‘IDF is lazy and failed to defeat Hamas,’ claims Israeli officer

A former spokesman for the Israel Defence Forces has described the military as “lazy” and unable to win battles after the Oslo Accords, Safa news agency has reported. Brigadier General Ron Kitri made his comments in an article published by the Israeli media on Monday.

The IDF, he claimed, has “changed into a group of lazy” soldiers who were unable to win a battle with paramilitary fighters, namely Hamas, in Gaza during last year’s 51-day Israeli offensive.

“Let’s go back to Operation Protective Edge in 2014,” he wrote. “The army was involved in a battle which was not more than 1,000 metres beyond the border and it faced Hamas paramilitary fighters. However, it could not end Hamas and this is the cost of laziness of this losing army, whose troops spend their time inside closed, safe rooms.”

Instead of developing the IDF’s abilities to achieve fast, fatal and decisive battles in the heart of enemy territory, he explained, the officers look for lazy imaginative solutions. “They are ignoring human resources and depending on technology.”

According to the brigadier general, the IDF prefers to depend on others instead of planning for decisive battles. He gave the example of arming the Palestinian Authority to tackle the Palestinian uprising.

Kitri recommended that the army should adopt a decisive policy to face the current wave of stabbing attacks, such as that which was implemented in 2002 in the occupied West Bank, which Israel dubbed Operation of Defensive Shield. Serious human rights violations are believed by many to have taken place during the Israeli offensive against Jenin Refugee Camp as part of the operation.