Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has effectively admitted that his military faced long-term defeat if it had persisted in the effort to reoccupy Gaza during the recent 50-day war.

On July 17, nine days after the start of the war, Israel launched a ground invasion of Gaza. However, after losing 64 troops in the operations, Israel halted the offensive and returned to airstrikes in between a series of temporary ceasefires before the conflict finally ended last Tuesday.

Netanyahu has faced a wave of criticism — including from some of his Ministers — for not persisting with the ground assault and reoccupying Gaza, which Israel left in 2005.

Speaking with Channel 2 TV, the Prime Minister used the example of the US occupation of Iraq after its invasion in 2003:

The US fought against a smaller Gaza called Fallujah….Fallujah is a tenth the size of Gaza. The great United States fought in Fallujah, its Gaza, sacrificed hundreds of soldiers who fought bravely….Went in once, twice, three times….

Thousands of Iraqis were killed there. Many thousands. And in the end it went out and al-Qaeda came back.

Netanyahu said Israel must not only consider the cost of reoccupation but of tying up resources when it faced war on multiple fronts, including the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights in Syria near fighting between insurgents and President Assad’s forces:

We have Al Qa’eda on the fence now in the Golan Heights. The Islamic State is racing towards us and Al Qa’eda is on the Golan borders… I chose in this reality not to invest all of our resources in this one arena [Gaza].

The Prime Minister maintained that Israel had won the recent war through its aerial assaults and assassinations of the Gazan leadership of Hamas:

I believed that what we should do at this time is simply to pound them. So maybe they remain [in power] but they are pulverized; they are isolated; they cannot smuggle weaponry….

We’ve done this. We’ve dealt them a terrible, terrible blow… We’ve given Hamas a thrashing that it will remember for many years.

He downplayed the criticism of his conduct of the war, as Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman complained that wasted a golden opportunity to eradicate Hamas.

“There was some creaking,” Netanyahu said, but “up to this point the government has acted as it should”:

In the face of all the criticisms, in the face of all the critics, in the face of all the background noise and private interests –– I was unfazed and I was very determined.