In six months of war, Israel has reduced Gaza to a charred wasteland, even as it has alienated its most important global partners, and enraged much of the world. Israel has rapidly squandered the best part of the sympathy and goodwill afforded them in the aftermath of Hamas’s vicious October 7 massacre, when terrorists breached Israeli borders and slaughtered 1200 civilians, kidnapping several hundred others.
Ultimately, this all amounts to a major strategic victory for Hamas, which has forced the Palestinian question back to the forefront of the global conversation, cynically spending the lives of both Israeli and Palestinian civilians to do it. For those of us who would love nothing more than to see the destruction of Hamas, and the rise of a moderate government in Gaza, it’s clear Israel is sabotaging its own cause.
Meanwhile, a recent poll shows that 71% of Israeli voters want Bibi Netanyahu thrown out of office immediately, with more than 61% of Israelis calling for early elections, including his own minister of war and political rival, Benny Gantz. Major protests are rocking Israeli cities again.
However, Bibi Netanyahu shows no inclination to leave office. His argument that there should be no change of political leadership until after the war is over is transparently self-serving, particularly considering his overarching desire to retain his legal immunity from pending corruption charges, raising the prospect that he will simply continue the war to keep himself in power. This uncertainty is intolerable.
Folly and failure
Of course, it’s Benjamin Netanyahu’s failed leadership that has brought Israel into this dark abyss. Right before the October 7th attack, Netanyahu was quietly urging Qatar to give Hamas hundreds of millions of dollars, in the theory that by supporting Hamas, he was fracturing the Palestinian movement and weakening the Palestinian Authority, thereby preventing a two-state solution in perpetuity.
Obviously, his chimerical theory that Israel could have peace, prosperity, and regional stability without somehow solving the Palestinian question has collapsed in flames. It was delusional.
Likewise, his government still has yet to answer even the most basic questions about why Israel, with its vaunted intelligence services and modern military, could possibly have been surprised and penetrated the way it was on October 7th? Part of the answer to that question is already clear: much of the IDF was preoccupied in the West Bank, where it was busy protecting Jewish settlers backed by Netanyahu’s far-right government, in what the international community regards as blatantly illegal annexations, and a major obstacle to peace. Those settlers have been backed by members of Netanyahu’s far-right coalition, and they continue to gobble up land, heedless of the consequences.
Thus, the Gaza frontier was wide open.
Even more glaring, why did Netanyahu discount the warnings from his own security advisers prior to the attack, when they told him that the raging protests unleashed by his failed judicial power grab were endangering the country? He has provided no answers beyond his earlier repudiation of any responsibility for anything. Instead, he has blamed others for Israel’s worst national security failure in its entire history, despite being the longest serving prime minister in Israel’s history. It was disgraceful, but it encapsulated his leadership, or lack thereof.
Alone
Indeed, Israel is perhaps more thoroughly isolated on the world stage than at any other point in its modern history, save for an increasingly strained relationship with its primary ally and arms supplier in Washington, amid a global outcry over the tens of thousands of civilian casualties in Gaza, which lies in ruins. Its military’s basic competency is in doubt, amid grave national security threats. It’s being accused of genocide in Gaza, an incredible notion for a state founded as a response to the Holocaust.
The entire Middle East is on the brink of a cataclysmic conflict, one in which Israel would certainly require American support, even as Netanyahu plays games with Washington. A simmering conflict continues with Hezbollah on the border with Lebanon, even as a larger war with Iran remains a very real possibility, particularly after Israeli airstrikes that killed several IRGC commanders at an Iranian consulate in Syria recently, in what was a major escalation of Israel’s shadow war with Iran. Ayatollah Khamenei promised to “slap” Israel for that attack, and Tehran’s retaliation is likely imminent. Obviously, Israel’s security challenges remain daunting, even as Netanyahu defies his American allies, thumbing his nose at President Biden, and jeopardizing Israel’s relationship with the United States, something no sane Israeli leader would contemplate.
For their part, Hamas is battered but remains very much alive as a political and military force in Gaza, and is certainly undefeated. While some key leaders have been killed, most of Hamas’s top echelon of political and military leaders are still alive and well. Hamas military leader Yahya Sinwar is alive, and deep underground somewhere in Gaza’s sprawling tunnel network. Ismail Haniyeh recently met with Ayatollah Khamenei in Tehran, taking something of a victory lap there.
Obviously, the Islamist terrorist sect that unleashed this conflict is far from being destroyed, unfortunately, and a critical mass of fighters remain hunkered down in Rafah, where they’re deeply embedded within the civilian populace. As in the past, they’re essentially daring Israel to strike, in the knowledge that more dead Palestinians can only help their cause. It’s as cynical as it is effective; Israel has shown little ability to confront this complex challenge without incurring inordinate collateral damage. President Biden has said a push into Rafah would cross a “red line.”
A new phase
In recent days, Israeli troops have drawn down most of their forces in southern Gaza, amid what analysts say is a new phase of the conflict, which is likely to continue into the foreseeable future. Israel has yet to come up with any kind of viable political solution for Gaza, much less an answer to the larger Palestinian question. Rather, they’ve deliberately created a political vacuum in Gaza, and have refused even to consider an arrangement that might allow the Palestinian Authority to govern there.
Instead, there is humanitarian catastrophe. Famine threatens.
In short, the war has been disastrous, a humanitarian and political nightmare for everyone involved. For those of us who supported Israel’s right to defend itself against Hamas’s wanton aggression, the IDF’s indiscriminate bombing has tested our patience and our moral bandwidth, particularly in lieu of Israel’s failure to address Gaza’s security and humanitarian concerns as it fights Hamas. Mass demonstrations recently restarted in Israeli cities over Netanyahu’s failure to return the hostages, and over his leadership more generally. His right-wing coalition is barely holding together, even as extremists in his cabinet press for ever harsher policies in Gaza and beyond. It’s a mess.
Combat in Gaza has ebbed for the moment, as negotiations continue in Cairo between Hamas and Israel, with U.S., Egyptian, and Qatari mediation, in an effort to secure the 100 or so remaining Israeli hostages believed to be held by Hamas in exchange for a lasting ceasefire, though those discussions remain at an impasse. Hamas recently said they don’t have even 40 living Israeli hostages to trade. Nevertheless, the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, and France published an op-ed in the Washington Post urging a ceasefire, while cautioning against an assault on Rafah.
For his part, Benjamin Netanyahu has been defiant. He recently declared that an assault on Rafah was imminent, saying that a date had been set for the push into that final stretch of Gaza. “We will complete the elimination of Hamas’s battalions, including in Rafah. No force in the world will stop us.” Presumably, he’s referring to his allies in Washington, even as he has tested the Biden administration’s support, ignoring U.S. concerns over Israel’s conduct in the war, and its larger strategy in Gaza.
Netanyahu has promised to begin that campaign to eradicate what’s left of Hamas’s final stronghold in Gaza for two months, even as the Biden administration has warned Israel against the move, particularly without a way to protect the lives of the million or so civilians sheltering there. Hamas has insinuated itself deeply into the civilian population there, as in the rest of Gaza, but Israel has shown little ability to conduct precision strikes without incurring massive collateral damage. More than 32,000 people are dead thus far, and only perhaps a third of those are fighters.
Of course, urban warfare is notoriously difficult, and collateral damage is to be expected, unfortunately, particularly when Hamas does everything in its power to embed itself into the civilian population. But this level of harm to civilians, and the strikes resulting in dead Israeli hostages, dead journalists, and dead aid workers have shown that there are real problems with the IDF’s rules of engagement in Gaza, to put it mildly.
Moreover, the war is draining support from President Biden’s fragile political coalition in the United States, a side effect that Bibi Netanyahu is certainly aware of, and perhaps enjoying. After all, what could be better for him than another Trump presidency? For this consummate operator and political survivor, it’s impossible not to wonder if Netanyahu is deliberately endangering the Biden administration’s reelection prospects.
Tight spot
On the one hand, Bibi’s right-wing coalition will likely abandon him if he doesn’t make the final push into Rafah to destroy Hamas, sparking elections that would almost certainly push him from power. This would prompt a desperately needed reckoning over his leadership, which allowed October 7 to happen in the first place.
On the other hand, U.S. support for Israel is already on a knife’s edge, particularly after the recent inadvertent strike that killed 7 World Kitchen aid workers, which has provoked a storm of outrage around the world. A bloody push into Rafah would be difficult for the Biden administration to tolerate. Protests against Israel continue raging in America, Europe, and around the world, as the IDF has waged a punishing campaign that has obliterated Gaza, and which has left Israel with dwindling support on the international stage.
At this point, it’s safe to say that Israel has lost much of the moral legitimacy it had in the aftermath of Hamas’s vicious attack, during which hundreds of fighters slaughtered 1200 men, women, and children in a cross-border strike that left Israel reeling. It has also forfeited much of its international standing, and its geopolitical partnerships, in what is an existential question for the Jewish state, particularly with so much danger on the horizon.
It’s time for a new government in Israel, one capable of addressing the IDF’s tendency to strike first and ask questions later, before Israel loses what’s left of her international standing. But even more crucially, Israel needs someone who can reformulate Israel’s larger strategic framework regarding the Palestinians, after the bloody failure of Netanyahu’s vision.
It’s time for Bibi Netanyahu to go.
This is why I support you. Clear, concise, and an analysis which educates.
This was a great article. You clearly explored the issues beautifully. Netenyahu is clearly a deeply flawed person and leader just like his buddy Donald Trump.