David Petraeus talks Trump, Gaza 'gated' areas and challenges 'privatisation' of war

Do you think al-Sharaa is a unifier?

That is a very, very challenging goal. We see how difficult that is. There are elements in the north that are still closely affiliated with Türkiye. You have the Alawites out on the coast, mostly supporters of the former regime. You have the Druze in the south. And then you have the Syrian Democratic Forces—largely Syrian Kurds—in the northeast that we are still supporting, along with a host of others in the kaleidoscope that is Syria.

It's not impossible, but there should be no assumption that everything will automatically transpire the way we'd like to see. But what we should do is enable him in every way we possibly can, which is why I applauded when President Trump lifted the executive branch sanctions on Syria and removed the $10mn reward on his head. But there are congressional sanctions still in place—the Caesar sanctions—and they're quite restrictive. But they were imposed on the Bashar al-Assad regime, not on Syria's current government.

Do you think Trump was right to join Israel in attacking Iran?

Yes. It showed America's enormous capability. Israel had done a magnificent job in the first 11 days of the 12-Day War, but there were targets that they could not crack, like the deeply buried nuclear enrichment site at Fordow. Only we have the massive ordnance penetrator, and the plane that can actually carry and deliver it. We flew the B-2 bombers all the way from their bases in the US without ever landing, refuelling in-flight numerous times en route to their targets. We precisely hit several different sites, in some cases double-tapping what Israel had already done, making sure that the targets were fully destroyed.

What do you make of Trump's negotiating style and his push for "Peace in the Middle East"? Some believe his style to be very effective, while others see it as bullying.

Well, diplomacy is not all nice talk. It often involves leaning on the other side, using the tools you have described as bullying. I employed some of this myself from time to time when it was clear that the other side needed to be reminded. So, if you have tools, use them all. And he does that; he uses the financial, economic, diplomatic, and informational tools available to him.

Does harsh rhetoric work?

Sometimes. I think it did work with respect to Hamas and also, frankly, with respect to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in achieving the ceasefire agreement in Gaza and the release of Israeli hostages. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't, and you have to find other tools. And we'll see what is necessary to achieve agreement on the next step in Gaza, which may prove to be much more challenging because it would require Hamas to essentially give up its weapons.

Do you think they will?

I find it a bit unlikely that all of them will be willing to do. Yes, there's a possibility they could go to a third country, be granted amnesty, and so forth, but I'm not sure most of them will agree to that. They want to retain a role and considerable influence in Gaza, and it's going to be very difficult to persuade them to do what we want rather than what they probably want. But again, using all the tools at our disposal is what generally leads to success in international relations.

Trump has called for a multinational peacekeeping force to maintain security in Gaza, but very few countries around the world and in the Middle East have shown interest in participating. Is this really the solution to Gaza instability, bearing in mind the key challenges of a right-wing Israeli government that has extremists among its ranks and the difficult mission of disarming Hamas?

I think you've laid out the challenges very effectively and clearly. I don't think any Arab country will agree to send forces to fight Hamas on behalf of Israel. That's how it would be seen. Even if many of them hate Hamas, they're not going to go in and fight against them.

Hamas is now a very, very substantial guerrilla and insurgent force. It is not what it was at the outset when it was organised into combat-effective companies, battalions, and brigades. Virtually all of its leaders—the equivalent of colonels and general officers— have been killed. Nonetheless, they're still roughly the same size because there's no shortage of angry young men who are unemployed, full of grievance, and willing to take up an AK-47 for the cause for a very modest amount of money. So this is going to be challenging.

I don't think other countries will come in—at least not unless there's some kind of UN Security Council mandate. There have reportedly been conversations in Azerbaijan, and perhaps in Pakistan as well. But I think that when they realise that their soldiers might be killed fighting for Israel against Hamas, they will be unlikely to contribute.

Some would argue that Israel defeated Hezbollah in Lebanon, which was a much more powerful organisation than Hamas. And do you agree that Hezbollah was defeated?

Hamas is still a formidable force, and they probably still have around two-thirds of their underground infrastructure where they can retreat to any time that Israel mounts an offensive.

Regarding Hezbollah, I thought Israel did incredibly well against them in Lebanon. They just didn't decapitate Hezbollah; they decimated the leadership. And when the papgers and walkie-talkies blew up, they had no command-and-control communications. That prevented Hezbollah from doing what we feared most, which was to mount an overwhelming attack of 10,000 or more missiles, rockets, and drones at Israel, which even their sophisticated counter-drone, air, and ballistic missile defences could not handle. The dynamics in Lebanon have totally changed now.  After a year of wrangling, they have a president and other key leaders in place.  

Then you have the operation against Iran, which I addressed earlier—nothing short of brilliant. Over a dozen of the most important nuclear scientists in the country, and many of the leaders of the security organisations as well, were taken out.

The fight against Hamas, though, has been more difficult. The problem is that Israel has been conducting a counter-terrorism campaign. In other words, clear an area, kill a bunch of bad guys (Islamist extremists) who deserve to be killed. But then they withdraw, and every time you withdraw, Hamas can reconstitute. Again, not as effective as they were before, but still quite effective. Guerrillas and insurgents are still capable of killing Israeli soldiers.

I've discussed many times with Israeli leaders, including the former Minister of Defence, Yoav Galant, and others, and publicly suggested that they conduct a counter-insurgency campaign, which is what we did during the surge in Iraq, where you clear an area, hold it, rebuild it, and then gradually transition it to other forces.

That would involve, say, starting in the north, coming a kilometre down, east-west wall, three of them are south walls. You have four gated communities, you call them. You clear every building, floor, room, cellar, and plug every tunnel entrance. You now have security, and you can maintain security because the bad guys can't get through.

As long as you've found all the tunnel entrances and have a good entry control point. Then you have biometric ID cards that allow people who live in that area to return and access better shelters near their homes, which are largely damaged or destroyed. And you gradually rebuild and restore basic services and provide additional humanitarian assistance. You can do all that, and you can use contractors as well because you now have security. If you don't have security, none of that is possible.

And that is the challenge in Gaza right now. Then you just keep doing it again and again and again. Yes, Gaza City, a million people, you have to slice that up into various gated communities. But this is what we did, and we were ultimately successful during the surge (in Iraq). We were able to drive down violence by nearly 90% using gated communities, we built walls and sheltered populations and separated the enemy from the people— whether it was Al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Sunni insurgents, or the Shiite militia supported by Iran. That's the only way you can achieve security and lasting results.

Now, there is no security, and that's what makes this so challenging. Forcing Hamas to give up its weapons means inflicting enormous damage to Hamas and further damage to Gaza. But I'm not sure you can actually destroy Hamas just by bombing them or conducting ground operations after which you withdraw from a community, because they'll be able to reconstitute.

It's very interesting that you mentioned security contractors as a solution in Gaza. We have been witnessing what I would call mercenaries for a long time, in Iraq and even more recently in Ukraine. Is the war being privatised?

I challenge the term 'mercenaries', but certainly there are, let's say, security contractors. Let me explain. When I was the commander in Iraq during the surge, one of my big ideas, though I didn't state it, was to contract out everything we could, except for what only our soldiers could do. If you have people guarding gates or guarding diplomatic convoys or what have you, that's fine, but not using them, certainly, to do what only our men and women and coalition partners and Iraqi soldiers and police could do in uniform.

You have to be very careful about using security contractors. We had a terrible incident about eight months into the surge, where security contractors essentially shot up a traffic circle when they thought they were being shot at. We never found evidence of that. They were actually tried in the United States in court and so forth. That led to a fundamental review of the use of security contractors and, more importantly, of their rules of engagement and of our tracking of their movements through the war theatre. The only security contractors we allowed in those days were those who were doing fixed-site security.

I've actually cautioned security contractors against performing tasks inside Gaza, and essentially those with whom I have some relationship. If there's security already, then by all means do it. But you should not get into a situation where you'll either end up fighting Hamas or dealing with huge throngs of people trying to get too limited foodstuffs. So, I think it's wise to be very clear about what you want security contractors to do. At the end of the day, you don't want contractors being used for explicitly military tasks, such as killing or capturing bad guys. That is not what they should be doing.