The Israeli Defence Force is intensifying its operations in the
southern Gaza Strip after a week-long pause in the war with Hamas [photo
credit: IDF]
And the second definition of Israel winning Tarek?
The second definition of winning that I've discerned is the one that
is espoused by large sections of Israel's extreme right wing government
and its cultural establishment. And it's chilling, I think, if you note
how much of that political and cultural establishment and even how many
of the normal population of Israel just simply have no acknowledgement
at all of the humanity of Palestinians. It's not even dehumanisation,
it's almost like they consider them some kind of repulsive scourge that
has to be extinguished. And if you look at the statements of these
politicians and of these groups, it's really quite clear that what they
want to do is to reclaim large chunks, if not all of the Gaza Strip and
use the cover of this military response to Hamas in Gaza to also
catalyse the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank. So basically, when the
dust settles, they want to have seized as much land as possible in
Palestine and killed or expelled as many Palestinians as possible. And
as distressing as it is to say, that probably has a higher chance of
success than the first definition of winning here. Because you know, the
block on this happening is not the conscience of Israelis or any of
their western partners and it's not their military capacity. They could
probably do this overnight. The block is the political pressure that
this activity is creating elsewhere in the global political system.
Already large swathes of the world, from Chile to South Africa to
Malaysia, are outraged at what's happening. The Abraham Accords group
is shaken, with the UAE and Saudi Arabia trying to lead the diplomatic
push against what's going on. Even old allies like Jordan and Egypt -
who have been at peace since the 70s - are being pushed into ever more
desperate and hardline statements in a bid to stop this happening. So
the Israelis keep pushing towards this barbaric goal. And if they do it
too hard and too fast, it really could trigger a regional war and God
knows where that leads.
You said three definitions of Israel winning, what’s the last one?
The last definition of winning, which is probably one that I don't
hear discussed hardly at all, but it's worth being cognisant of, because
it highlights how utterly depraved this whole thing is, is to make the
case to say that this is all about Netanyahu saving his political skin. I
mean, the guy was deeply unpopular to begin with. And then many blamed
him for his failure to stop October 7 happening. And you know, Bibi, his
whole shtick is that he would be the guy who stops a Palestinian state
ever emerging by empowering Hamas against the Palestinian Authority,
defending Hamas and neutralising any armed resistance to Israel by
periodically mowing the lawn, which is this horrible clinical phrase for
regularly killing armed resistance actors, for want of a better term,
in order to manage them. And it's clear that after October 7, this
policy has failed catastrophically. So right now, he knows that as soon
as this war ends he's done for, the polling numbers are hugely stacked
against him. So really, he feels like he has to keep waging a war until
something that looks like either satisfying revenge or victory can be
created, that would be sufficient for him to keep this Frankenstein's
monster of a (government) coalition going on or to allow him to build a
new one.
So yeah, I don't really know what winning looks like, it's probably
healthier for us to focus on how this ends, which is that we just hope
that the ceasefire continues, hostages continue to be released. And
eventually there's too much inertia around the prolonged truce, and
Netanyahu has too little political capital remaining to start up
hostilities again. Because a real win here would be to stop October 7
happening again, or to stop the systematic massacre of Palestinians
happening again. And the only way to do that is through a political
settlement.
The podcast was recorded 30 November. On 1 December Israel
resumed its offensive targeting the southern Gaza Strip and the city of
Khan Younis. Yesterday Al Jazeera reported the renewed offensive had already killed 700, taking the death toll in Gaza to more than 15000.