Ongoing Israeli attacks ‘a bid to drag out conflict, delay elections’

Israel’s ongoing attacks in Gaza are in part a bid to prolong the conflict in order to delay elections and internal scrutiny of the failures that led to the war, says Israeli political analyst Akiva Eldar. He told Al Jazeera that the ongoing attacks, such as those today in southern Gaza, in part reflected the domestic concerns of Netanyahu’s government. “It’s also a domestic issue since declaring an end of the war is also declaring elections in Israel, early elections,” he said, adding that the end of the war would also lead to a commission, demanded by the opposition and courts, “that will inquire [into] the blunders that made the October 7 [attacks] possible”.