Hawkish former IDF general Ofer Winter, who is gearing up to launch a new party next week, aired a video on Thursday slamming Israel’s current multi-front war as indecisive and urging a change in Israel’s security policy.
“For three years, there has been a war here that, alongside big achievements, hasn’t yielded a decisive result on any front,” Winter said, urging a change from “reactiveness and rounds [of conflict] to initiative, decisiveness and victory.”
The ex-general, who is one of many figures launching parties aimed at right-wingers disappointed with the current hardline conservative government, decried the endless reserve duty many Israelis have served over the past three years in Gaza, Lebanon, the West Bank and Syria. He added: “You can’t send soldiers to a three-year war without ending it with victory.”
In his castigation of the government’s policy, however, he endorsed a policy backed by some of its most prominent far-right members, saying, “There won’t be a decisive result without massive emigration by the Gazans.”
Human rights experts have said encouraging any migration of Palestinians from Gaza would be considered a form of ethnic cleansing, and efforts by the government to push for such a move have hit repeated roadblocks.
