Mehr News Agency has obtained a highly confidential audio file about the Gaza war. In this confidential file, David Petraeus, the retired general of the US Army, presents his suggestions for the victory of the Israeli regime in the war against Gaza in a closed and confidential meeting with the American and Israeli political-military elites. Aviv Kohavi, Former Chief of the General Staff of the Israeli regime, is also present in this secret meeting.
Born on November 7, 1952, David Howell Petraeus is a retired United States Army general and public official. He served as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency from September 6, 2011, until November 2012, when he was forced to resign. In 2001 and 2002, he was one of NATO's senior commanders in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and in 2007, he was in charge of the military forces of the United States and its allies in Iraq. The high-ranking American general was also in charge of commanding the US Army in West Asia, East Africa, and Central Asia before heading the CIA.
Born on 23 April 1964, Aviv Kohavi was the 22nd chief of general staff of the Israeli regime's military forces until 23 January 2023. Kohavi started his military activities as a paratrooper in the Paratroopers Brigade and soon gained administrative and military positions in the Zionist regime until finally he was chosen as the commander of this unit. He also served as the commander of the so-called Gaza Division in the Zionist military, commander of the Northern Command, and the regime's military intelligence director. The Zionist military official played a major role in the suppression of the first and second Intifada, the Zionist regime's aggression against Lebanon in 1982 and 2006, as well as the regime's aggression against the Gaza Strip in 2008, 2011, and 2014.
An overview of the confidential audio file
In this meeting, General Petraeus proposed the failed US strategies in Iraq and Afghanistan as a solution for the people of Gaza. By occupying Afghanistan in 2001, the US promised a better life to the Afghan people but after 20 years, it fled from Afghanistan in total disgrace. "Terror", "poverty" and "displacement" are the sinister legacy of 20 years of the US occupation of Afghanistan.
According to Brown University, 2,500 American soldiers and nearly 4,000 American civilian contract workers were killed during the 20-year occupation.
Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) has also announced that in the 20-year US war in Afghanistan, 66,000 Afghan military forces and 48,000 civilians were killed. 75,000 other Afghan civilians were injured in those years. The result of this war has only been the destruction of Afghanistan and its plunge into the endless cycle of terror and instability.
Also in Iraq, the US entered with demagogic promises and has brought this country to a point where it still witnesses terror and insecurity after 20 years. The Opinion Research Business organization says that only until 2007, which means 4 years after the start of the war, one million and two hundred thousand Iraqis were killed. The sad thing is that nearly 40% of these dead were women and children.
In this audio file, General Petraeus clearly points to the deliberate killing of Palestinian women and children by the Israeli regime, while trying to justify this crime. He also suggests the strategy of exploding residential buildings, the same strategy that has so far resulted in the martyrdom of nearly 9,000 Palestinian civilians, including 3,500 children. In order to justify the brutal killing of the Palestinian people, the US general also proposed the rebuilding of Gaza by the Zionists to restore the Israeli regime's image. This is the same deceptive strategy that the Americans tried to use to justify the killing of the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, but the result of this strategy has been the instability of the region, the poverty of the countries involved in the American occupation, and the death of millions of innocent people.
In this meeting, Petraeus also admits that the US strategy regarding the occupation of Iraq was stupid, but he proposes the stupid and failed strategy to be used in Gaza.
The full text of Petraeus' confidential audio file
Um, I see no alternative to the destruction of Hamas and I use that term specifically because as Aviv [Kohavi] knows there is a military doctrinal term, it’s a gradation you know, you can disrupt, you can deny, you can defeat you can destroy. I think that it [Hamas] has to be destroyed. Destruction means in military terms that you are rendering an enemy incapable of accomplishing his mission without reconstitution. Keep in mind the reconstitution piece, because this is a huge task for, the day after for the ultimate administration of Gaza. I think that the vision that is announced by the prime minister ultimately with the IDF chief of staff and others, ah should be to make clear, they intend to destroy Hamas and Islamic Jihad and then to lay out, how this has to be done there is no alternative. I’m sure Aviv [Kohavi] will agree, literally to going progressively methodically through, starting with Gaza City in the north but ultimately it’s going to have to be the entire area of Gaza over time, if it is truly to be destroyed and there will still be of course remnants of Hamas and PIJ that Iran will seek and will try to enable to come back and so I have to focus on that in a moment. I think there has to be an explanation of how this is going to be done that stresses “Purity of Arms” (One of the fake slogans of the Zionist military, meaning not to kill civilians, women, children, and observing morals in war) again the Israeli terminology for essentially the Geneva convention, the laws of land warfare, that this has to be stressed. As several of you have noted again the growing concern on the Palestinian civilians, this will have to be very clearly demonstrated, you know, during the battles that Israeli soldiers taking great pains to safeguard civilians, noting that of course there is that enemy without uniform hides among the civilians as hostages, there gonna be suicide bombers, there will be improvised explosive device you know all this. Booby traps, rooms will blow up, building will blow up, etc… that just gonna have to be methodically and very carefully done and of course it’s going to have to be emphasized clear and hold as Aviv [Kohavi] knows if you clear and just go on to the next building and don’t leave a size of force behind, the enemy will re-infiltrate behind you and you are going to be at fighting at 360 degrees, and you have to again do this very very methodically and hang on to the areas. And then I would submit that it should begin to rebuild as quickly as it's possible, as soon as an area is reasonably safe. There should be a demonstration of the intention to start repairing the damage and destruction and that leads to another element of the vision, which has to be what life can be like for the Palestinians in Gaza and I submit the West Bankers at it, hurting at the domestic political issues and that Israel will make this slightly idealistic, but again we did this when we were carrying out operations to clear out al-Qaeda in Iraq and then the ISIL where we'd tell the Sunni Arabs, if you reject them, if you help us against them; I’m not expecting that the Palestinians to help you against them, but at least not to actively support them, and to stay out of the way and then perhaps life not only, perhaps life will be better after Hamas. Hamas has brought this on you, um…and so forth and so on. But I think there has to be this kind of vision and again it’s very clear that people are asking what is the future of that of the Palestinians in Gaza? I think there has to be an acknowledgment that Israel is going after to run Gaza for a while and no one wants to reoccupy, I know the challenges associated with that, but I just don’t foresee any confident and capable organization coming in. Keep in mind that because for sure if you are sending out to destroy not just Hamas’s army and the PIJ army it’s to destroy or dismantle the Palestinian political wing which has been announced as part of the objective. So who is going to administer, and keep in mind the administration is not just handing out humanitarian assistance, restoring basic services, starting reconstruction, getting schools, markets, clinics, opening all that. There should be, it should be thought about as a counter-insurgency campaign because in addition to that stability operations there is going to have to be an intelligence-led effort to ensure that the Islamic Jihad and Hamas cannot reconstitute themselves from the remnants that will be left (inevitably) and they'll certainly going to try to do that. So again all these elements I think of the vision really should be stated and also frankly just doing that is going to force the leadership to acknowledge some hard realities, frankly we did not acknowledge sufficiently when we went into Iraq and discovered that in our phase for planning our post-conflict set of planning was wholly inadequate and then took really stupid counterproductive decisions that created hundreds of thousands oppose to the new Iraq rather than supporting it, firing the military without telling them how would enable them to provide their family, de-Ba'athification then the level of bureaucrats, tens of thousands we need to run the country without an agreed reconciliation process. So again I think these visions are crucial, it just can’t be this idea that they'd been saying so far, that we’ll figure it out when we get there, the focus is on the combat operations, for somebody who is there and been there up holding the bag that doesn’t cut it.
Conclusion
The Zionist regime suffered a heavy defeat in the Hamas-launched Al-Aqsa Storm operation, which the Leader of the Islamic Revolution correctly described as an "irreparable defeat". The defeat of a regime that claims to have military and intelligence power from a small and isolated group has caused the US to take over the management of the war against Hamas and the Gaza Strip to somehow compensate for the Tel Aviv regime's defeat. So far, except for the brutal killing of innocent Palestinian people and the round-the-clock bombing of the Gaza Strip, no specific strategy has been presented by the Israeli regime and the United States. The regime's ground operation is also being carried out step by step, but so far it has not brought any success for the Zionists. In this situation, Petraeus is trying to create a victory at any cost by proposing the destroy the Gaza Strip. But this strategy was experienced 22 years ago in Afghanistan and 20 years ago in Iraq, and everyone has seen its results. It seems that the US is trying to record another defeat in the name of the Zionists by repeating its mistakes in the region, this time in the Gaza Strip.
MNA