Failed Doha Strike Bursts the Illusion That Israel Can Use Force Wherever and Whenever It Wants
Benjamin Netanyahu doesn't like the word "strategy." In deliberations with the heads of the security branches, he has a habit of showing open contempt for the very existence of the term, quoting his father, the late historian Benzion Netanyahu, who always regarded it with suspicion. This doesn't mean the prime minister lacks strategic goals.
For three decades, he has waved two flags: preventing an Iranian nuclear bomb and thwarting the establishment of a Palestinian state (even if, for tactical reasons, he briefly pretended in 2009 that he was willing to support the idea). In recent years, especially since his corruption trial began in 2020, a different goal has occupied the top spot: remaining prime minister, at any cost.
In Netanyahu's world, opportunities are exploited from a position of strength, and options are always kept open for the last minute. People who have worked with him closely describe a man who consistently uses a system of compartmentalized cells. Dozens of moves are examined and carried out simultaneously, and only he is aware of the connection between them and the ability to link a concession at point A to extortion at point B – without restraint or feelings of regret.
After the October 7 massacre, several of his foreign guests recounted meeting a shadow of a man, a pale and frightened leader who feared his country's citizens would drive him from his home in Jerusalem with rocks and sticks, given his responsibility for the massacre. But Netanyahu soon recovered and developed new survival tactics.
Immediately after the war with Iran in June, his close associate Nathan Eshel was quoted by the Times of Israel as saying that by the next general election everyone in Israel will have forgotten the October 7 calamity; "The disaster will have no effect whatsoever on the election results. None." That's Netanyahu's revised approach, which is still aimed at survival.
In his handling of the war, his policy is militant and expansive and involves taking more risks than he would have dared to in the past. Along the way, he seems to have fallen in love with a new idea: expanding the state's borders, for the first time since 1967. Hence the constant flirtation with seizing new territory in the Golan Heights, on Mount Hermon and in southern Lebanon, alongside the push to annex the West Bank settlements.
On Tuesday, after the attempt to assassinate Hamas' leadership in the Qatari capital, Doha, one of Netanyahu's spokesmen (the one who isn't suspected in the Qatargate case) mocked the criticism from the left. "On a day like this, [we] need to ask: What's the strategy?" he wrote on X. The aim was to ridicule the claim that Netanyahu has no plan to end the war and return the hostages and bodies held by Hamas in Gaza. According to his people, these are only petty opponents who refuse to see the big picture: Netanyahu has restored Israel's strength and deterrence. All of our neighbors in the Middle East are watching and trembling.
But ironically, it soon became clear that this time things aren't going as the Prime Minister's Office had hoped, and the image of an Israel that is always able to use force at will, without limits, proved illusory. Qatar and Hamas are still putting up a big smoke screen but the results of the attack don't appear promising. The adherence to and admiration for the policy of targeted killing – in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Iran, in Yemen and now in Qatar – apparently didn't prove themselves this time. Something went wrong. It was either faulty intelligence or Hamas was given an advance American-Qatari warning. At the moment, it appears that most of the targets escaped unscathed.
All this clarifies the criticism of the management of the war, which should have not have dragged on until its second anniversary, in less than a month. On October 7, 2023 a terrible Israeli failure occurred, enabling Hamas to commit a murderous massacre. That's the fault of the heads of the defense establishment, who didn't recognize the specific danger in time and didn't properly prepare for it. But it's also the responsibility of Netanyahu, who ignored all the defense organizations' warnings leading up to the war, who deliberately exacerbated the rift in Israel and openly dismissed the possibility that the surprise attack of the Yom Kippur War could be repeated.
Later, that same defense establishment chalked up major accomplishments in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran. But what is currently tripping Israel up is precisely what the advisers are trying to downplay: the refusal to translate the military and intelligence achievements into far-reaching strategic results, even if it sometimes demands political compromise. Time after time, Israel had opportunities to end the war with the help of a deal and to stabilize its borders. But Netanyahu opted for the opposite because the continuation of the war and the chaos serve his interests. Paradoxically, they also ensure the stability of his government by preserving the unholy alliance that he forged with the Knesset's messianic right-wing parties.