The brutal attack by HAMAS terrorists on October 7 dealt a body blow to Israeli society. Perhaps the most damaging aspect for the long-term was to have burst the bubble of Israeli exceptionalism. The dramatic failure of the Israeli army underscored that Israel's security cannot be built on border walls, high tech armaments and ignoring the Palestinians' desire for their own state. Israel lives in a dangerous neighborhood which won't change even with the defeat of HAMAS.
What position will the Israeli government take after the war with HAMAS ends? The policies followed what ever political coalition is in power following the war will most likely decide Israel's future. Its forst gaol must be to stop the march towards a "Torah state."
Politicized religion, in what ever country it has appeared, invariably leads to extremism. Because the so-called religious precepts invoked by those who use religion to achieve political ends are said to be the "will of God," they can't be challenged. If they are, those who mount. such challenges are attacking God and religion.
The phony religious extremists in Israel who continue to push for more settlements, while they seize Palestinian land and attack Palestinian farmers and destroy their crops, are building an ever stronger power base. This increased power is evident in the most right-wing government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu which has ever ruled Israel since its founding in 1948.
The government's promoting of violence has created an "open season" on Palestinians as Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Giver, has distributed 10,000 rifles to settlers in the West Bank. Over 300 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since October 7th. While some have been youth in refugee camps who have fought with IDF soldiers, most have been unarmed farmers, often in remote villages, who lack any protection.
Settler attacks offer only one outcome - the spread of violence in the West Bank. Such violence will only lead to more deaths and cries for vengeance. In effect, what Ben Giver and the far-right extremist settlers policies are promoting is the opening of another front in the ongoing war with HAMAS. Further violence strengthen HAMAS' argument that armed conflict is the only option open to Palestinians to end Israeli occupation of the West Bank.
The Torah or theocratic state option will transform the Israel-Palestine struggle into a religious one when in reality it is a struggle over land. Iran would like nothing more than to frame the Israel-Palestine dispute as one between "Muslims." As it designation of the so-called Quds (Jerusalem) Force, a wing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Iran focuses on "liberating Jerusalem," the third most holy city in Islam," rather than supporting the creation of an independent democratic Palestinian state.
In ideological transforming the the Israel-Palestine struggle to a pseudo-religious conflict, Iran can appeal to Arab Muslim youth throughout the Arab world who are angered by Israel's treatment of Palestinians in occupied territories in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Netanyahu's policy of continuing the war in Gaza for "several months" and creating a security zone along the Gaza-Egyptian border is certainly to be rejected by Egypt. Keeping Israeli troops in Gaza is a recipe for continued guerrilla attacks against them and counter-attacks which will further inflame public opinion throughout the Middle East and beyond.
