Israel’s New Army Chief Says Mission Against Hamas ‘Not Accomplished’

Israel’s new military chief Eyal Zamir said his country’s mission to defeat Hamas remained unfinished as he took office Wednesday, with uncertainty hanging over the fragile Gaza ceasefire.

Speaking before Zamir at a ceremony at military headquarters in Tel Aviv, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was “determined” to achieve victory in the multi-front war that began with Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack.

His remarks came after Arab leaders endorsed a plan to rebuild the Gaza Strip under the future administration of the Palestinian Authority, presenting an alternative to US President Donald Trump’s widely condemned proposal to take over the territory and displace its people.

But the prospect of the PA governing Gaza remains far from certain, with Israel having ruled out any future role for the body in the territory ruled by Hamas since 2007.

“Hamas has indeed suffered a severe blow, but it has not yet been defeated. The mission is not yet accomplished,” Zamir said, amid a deadlock in negotiations on the next steps in the ceasefire with Hamas in Gaza.

Zamir is replacing Herzi Halevi, who announced his resignation as armed forces chief in January over the military’s shortcomings on October 7.

The military has since released the findings of an internal investigation that acknowledged its “complete failure” to prevent the deadliest attack on Israel since its creation.

The Hamas assault resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, most of them civilians, while Israel’s military retaliation in Gaza has killed at least 48,405 people, also mostly civilians, data from both sides show.

The war in Gaza has left the territory largely in ruins and created a dire humanitarian crisis.

An Arab League summit on Tuesday announced the adoption of a “comprehensive” plan for Gaza’s reconstruction, to be financed by a trust fund, and urged the international community to offer its support.

A draft of the plan seen by AFP outlined a five-year roadmap with a price tag of $53 billion — roughly the amount the United Nations estimated for Gaza’s reconstruction — but the figure was not included in the summit’s final statement.

“All these efforts are proceeding in parallel with the launch of a political track” towards Palestinian statehood, it reads, an ambition that Israeli leaders have opposed.

The summit also called on Palestinian representation to be unified under the PLO, an umbrella group that is the dominant political force within the Palestinian Authority — a move that could sideline Islamist Hamas, which is not a member.

The Arab plan was a direct response to the one floated by Trump, who triggered global outrage by suggesting the United States “take over” Gaza and turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East”, while forcing its Palestinian inhabitants to relocate to Egypt or Jordan.

Hugh Lovatt, a senior policy fellow with the Middle East and North Africa Programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said the new plan was “far more realistic than what the Trump administration is proposing in terms of being able to be operationalised”.

But Ghassan Khatib, a Palestinian political analyst and former PA minister, was sceptical whether it could realistically come to pass, noting the lack of details around financing and the political hurdles it would face.

“The only two players in Gaza, the only two parties who have influence in Gaza are Israel and Hamas, and… their positions are not coherent with this plan,” he said.

“It doesn’t make sense to expect Israel to drop the plan of Trump and to adopt the plan of the Arabs. There’s no chance.”

While Hamas has said it welcomed the Arab plan, it is unclear how willing it would be to relinquish control of Gaza.

Israel, meanwhile, has said the Arab leaders’ proposal fails “to address the realities”, and criticised its reliance on both the PA and the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty said the plan would seek backing from Muslim nations at an emergency summit of Organisation for Islamic Cooperation foreign ministers scheduled for Friday in Jeddah.

The ceasefire deal’s first phase ended over the weekend after six weeks of relative calm that included exchanges of Israeli hostages taken on October 7 for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.

While Israel has said it wants to extend the first phase until mid-April, Hamas has insisted on a transition to the deal’s second phase, which should lead to a permanent end to the war.

Netanyahu has faced sustained pressure throughout the war from the hostages’ families and supporters to strike a deal to bring them home.

“It’s very hard for me that the country still hasn’t completed the process of bringing back the hostages,” said Yael Lotem, who came out on Wednesday to watch the funeral procession of slain hostage Ohad Yahalomi.

“It was possible to bring them all back alive, and that didn’t happen.”