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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was reported to have been paralyzed for hours, if not days, following the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023. If anyone knew that his entire paradigm of containing the threat emanating from this Islamist movement, and more generally the Palestinian issue, had collapsed in a matter of a few hours, it was he. Netanyahu has always been more of a politician and tactician than a statesman and strategist, not because he could not be the latter but because his opportunistic character has dictated that he opt for what will gain him power and help him to retain it.
These opportunistic instincts helped Netanyahu to gradually recover from the early shock of Oct. 7, aided mainly by military successes on other fronts, whether it was dealing a severe blow to Hezbollah in Lebanon or reducing the capabilities of Syria and the Houthis in Yemen. And finally, the 12 days of war with Iran when, despite sustaining losses by Iranian missiles, Israel showed its military superiority and ability to hit almost any target in the territory of its main regional enemy.
However, this still leaves a number of questions unanswered. Is Israel more secure today than it was before this near two years of multifront war? Has its overall strategic situation in its relations with the region and beyond improved or worsened? To me, the answer on both accounts is no.
Israel was caught completely by surprise when Hamas attacked nearly two years ago and the shockwaves this created ran all the way from the highest echelons of government and the security services to the rest of the society. This was not surprising, nor was the wish to go after the perpetrators of that massacre. But Israel went to war with revenge on its mind and too little encompassing strategic thinking about what it wanted to achieve and the political implications of the war’s aftermath. The decision by Hezbollah to join in and force an almost complete evacuation of the north of the country was unsustainable for Israel, as it handed one of the proxies of Iran a strategic victory and increased the sense of being under siege.
At that point, the international community was still fully behind Israel, and not without justification, but Netanyahu and his government misinterpreted this support as a carte blanche to use force however they wanted and wherever they wished. They gave no consideration to the likely political consequences of the failure to defeat Hamas and release all the hostages or to the attempt to force the people of Gaza out of this tiny territory and possibly annex it.
Israel went to war with revenge on its mind and too little strategic thinking about what it wanted to achieve
Yossi Mekelberg
According to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, Israel’s unabated assault on the Strip has resulted in the deaths of at least 62,122 people and injuries to a further 156,758, the vast majority of whom were not Hamas militants. A Guardian report last week revealed that, according to the Israeli military’s own data, 83 percent of those killed in Gaza have been civilians — a higher figure than those in the Syrian and Bosnian wars, for example.
The Israeli government set itself the objectives of eliminating Hamas and releasing the hostages it kidnapped; two objectives that proved, from the outset, to be contradictory and only partially achievable. This state of affairs has given the country’s enemies more ammunition to criticize it and forced its closest friends and allies to reconsider their support of Israel with regard to both this war and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a whole.
For instance, what in recent months began as a trickle of European countries recognizing Palestinian statehood has now turned into a flood, with an expectation that three G7 countries, the UK, France and Canada — two of them permanent members of the UN Security Council — will announce their recognition at the UN General Assembly next month. By doing so, they will be following the example of Spain, Norway, Ireland and Slovenia.
For Netanyahu and his bunch of ultranationalist-messianic political partners who want to prevent Palestine from ever becoming sovereign and independent, the recklessness with which they are conducting this war has created the conditions in which these countries are prepared to defy Washington and recognize Palestinian statehood. For those of us who have supported this development for a long time, this is a silver lining in the darkest of clouds. On the other hand, for Netanyahu, it is a strategic defeat of his own making — hence his vitriolic response to foreign leaders who “dare” to recognize the state of Palestine.
No country in the world has managed to gain and lose sympathy as quickly as has been the case for Israel since Oct. 7. But it is not only on the Palestinian front where it is difficult to decipher the Israeli government’s endgame — and mainly because its only modus operandi is to use excessive military force. There was a logic to the war with Iran, but how that military success might be translated into a diplomatic initiative that will ensure Tehran does not develop nuclear military capability is extremely unclear.
Moreover, the so-called Axis of Resistance suffered a severe military hit that has also humiliated its main backer. But as most observers agree, without diplomatic engagement, Iran’s response to the exposure of its vulnerability is likely to be an acceleration of its nuclear program toward creating a nuclear bomb, while June’s 12-day war also exposed Israel’s vulnerabilities.
On the Syrian front, the fall of Bashar Assad was helped by the defeat of Hezbollah in Lebanon, leaving Syria cut off from the Iranian orbit and making it more difficult for Tehran to support its proxy in Lebanon. However, Israel’s aggression and insistence on expanding its territorial occupation of Syrian and Lebanese lands complicate an already complex situation in both countries and restricts their ability to reduce tensions with Israel.
The mass killings and destruction in Gaza, while defying international law and humane behavior, has tainted Israel’s reputation, which also has a strategic price of other countries’ refusal to cooperate with it or do business with it. And for now, extending normalization with other countries in the region is off the table. This will be Netanyahu’s dreadful legacy when he leaves office at last.
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