A former director of Israel’s internal spy agency, known as Shin Bet, has issued a strong condemnation of Tel Aviv’s relentless military assault on the besieged Gaza Strip.
In a pointed article published in Foreign Affairs on Thursday, Ami Ayalon, who also once commanded the Israeli navy, declared, “Israel is fighting a war it cannot win.”
Ayalon described the assault as “unjust, immoral, and counterproductive,” urging the international community to enforce a political endgame.
He called on global powers to circumvent Tel Aviv’s obstruction and initiate a process aimed at establishing the so-called two-state solution.
He warned that Israel’s stubbornness threatens to unravel the entire regional order.
“The longer the vacuum in Israel’s planning persists, the more international actors will need to come together to prevent an even worse catastrophe than the one currently unfolding,” Ayalon cautioned.
Without a two-state solution, he argued, Israel risks deepening its international isolation, losing support among allies, and becoming a global pariah.
“Wars without a clear political goal cannot be won,” he asserted.
Ayalon’s essay represents one of the most scathing critiques to emerge from Israel’s security establishment. More than 22 months into the military offensive, he warned that Israel has lost any semblance of strategic coherence.
While the Israeli military claims to have dismantled the core infrastructure of the Hamas resistance group, Ayalon noted that Israeli authorities have failed to articulate a political plan for Gaza, leaving the region in the grip of a humanitarian catastrophe and instability.
In his article, the former spy chief also proposed a political solution to the conflict through the long-overlooked Arab Peace Initiative (API).
This 2002 proposal, endorsed by all 22 Arab League states, offers full normalization of ties with Israel in exchange for a complete withdrawal from the occupied Palestinian territories and the establishment of a Palestinian state based on the borders defined in 1967.
