finished by now.”

Danon argued it was a mistake to make the changes to the way Israel was carrying out operations in Gaza because “the international community did not appreciate what we did and on the contrary, [they’re now] applying more pressure.” Had Israel continued its initial war pace, he said, “we would have been able to start to speak about [the] reconstruction” of Gaza.

His comments come as Israel plans to invade Rafah, the southern city in Gaza, where more than a million Palestinians have fled to in an effort to avoid the main battlegrounds of the war. The city is the last remaining place in the strip Israeli forces have yet to conduct full-scale operations, though it also is where a majority of Gaza civilians are sheltering due to the previous months of war.

U.S. officials remain steadfast in their belief that Israel can achieve its goals in Rafah without carrying out a ground invasion, which they believe has the chance to incur scores of civilian casualties, but Israel believes there is no other way. American and Israeli leaders remain in conversation about these alternatives.

President Joe Biden has repeatedly supported Israel’s war efforts against Hamas, and his administration has continued to provide Israel with military aid even as officials urged Israeli leaders to do more to prevent civilian casualties. The Hamas-controlled Gaza health ministry has reported approximately 32,000 deaths during the war, though that number does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.

While Danon said Israel does not take Biden’s support for granted, he also argued that November’s presidential election in the United States has put the two countries on a “contradiction of calendars.”

Biden has faced significant pressure from the more progressive wing of his party and from a majority of the Arab American community for his continued support for Israel despite tens of thousands of casualties, widespread Palestinian internal displacement, and a lack of aid so grave it has international entities worried about the possibility of famine.

Thaer Ahmad, a Palestinian American doctor who has spent time in Gaza since the war began, walked out of a meeting with Biden on Tuesday over his handling of the war.

“I said it was disappointing I’m the only Palestinian here, and out of respect for my community, I’m going to leave,” Ahmad said he told the president, according to CNN. It is the latest example of Biden being confronted by Americans who disagree with his stance on the war.

Ahmad’s protest came the same day Biden spoke out about an Israeli airstrike that killed seven aid workers. Israeli leaders rarely comment on military operations, but in this case, they have already acknowledged innocent people were killed in the strike and described it as a case of misidentification.

Danon, like Netanyahu, described the mistaken airstrike that killed seven aid workers as an incident that happens during war.

“Unfortunately, during time of war, when you have NGOs in war areas, those kinds of incidents happen,” Danon added. “You know, we always try to avoid such cases and it’s unfortunate.”

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Biden said he was “outraged and heartbroken” by the strike, and he criticized Israel for the number of aid workers who have been killed during the nearly six months of war.

The president rebuked Israel for not doing “enough to protect aid workers trying to delivery desperately needed help to civilians,” and noted the war has “been one of the worst in recent memory in terms of how many aid workers have been killed.”