A group of high-ranked Israel Defense Forces officers in reserves released a plan last week calling to besiege the northern Gaza Strip, including Gaza City, while evacuating its civilians, to defeat Hamas.
The proposal, named the “Generals Plan,” has gained traction in Hebrew media and will be presented at a meeting of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee next week.
“After 11 months of war in the Gaza Strip, Hamas should have already been defeated,” Col. (res.) Hezi Nehama, a former commander of the IDF’s Menashe Brigade—aka the “Jenin Brigade”—who endorses the plan, told JNS on Tuesday.
“We should’ve never allowed [Hamas] to control the humanitarian aid, and we should’ve initially entered the Gaza Strip from the Philadelphi Corridor,” he went on to say, referring to the border area separating the Palestinian enclave from the Sinai Peninsula.
But what was done is done, Nehama acknowledged.
“The Generals Plan is the only plan that can get us out of stagnation and will create enough pressure on [Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar that will force him into a hostage swap deal on reasonable terms,” he said, referring to the 101 Israelis held captive in the Strip.
Today, Nehama continued, Hamas remains the undisputed ruler in the Gaza Strip. The Islamist terrorist organization “is still breaking the bones of every civilian who writes something against it on social media.”
The situation must change, he asserted, as Israel is fighting an asymmetrical war.
“We need to win, Hamas just needs to survive,” Nehama said.
Strict blockade
The so-called Generals Plan was crafted by Maj. Gen. (res.) Giora Eiland, a former head of the Israeli National Security Council, the IDF Operations Directorate and the IDF Planning Directorate, and was endorsed by a host of senior officers who have participated in the fighting in the Gaza Strip.
The plan has two stages. First, the evacuation of up to 300,000 civilians from the northern Strip within a week’s notice, clearing it of noncombatants; and second, imposing a strict blockade on the area in which no humanitarian aid enters and no entry or departure of persons is allowed.
Those who stay behind will be considered terrorists and legitimate targets for the military.
The blockade will be lifted only when the approximately 5,000 Hamas terrorists left in the beleaguered area surrender. This development will put real pressure on Hamas to accept a favorable hostage-exchange deal, the plan stipulates, and will bring it to the precipice of defeat.
The plan is also compliant with international law, the document states, as long as civilians are given reasonable time to evacuate.
Nehema, 47, said that the plan recognizes that the key factor allowing Hamas to survive is the Palestinian population.
“The IDF wants to fight in civilian-free areas; Hamas wants to fight in civilian-dense areas. The civilians are its shield in more than one aspect,” he said.
“I was stationed there in the beginning of the war in all [of Gaza City’s] districts—Al-Shati [camp], Jabalia [adjacent to Gaza City], Zeitoun—and I saw in my own eyes how the population interfered with our fighting. The IDF managed to evacuate large swaths of the population, but about a quarter of a million remained. Civilians took refuge in designated locations, for example a school, and the terrorists flocked to those areas with them,” he related.
Instead of insisting on a full evacuation, the military conceded this issue to Hamas, Nehama added.
And now, he lamented, eight and nine months after the IDF left these districts, “Hamas has fully recovered.”
At the population’s expense
“Every day, Hamas is given hundreds of aid trucks” containing food, fuel and medicine, Nehama said. “It gets [the goods] for free and sells them to the population at full price.”
With all that cash, Hamas is able to pay its terrorists salaries, recruit new members and maintain high morale.
“A clan that refuses to send new recruits for Hamas does not get money or food,” Nehama said. “A quarter of a million Palestinians [in the northern Strip] are enough manpower to fill in Hamas’s shattered battalion’s ranks, to make the underground tunnels fit again and to reestablish arms production sites. Just last week rockets were fired at Ashkelon [from this area].”
Nehama mentioned another source of rehabilitation: thousands of IDF munitions that failed to detonate when fired at the Palestinian enclave over the course of the war. One ton of an Israeli bomb that failed to detonate can make up to 10 explosive devices in the hands of Hamas.
Defeating Hamas
Nehama took active part in the first months of the war in Gaza, serving as the 261st Brigade (aka the IDF Officers School Brigade)’s chief of staff. He has 25 years of military experience under his belt, having commanded the Alexandroni and Menashe Brigades, and having been a fighter in the General Staff Reconnaissance Unit (Sayeret Matkal).
He is also a co-founder of the Forum of Reservist Commanders and Fighters, an organization composed of officers and combatants who have been critical of the strategy implemented by the IDF General Staff since the start of the war on Oct. 7.
The Forum’s chief thesis is that the military leaders at the helm are not pushing for decisive victory against Hamas.
“The fact that the military did not screen the [Gazan] population since the start of the war is a scandal,” Nehama stressed.
“In all the operations and wars that I participated in over the last 25 years, we examined the population. In ‘Operation Defensive Shield’ [in Judea and Samaria, during the Second Intifada in 2002], we would impose a blockade on refugee camps and let the people move out through a screening process; we would check them,” he said.
“In the current war, we simply allow the terrorists to traverse freely from zone to zone, along with the population, as well as the hostages, unfortunately.”
According to the Generals Plan, the Palestinian population in northern Gaza will be able to leave southward through two humanitarian corridors.
If civilians happened to remain longer than the designated evacuation period, Nehama noted, they could still approach the corridors safely with white flags, “receive food, water and everything,” and exit the zone.
He believes that there are unlikely to remain underground tunnels through which terrorists can escape.
“The IDF has been deployed in the Netzarim Corridor [cutting Gaza City off from the south] for more than 10 months, and has destroyed most or all tunnels there. This route is only four kilometers wide, hence chances that tunnels are still there are low,” he said.
“After a month with no humanitarian aid, the embattled terrorists will become much weaker. The neighborhood bully would be left without his subjects, and his path towards submission becomes possible,” Nehama said.
International law
The senior officer went on to say that a blockade is the most moral option in war.
“You save lives on both the enemy’s side and on yours. This is part of the U.S. Army’s protocol. The Americans implemented this in Afghanistan. In fact, sending aid to terrorists is prohibited by U.N. convention,” Nehama said.
He underscored that the plan does not take into account the so-called “day after” the war.
“That day will probably not come for a least two years. If we execute this plan in Gaza City, we will have to repeat it in the central Gaza Strip, then in Rafah and Khan Yunis [in the south], among other areas, so it will take time. Especially if we will be simultaneously busy in the north [fighting Hezbollah in a ground operation in Lebanon]. We will be short of manpower in the south.
“This is why all these talks about the ‘day after’ are irrelevant. When that day comes, [the military] will not need to provide the population with municipal services, schools and other similar things—only with humanitarian aid, which consists of food and medicine. The military knows how to distribute these inexpensively. After we cleanse Gaza City of Hamas, we can allow the return of women, men and children cleared by the Shin Bet, and together with the work of international NGOs, the IDF will distribute the food. It won’t be a problem because Hamas won’t be there,” said Nehama.
The Generals Plan cites the blockade tactics of the Union Army in the U.S. Civil War that led to the collapse of the Confederacy and Winston Churchill’s decision to impose blockades on France and Italy to defeat the Germans in World War II as successful military campaigns.
The plan reads: “As long as there is an unlimited supply of food, water and fuel in Gaza, and as long as Hamas is the one who controls and distributes supplies to the residents, and as long as we do not make an effort to physically separate Hamas from its citizens—effective pressure for the release of the hostages and the hoped-for victory will not be achieved.”
From victory to deterrence
Although Nehama is critical of the IDF generals conducting the war, his criticism is not personal.
He explained that until the ’90s, the IDF had one way of thinking: decisive victory. “This is what commanders learned in all officer courses.
“Since then, however, the then-IDF Chief of Staff [and subsequently the prime minister] Ehud Barak introduced a new idea of a ‘small and clever’ military. We pivoted from ‘victory’ to [the concept of] ‘deterrence.’
“This meant that the military would stop sending troops on the ground [to crush the enemy]. Instead, it would rely on intelligence, firepower and the Air Force, and reduce the numbers of divisions and brigades. The days of many soldiers getting killed were over. We [could be satisfied] with deterring the enemy,” Nehama said in describing the new school of thought.
This led to an unprepared IDF on Oct. 7, he said.
“We had no plans to conquer Gaza, not enough divisions, not enough ammunition, and most of the military budget was transferred from the Ground Forces to Intelligence and the Air Force,” he continued.
“To close down 25 brigades in 25 years for a military with fewer than 100 brigades—someone must have gone off the rails,” he said.
Nehama also expressed concern over a recent pattern of ridding the IDF of senior officers with offensive mindsets.
“The people in the General Staff are good managers and intellectuals, but their ability to wage an aggressive, determined war, having faith in our reserves soldiers and the nation, is lacking.”
Nehama is optimistic, however. He said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knows about the plan and leaders of the Forum of Reservist Commanders and Fighters have called for a meeting with him in the coming days so they can provide a detailed presentation of the proposal.
“We have a wonderful nation,” Nehama said. “Even if the commanders on top are a little confused, we will win.”
