I Served in the IDF in the 2014 War in Gaza. The Friends I Lost There Should Have Been the Last Ones.

I was the commander of an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) infantry platoon sent into the Gaza Strip during Operation “Protective Edge” in 2014. I remember the burning skies at night, the incessant sound of bombings, the destruction, and the sense of danger in the air.

I remember the moment I was told five of my soldiers had been killed after Hamas operatives used a tunnel and infiltrated their fortified post, and how none of us slept that night. We just smoked and looked at each other without saying a word.

Almost every old friend I run into talks to me about Gaza. Most of them are in therapy to help them let go of what they experienced there—most of them unsuccessfully.

We are the soldiers who served the Israeli concept of “managing the conflict” and the endless rounds-of-fighting policy.

We are the soldiers the Israeli government sent to kill and be killed. We did our part. We paid the heaviest price, only for the Israeli government to squander it. They abandoned us.

They were supposed to think ahead: not a year or two, but ten, fifty. They were supposed to make things different. We did our duty. They haven’t played theirs.

We did not put our lives on the line to serve another round of fighting. Each and every time, they gave us the “there’s no other choice” spiel, and each and every time, they did everything in their power so that there wouldn’t be any other choice. They sent generations of Israelis to be killed and wounded, and to kill, as if our lives and Palestinians’ lives are worth less than dust, just an advance payment until the next round.

When Mira Stahl—who was murdered by Hamas on Oct. 7—was laid to rest, her funeral started with an anxiety-reducing exercise everyone in attendance knew, because she’d taught families living near the Gaza border exercises to help manage anxiety. An entire region where everyone knows anxiety exercises—because anxiety is just part of life there.

These people were not abandoned on Oct. 7. They had already been abandoned for years by that point, because our yellow-bellied leadership decided that periodic rounds of horror were good enough.

Our blood was the grease in the wheels of this false mentality. “Managing the conflict” is a foul euphemism for soldiers who came home broken men, for soldiers who never came home, for the PTSD suffered by every child living in the Israeli communities near the Gaza border; for the annual pummeling of the Gaza Strip because “the grass needs to be mowed,” to use a phrase often deployed by Israeli security and political leaders.

Many a clever expression has been thought up to describe what ultimately amounts to more senseless death.

“Managing the conflict” is the false god to which the State of Israel has for years sacrificed its citizens—a god whose hunger will never be satisfied. Israelis living now will be sacrificed to it yet—in the West Bank, in Gaza, and inside the Green Line, too.

After the 2014 war, I testified about my service in Gaza and the West Bank to the Israeli veterans anti-occupation NGO, Breaking the Silence, because I felt Israelis had to understand what the government’s policy looked like on the ground. Still, the penny has yet to drop for this despicable leadership.

They tell us, “This is not just another round,” and then go on to speak of Israeli security control over the Gaza Strip with no intention of ending it with an agreement that guarantees a safe and free future for both sides.

What is that, if not ensuring the next round? How much money will continue to be poured into fences and patrols as if it guarantees security? Even now, they can’t offer either us or the Palestinians any other horizon.

Instead, the inept politicians responsible for this unbelievable disaster are trying to worm their way back into the public’s hearts the only way they know how: by stoking hatred against any and all Palestinians.

Hamas is a murderous terrorist organization. Murdering small children is heinous, depraved cowardice.

But the members of my government are also cowards. They hid behind those living in the border communities.

Our leaders demanded those civilians “show resilience” because they refused to give up their Messianic fantasy in the West Bank and pay the political price a peace agreement would exact from their electoral base. Those paying it in their stead are children shivering in their beds and entire families who now share a grave.

Everyone has had to pay a price—soldiers, residents of border communities, and of course the entire Gazan population. Everyone except the country’s leaders.

The unfathomable atrocities Hamas committed on Oct. 7 weren’t just the result of an intelligence or military debacle. They were everything Israeli governments have ever offered us—taken to an extreme. “We will forever live by the sword,” was Netanyahu’s promise, but he’s the one living on our swords, while we, innocent Israelis and Gazans, are the ones dying.

“What do you propose?” the perpetual war and occupation supporters ask us mockingly, as if being doomed to endless bloodshed is somehow a more realistic prospect.

We propose what we always have—and what anyone who truly supports Israel and holds dear moral values should be pushing for: fight extremist, messianic, and violent forces, stop attempting to “manage the conflict,” and strive to end it by seriously working to reach a political agreement which will bring to an end the occupation of the West Bank and the siege on Gaza. For years, we and the Palestinians have both been cannon fodder for lack of leadership and political cowardice. Enough.

Snir Klein served as a combatant in the IDF paratroopers brigade and fought in Gaza during Operation “Protective Edge” as a commander in a squad commander course. Today, he is a human rights lawyer.