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An Israeli Leadership Damaging Israel's Chances for Long-term Survival [1]
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Date: 2023-12-10
The title above is asserts more than I know for sure, but that is regrettably how it looks from here.
The question for Israel in the aftermath of the Hamas atrocities of October 7 has always been, what is the best way to respond? The proper criterion for Israeli decision-makers seeking to answer that question has always been, what response will enhance rather than damage the prospects for Israel’s survival?
As I wrote here shortly after this crisis began, the challenge facing those Israeli decision-makers seemed the most complex I’d ever seen any government face, as there were so many levels of the situation.
One of those levels — obvious from the start — is that it was clear that Hamas had committed its atrocities with the purpose of provoking Israel to do what Israel had the clear impulse to do: i.e. to launch an attack on Hamas which, as it was fully enmeshed in the whole of the structures of Gaza, would mean an attack on the civilian population of Gaza as well.
A COST/BENEFIT ANALYSIS
It is not clear what response would have served Israel best, but it is difficult to see how Israel has helped itself as much as it has hurt itself by hurling its military might against Gaza as it has.
On the plus side, for Israel, there are the ways that it has damaged Hamas— killing leadership, killing Hamas fighters, destroying Hamas infrastructure. Likely, Hamas will no longer control Gaza.
Also on the plus side, Israel will have sent a message to its enemies — Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Iranian regime — that an attack on Israel will be met by furious retaliation.
I find it difficult, from here, to know how much Israel has achieved, or how those achievements will affect how events in the region will unfold in the years to come.
But from what I can see, those achievements that serve Israeli interests seem dwarfed by the damage Israel has done to itself.
Israel had been on a path of normalization of its relations with Arab states. When the Hamas atrocities occurred on October 7, the Israelis were en route to achieving the big breakthrough in those “Abraham Accords”: a U.S.-brokered deal with Saudi Arabia.
The Israeli assault on Hamas — and therefore on more than two million civilians in Gaza — has stopped that process dead in its tracks. The “Arab street” is so furious that there is some danger that some of the progress already made with other Arab nations might be reversed.
The rage of the Palestinian people in particular has intensified still further, creating that much more historical trauma and hatred that would have to be overcome in future years for any stable and lasting peace to develop.
Likewise in much of the rest of the world. In the minds of the publics of the West the initial revulsion at the horrors of what Hamas inflicted on innocent Israeli civilians has been pretty thoroughly displaced by strong disapproval of what the Israelis have done in response.
Antisemitism has reared its ugly head around the world.
How long, one wonders, will it take for the image of Israel to recover from the damage to it caused by Israel’s killing thousands of Palestinian civilians in the course of its assault on Hamas?
I would like to believe that those costs are outweighed by what Israel has achieved. But the costs are big and obvious, and the benefits of Israel’s choices seem unclear and largely speculative.
A DEFECTIVE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT
If it is true that Israel chose badly how to respond to the Hamas atrocities, why would that be?
In part, it would seem that the impulse to vengeance is widespread in humanity, and that it frequently leads to bad choices. As was mentioned frequently at the outset of this crisis — including by President Biden — the United States made such mistakes in response to the attacks of 9/11/01.
But it was already quite clear — including to most of the Israeli public — that the current Israeli government was defective. A sociopathic Prime Minister — Benjamin Netanyahu — had already sacrificed the interests of the nation by forming the only coalition he could that would restore him to power: a coalition that included fascistic elements that had previously been consigned to oblivion because of their extremism.
The nation had already been convulsed for months — with weekly demonstrations against the government — in which hundreds of thousands took to the streets to protest the measures — ”judicial overhaul” — that threatened to destroy the checks and balances of Israeli democracy.
Already, that much of the prequel to this crisis reveals two reasons why Israel would choose badly, and why its bad choices would be specifically in the direction of excessive reliance on the tools of war.
One of those reasons is the fascist element that must be satisfied for the government to hold together. Fascism tends always to lean toward conflict, to embrace cruelty as a feature not a bug of policy, and to seek outcomes in which there’s everything for the Us and nothing for the Them.
So major figures in this government are in their element when it comes to vengeance, destruction, and manifestly have no interest in an eventual two-state solution. For them, the idea of adding bridge-building with the Palestinians to the war-making against the Enemy among them does not comport with their fascistic spirit.
And then there’s the Prime Minister, who depends on those fascists to maintain himself in power, which he clearly wants for selfish reasons (like to keep himself out of jail for the crimes on which he’s been on trial). Netanyahu has already shown that he will sacrifice the nation’s interests to serve his own, and his interests requires that he not alienate the fascists he took into his coalition.
In addition, it is widely understood that the Israeli public has soured on him profoundly, but is waiting for this crisis to resolve before booting him out. This in itself gives Netanyahu a perverse incentive to prolong the war, rather than seek its resolution.
Whether that perverse incentive is affecting the decisions that are continuing the attacks Hamas and Gaza is not visible to me. But it is not unreasonable to suspect it.
CAN THE U.S. DO ANYTHING TO HELP THE ISRAELIS DUMP THIS GOVERNMENT
Earlier in this crisis, I wrote here in praise of President Biden’s masterful diplomatic moves to — first — completely gain the trust and appreciation of the Israeli people and — then — use that trust to nudge the Israelis toward caution, moderation, careful forethought.
It is clear that the Biden Administration had some beneficial impact on how Israel conducted itself. The ground assault was delayed, the attacks were apparently at least marginally more careful, attention to the humanitarian emergency in Gaza was likely greater than it otherwise would have been.
But it is also increasingly clear that the decision-makers in Israel have frustrated Biden by falling more than a little short of what the American administration thinks is called for.
What had looked like a brilliant, multi-dimensional presidential foray into a crisis with huge stakes now increasingly looks like a losing bet. Because the Israeli decision-makers have determinedly gone their own way, they’ve put Biden and the United States in the position of being tied to a war-making effort that much of the world strongly condemns.
(Perhaps history will say of Biden in this crisis, “Good try, but he under-estimated the brokenness of the Israeli government he thought he could influence.”)
To the extent this situation can be retrieved, it would seem to require the replacement of this Israeli government with another that is animated by the better spirit of that nation.
Is there any course that the United States can and should take to achieve that change of government?
No nation will allow another to dictate its internal political life. So nothing can overtly be said or done in which the United States seems to be telling Israel to dump this Netanyahu coalition and establish a government that will make better decisions.
However, the United States make its own decisions about what it will do, or not do. The Biden Administration can say many things that do not overtly call for the fall of the Netanyahu government.
Already, the complaints coming from President Biden, Secretary of State Blinken, and Secretary of Defense Austin are less muted. Already, with the Netanyahu government having done nothing to check the crimes that Israeli settlers have been committing against Palestinian villagers in the West Bank, the U.S. has taken (token) unilateral steps to impose sanctions on such settlers.
While those moves point in that direction, they are clearly too weak to affect the situation in Israel.
On one occasion, President Biden said that attaching conditions to U.S. military aid to Israel was “a worthwhile thought.” But nothing along those lines has happened.
Could any American course of action — an optimal orchestration of word and deed — help the Israeli people get a government that would make better decisions? I don’t claim to know.
But in terms of issues of respect for “sovereignty,” it seems relevant to note that the polls in Israel show that a substantial majority of Israelis are not glad to have Netanyahu leading their country, and that — if my assessment above is correct — this Israeli government is making decisions that hurt, rather than enhance, Israel’s most vital interest: its survival as a Jewish state in that region.
If I were President Biden, I would ask my advisors: “Is there anything we can do to bring about a better Israeli government than the one that is hurting both Israel and the United States.”
(All this on the assumption that I’m right that the decisions Israel has been making have done more to hurt Israel’s long-term chances for survival than to enhance them. That’s how it looks from here, but I acknowledge that what will be the consequences of any course of action are impossible to judge with certainty.)
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