As ceasefire talks falter under Netanyahu’s hardline intransigence, ex-General Yitzhak Brik fires a fatal warning: continue this war of attrition, and “Israel will collapse within no more than a year.”
🔥 “Galloping towards the edge of an abyss”
Writing in Haaretz, Brik—who spent decades in senior military roles—declares:
“The country really is galloping towards the edge of an abyss. If the war of attrition against Hamas and Hezbollah continues, Israel will collapse within no more than a year.”
He adds:
“Israel is sinking deeper into the Gazan mud, losing more and more soldiers as they get killed or wounded, without any chance of achieving the war’s main goal: bringing down Hamas.”
⚔️ Blame on “the three pyromaniacs”
Brik singles out Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi as architects of disaster:
“They are the three pyromaniacs burning Gaza and recklessly provoking Hezbollah and Iran—playing with fire that risks a regional conflagration.”
He slams their policy of targeted assassinations, warning that the recent killing of Ismail Haniyeh could “ignite the entire Middle East.”
💥 Historical hubris: “Die with the Philistines”
Brik echoes scholar Omer Bartov’s biblical allusion to Samson’s doomed stand in Gaza—“Let me die with the Philistines!”—as a metaphor for Netanyahu’s strategy. Bartov warns that, like Samson, modern Israel risks self-destruction if its leadership treats war as an end, not a means.
📉 Economy, morale and international isolation
Beyond the battlefield, Brik highlights:
- Rising attacks in the West Bank
- Plummeting soldier morale
- A tanking economy
- Global pressure via boycotts and arms embargo calls
He laments that a nation once reborn “from 2,000 years of exile” is now “disintegrating” under its leaders’ “dictatorial” grip.
🔮 A year to live?
With no clear political objectives and a war draining Israel’s lifeblood, Brik warns the next 12 months are pivotal. “Israel has entered an existential tailspin and could soon reach a point of no return,” he writes.
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