NETANYAHU’S POLITICAL CRISISThe Israeli prime minister faces mounting opposition from abroad and new resistance from his own military
The late Abba Eban, the erudite Israeli politician and diplomat who served as foreign minister from 1966 to 1974, said it best decades ago: “History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.” Eban died at age 87 in 2002. Were he still with us, he would be stunned to learn that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has pushed Israel to the edge of the moral abyss, backed by the nation’s religious extremists, is not yet done with the killing and starvation of Palestinians. His latest gambit, made public in an interview last week with Fox News, is a plan for the beleaguered Israel Defense Forces to take control of all of Gaza. The estimated 2.1 million surviving Gazans would be moved to three previously disclosed planned resettlement camps along the Mediterranean coast in Gaza that would be protected and supplied by the over-deployed IDF, whose troops also would temporarily take control of all of Gaza. The Israeli military’s chief of staff, Army Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, who took office in March, immediately objected to the proposed new assignment. He cited the exhaustion and fitness of the Army’s regular and reserve forces, many of whom have been on and off active duty on tours lasting forty weeks or more. The general also made it clear that putting the over-stretched army in charge of the surviving population of Gaza would not be possible. Netanyahu backed down, in part, perhaps, because one faction of the religious fanatics who are keeping him in office believe that prayers, and not the IDF, will keep Israel safe. I’ve been told that the Israeli intelligence community has shared with Washington the location of the remaining hostages who are still alive: they are being held in tunnel complexes that have yet to be targeted. One complex in Rafah, in the south of Gaza, is believed to hold at least ten hostages whose health is known to be parlous. There is a similar hostage complex in the tunnels under Gaza City. It is believed that as many as twenty-two, many of them IDF members, are still alive, though starved and in need of immediate medical attention. An all-out rescue attempt at either hideaway could lead to a successful recovery or to instant death for the hostages and their Hamas captors. Israeli intelligence also believes, I have been told, that killing the Hamas prison guards will make the recovery of the bodies of thirty dead hostages all but impossible because the guards are the only ones who could lead the IDF to them. The world, stunned by the ferocity and success of the Hamas attack on Israel in November of 2023, was slow to respond as Israel made no effort to distinguish between the enemy and those living their life in Gaza. Day and night bombing by the Israeli Air Force tore apart homes and apartment buildings, turning all residents of Gaza, including women and children, into targets. Within a few months charges against the Israeli leadership were filed before the International Criminal Court, which in 2024 issued arrest warrants for Netanhayu and other Israeli leaders. Fresh water and food were increasingly hard to find in Gaza, along with hospitals and clinics. Much of the world did not grasp the extent of the degradation forced on Gaza until photographs of emaciated mothers and children began circulating widely in recent months by the world’s media. Growing international outrage and protests have spurred political pressure on the suddenly weakened prime minister who desperately needs the political support of the religious hard right in Israel. That group is bitterly divided between the hard-line settlers who want to take Gaza and the West Bank and the ultra-orthodox who view the Zionism of the settlers as a secular interruption of God’s plan for the Jews. Netanyahu was indicted in 2019 for breach of trust, bribery, fraud, and corruption. He was forced to give up his various ministry portfolios, but remained in office as prime minister. The specific charges included the acceptance of more than $200,000 in personal gifts for him and his wife, including exotic wines and cigars. Many of the gifts came from Arnon Milchan, a prominent Hollywood producer at the time who benefited from legislation that the prime minister pushed through the Knesset. Netanyahu’s eventual response was an attempt in 2023 to curb the powers of the judiciary, especially the Supreme Court. One of his many defeated proposals was to allow the Knesset to overturn court decisions by a majority vote. A one-vote majority could keep him in office and out of jail. He urged legislation that would give his office a dominant role in appointing judges, including those proposed for the Supreme Court. His various demands and proposals led to weekly protests in Tel Aviv by hundreds of thousands who saw his proposals as a threat to judicial independence. None of his openly self-serving proposals became law, and the successful street demonstrations were seen by many as a turning point in Israeli politics. After the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, Netanyahu has been determined to keep the war of retaliation going beyond mid-2024, when Israeli military analysts and Western intelligence agencies concluded that Hamas’s heavily bombed command structure had lost its ability to function as a military organization. Israel’s avowed goal of killing all members of Hamas was considered impossible to achieve. Hamas is thought today to have a force of three to five thousand, many of them barely teenagers, armed with pistols and eager to avenge the deaths of parents and siblings. Many in Israel believe Netanyahu, with the backing of Joe Biden and Donald Trump, has made Israel safer through the Israel Air Force’s bombing of Syria, Hezbollah, Lebanon, and Iran. Trump’s decision to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites is also seen as a boon to Israel’s safety. But America and the world have increasingly reacted with horror at the suffering of the Palestinians, with many prominent Western officials and commentators now joining an international chorus that has for months been calling Israel’s war a genocide. As Netanyahu moves closer to the far right and looks away from the intensifying sieges in Gaza and the West Bank, the continuing Israeli bombing and herding of the surviving Gazans from one tent city to another is facing mounting opposition around the world. One prospect is that General Zamir may begin to take responsibility for the war away from a prime minister who has personal reasons to keep the war going. Zamir may conclude that there is no way, short of slaughtering and starving all in Gaza, to win a war that is impossible to win, given the increasing horror as the world watches the unfolding atrocity. Invite your friends and earn rewardsIf you enjoy Seymour Hersh, share it with your friends and earn rewards when they subscribe. |