If you’re keeping score back home, you’ve probably noticed that the two most senior defense officials in the US war cabinet Benjamin Netanyahu (Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and former military chief of staff Benny Gantz) warned last week that Netanyahu is leading Israel into a disastrous situation by refusing to present any plan for non-member Palestinians to Hamas govern the Gaza Strip and instead appears to be contemplating a long-term Israeli military occupation of Gaza. Gantz said he would leave the government if there was no plan by June 8.
Here is what is at stake for the United States in what these ministers say: Netanyahu has become a radical actor, undermining key US interests and Arab allies, and becomes the gift that keeps on giving to Iran.
Just look at the political decisions Netanyahu has made and tell me with a straight face that he has not allowed Iran to completely overtake Israel. Using its allies Hamas and Hezbollah, Iran has reduced Israel since October 7, forcing tens of thousands of Israelis to abandon Israel’s western and northern borders and isolating the country on the world stage because of Gaza, while Iran has become a threshold nuclear power and the largest imperialist force in the region ( given that it effectively controls four Arab states) and is less isolated than it has been in years. All of this has happened under Bibi’s direction.
But now Netanyahu is busy doing something even more dangerous for the future of Israel… and for the United States. He is tirelessly harping on the mentality of the Israeli public that There is no difference between Hamas, inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood, which is dedicated to wiping the Jewish state off the map and replacing it with an Islamic one, and the secular Palestinian Authority, led by Fatah. in the West Bankwhich adopted the Oslo Accords in the mid-1990s, which called for a two-state solution, and worked with Israel for three decades to limit violence in the West Bank.
The Palestinian Authority has a million flaws, some created or exacerbated by violent Israeli settlers. But there is a reason Netanyahu panicked every time his leader, Mahmoud Abbas, said, in effect: “Well, Bibi, do you want to control the West Bank by yourself? Here are the keys.” It is because Netanyahu knows very well how much the Palestinian Authority cooperates with the Israeli army and the Shin Bet security service to control the West Bank, and how much it would cost Israel in money, soldiers and legitimacy if Israel had to govern alone. Palestinian security, health, banking and education in the West Bank.
And yet, as Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners want to annex Gaza (and their votes may keep him in office and out of jail if he is convicted in his corruption trials), Bibi is singing his line that Hamas and Fatah are the same.
(This is the most important dynamic happening now, and the decision of the International Criminal Court to request arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant and Hamas leaders accused of war crimes only strengthens Bibi at home and diverts attention from this.)
Worse, too many Israelis are buying Netanyahu’s absurd argument, and too few opposition leaders – including Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot– they stand up and clearly reject it. This is an impending disaster: Bibi is discouraging Israelis from having no legitimate Palestinian alternative to the Hamas government. That is the implication of claiming that Hamas and Fatah are the same.
And Netanyahu is doing all this under the direction of the Jewish supremacist ministers in his cabinet to whom he has given unprecedented powers: the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrichand the minister of National securityItamar Ben-Gvir.
“We must return to Gaza now! We are returning home, to the Holy Land! Ben-Gvir said during an Israeli Independence Day march last week, without a rebuke from Netanyahu. “We must encourage emigration. Encourage voluntary emigration of Gaza residents.”
It is not a lone voice. Netanyahu’s incoming military secretary has reportedly drawn up his own plan (without the participation of the defense minister or the army chief of staff) for Israel to permanently rule Gaza with a military administration.
Gallant, former head of the Israeli equivalent of the Navy SEALs and the only person with political courage and gravitas in the leadership of Netanyahu’s Likud party, became so alarmed that last week, without permission from the prime minister, he gave a speech saying that since October He has been asking Netanyahu for a plan for who will govern Gaza once Hamas is dismantled, but has “received no response.”
Without a plan, Gallant added, “there are only two negative options left: the Hamas government in Gaza or the Israeli military government in Gaza. …The ‘day after Hamas’ will only be achieved when Palestinian entities take control of Gaza, accompanied by international actors, establishing an alternative government to the Hamas government.”
Although Gallant did not mention PA involvement, he did not rule it out. But Netanyahu has made his position clear: “Gaza will be neither Hamastan nor Fatahstan”, as he put it this winter. Fatah is Abbas’s party.
Netanyahu’s now constant repetition that the Palestinian Authority is the same as Hamas is leading some to wonder if we are misunderstanding Netanyahu, he said. Victor Friedmanan Israeli organizational psychologist.
“Netanyahu’s acquiescence to the far right, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, has generally been seen as motivated by his need to keep his coalition together and himself out of jail,” Friedman told me. “Now it appears that he has willingly sold his soul to the far right. One explanation is that the extreme religious right projects a messianic image on him that corresponds with his own feeling of having been called to save Israel and the Jewish people. He has a plan for the next day and it is very clear to anyone who will listen: “Total Victory” and, finally, the return of the Jewish settlement there. “Israel is on its way to reoccupying Gaza.”
If that happens, Israel will become an international pariah, and Jewish institutions everywhere will be divided between Jews who will feel the need to defend Israel (right or wrong) and those who, with their children, will find it indefensible.
Unfortunately, Netanyahu has not led Israel to its current impasse alone. For years, his settlement project and his Iran policies received coverage from AIPAC, the US pro-Israel lobby; the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations; the American Jewish Committee; and instinctive supporters of both the Republican and Democratic parties.
And sadly, I don’t think President Joe Biden fully understands his “old friend” Bibi, whose government is the first to formally declare annexation of the West Bank as its goal and, in fact, attempted to strip the Supreme Court of its power. to stop it.
My rule: never listen to what Bibi tells you privately in English. Just watch what he says in public in Hebrew. For months, Biden’s team has pleaded with Netanyahu to articulate a post-Gaza vision that would involve Palestinian and Arab control over Gaza and a long-term path to a demilitarized Palestinian state, so that the United States is not facilitating an Israeli occupation. from Gaza. along with the West Bank, and to pave the way for a US-Saudi security pact that could also produce normalized relations between Israel and the Saudis.
Netanyahu has said no to all of this. However, he did show his gratitude to Biden by making his congressional majority give Elise Stefanik, a Republican congresswoman with no position on foreign policy (and a person who was dragging herself to become Donald Trump’s vice president), the extraordinary honor of giving a speech on Sunday in the Knesset, where he harshly criticized the president of the United States and praised Trump.
And who is this great military genius whom everyone pleases? Let’s see: In 2015, the Obama team concluded a nuclear deal with Iran that imposed inspections and restrictions on Iran, cutting its stockpile of enriched uranium to a small amount enriched up to 3.67% purity, away from roughly 90% purity. needed for a bomb. So even if Iran tried to escape, it would need at least a year to produce enough fissile material for a bomb, enough time to stop it. Netanyahu bitterly opposed the deal, even though several senior Israeli military and intelligence officials favored it, which Bibi kept hidden from the Israeli and American public.
After Trump came to power, Netanyahu pushed hard to tear up the deal, which Trump recklessly did in May 2018. Netanyahu was apparently counting on the fact that if Iran broke the deal and started enriching itself to make a bomb , Trump would explode. Iran’s nuclear facilities. Iran erupted, but neither Trump nor Biden were prepared to launch an attack on Iran.
The result? As Reuters reported last month, “Iran is now enriching uranium to 60% purity and has enough material enriched to that level, if further enriched, for two nuclear weapons, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s theoretical definition. . “That means Iran’s so-called breakout time (the time it would need to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear bomb) is close to zero, probably a matter of weeks or days.”
This is one of the biggest US-Israel national security fiascos of all time.
And for the last decade it was Netanyahu –“Mr. Security”, who facilitated the transfer of more than a billion dollars from Qatar to Hamas, to strengthen it in Gaza, and used his voice to delegitimize the Palestinian Authority. In this way he could tell the world that Israel does not have a Palestinian partner and must therefore occupy the West Bank forever.
And now he is selling Israelis on the fantasy that there are some perfect Palestinians who will step forward to rule Gaza on behalf of Israel and challenge the only two Palestinian ruling entities with any legitimacy: Hamas and Fatah. If you believe that, I have a bridge I would like to sell you in Gaza. This will lead Israel, America’s main ally in the Middle East, into a confusing and exhausting conflict without end.
Hamas is not the Palestinian Authority. Hamas is an Islamist militant and mass murdering entity that has done more harm to Palestinians than any other organization. If Israel committed to working with a reformist Palestinian Authority to govern Gaza, froze settlements, and committed to developing a partnership with it for a Palestinian state one day, that would change everything. It would give Israel the global legitimacy to dismantle Hamas, organize a Palestinian/Arab force that would govern Gaza in a way that neither Israel nor Hamas did, and open the way for normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
None of this would be easy or have any guarantee of success for the most well-intentioned Israeli prime minister. But without at least one attempt – and another and another – Israel’s long-term survival is in danger. Unfortunately, Israel is ruled today by a man who is only interested in its short-term survival. And in that he is succeeding.
© The New York Times 2024
