Could the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants break Netanyahu’s grip on power?
With minimal opposition and a sense of sourness, bitterness and at times anger, another unnecessary Israeli war in the north came to an end Wednesday. The dead are buried – maintaining the normal ratio of about 4,000 to about 100. The wounded are undergoing rehabilitation, the mourners are grieving and in post-traumatic shock, homes are in ruins and nothing is better anywhere at the end of this useless war than it was before it erupted. The prime minister's concluding remarks on Tuesday evening illustrated that well.
In a discouraging speech on the occasion of the cease-fire in the north, Benjamin Netanyahu enumerated the war's achievements: how many we killed and how much we destroyed, as if the measure of the blood and the scope of the destruction are an achievement. "The earth shook in Beirut," he boasted. So what? What benefit did Israel gain from that ground-shaking other than satisfying a lust for revenge? What did anyone, other than the arms industry and the war barons, gain?
Netanyahu didn't attempt for a moment to provide even a sliver of hope for a different future. He only promised that we would resume killing and destroying in the next round as well. The only Israeli vision is to continue living by the sword, and only by the sword, forever.
Most Israelis are in a similar mindset. In its emptiness, some of the opposition came out against the cease-fire while the Bibi-ists swallowed hard and squirmed in discomfort. Another war is ending without any rejoicing in any political camp. In these parts, such feelings are reserved for the beginning of wars, not their end.
In that case, what purpose was served by this violent spectacle? Is Israel a safer place now? Is the Galilee? Has the country's international standing improved? Has the economy? Have the people's spirit or mood? Has anything? It's only the damage that has again piled up, reaching unprecedented heights.
It was clear from the first day of the war that fighting on two fronts wouldn't lead to a better future. That's what happens when you set out to fight punitive wars, the entire aim of which is to satisfy public opinion. They'll say: "There's no alternative." They said: "They started it." They claimed self-defense. All that is true, but what goals have been achieved other than the wholesale assassinations that will quickly spawn new lines of command, and the mass killing and destruction that have already spawned burning hatred that is more justified than ever around the world?
Israel won militarily in Lebanon and Gaza and lost in every other respect. Israel's leaders are wanted in The Hague and its citizens are ostracized in the world. Gaza and Lebanon were two wars of choice. From the outset, it was clear that it may have been permissible to wage them but that it would also be dreadfully foolish.
It was possible and necessary not to wage such a horrific war against Gaza even following October 7. The war hasn't returned the dead or the hostages. It was also possible and necessary not to wage the war against Hezbollah. What was achieved through Tuesday's agreement was possible to achieve without a war – a halt to the war in Gaza. Therefore the reasoning that Israel had no choice is false. It's particularly outrageous when one sees how it has ended and at what price. It therefore would have been better not to go to war in Gaza, without which there also wouldn't have been a war in the north.
Men carry Hezbollah flags and a picture depicting late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut's southern suburbs on Wednesday.Credit: REUTERS
The bereaved families have been trying to satisfy themselves that their sons did not die in vain, that they died defending the homeland. It's hard to argue with them, but what defense of what homeland is there in the horrifying destruction and death in Gaza and in the dreadful punishment in Lebanon?
All Israel wanted to achieve with the agreement in the north was a time-out until the next war. There wasn't even an attempt at anything else. In Gaza, the reality is even worse. There the killing is just for the sake of killing and has no end. That's a disastrous policy.
Israel maintains the right of self-defense but neither of the two fronts dealt with that. If Israel had wanted to defend itself, it should have known what it wanted to achieve at the end of the war. It had no idea, and as a result, this was another war fought in vain, the partial end of which no one is even celebrating. Israel wants wars.