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| Itamar Ben-Giver, Benjamin Netanyahu and Bezalel Smotrich |
Four months after the brutal HAMAS attack on southern Israel, it is clear that Benjamin Netanyahu represents a serious threat to Middle East peace and potentially to global stability as well. The list of Netanyahu's political sins is a long one. It begins with his lifelong effort to prevent the establishment of an independent Palestinian state living peacefully side-by-side with Israel. What are the implications if the current prime minister remains in office and the Israel-HAMAS war continues?
First, it has become clear that Netanyahu wants the current war to continue. He doesn't care about the over 100 Israeli hostages still held by HAMAS. All that concerns him, as myriad political analysts have argued, is to keep his hold on power and avoid the playing out to the end of his current trial for political corruption. Netanyahu Puts Political Survival Ahead of Tough Decisions on Gaza
Second, it was Netanyahu who ignored numerous warnings from Mossad, Israel's main intelligence organization, and members of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), that HAMAS was planing an attack on Israel. It has been noted that he refused to read a report on the terrorists' plan of attack in July 2023 when delivered to him by a high ranking military officer.
As a result of the massive security failure on October 7th, more than 40 former high ranking army officers and intelligence chiefs signed a petition saying that Netanyahu's rule constitutes a "clear and present danger" to Israel and that he can no longer remain Israel's prime minister. Although he doesn't have the right to do so, the petition asked Israel's president Isaac Herzog to remove Netanyahu from office. Netanyahu must be removed, top former Israeli national security officials say
To retake the office of prime minister in 2022, Netanyahu's only option in forming a cabinet was to include far right extremists, the most notorious of which are Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Giver, and Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich. All the far right cabinet ministers seek to expel the Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza.
Smotrich created a domestic controversy by diverting large amounts of funding to expand illegal West Bank settlements while Ben-Giver has given arms to settlers with the implicit message that using them on Palestinians won't result in repercussions. Because after Netanyahu returned to power in 2022, attacks on Palestinian farmers, especially in remote areas of the West Bank, created a Palestinian backlash, IDF troops were moved to the West Bank leaving the Israel-Gaza border only lightly patrolled.
Third, in another ploy to please his far right cabinet ministers, Netanyahu initiated a plan to strip the Israeli Supreme Court of its powers to overrule laws passed in the Knesset, Israel's parliament. Arguing that the Court was too "liberal," Netanyahu provoked 33 weeks of demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of Israelis demanding that his withdraw his effort to undermine Israel's democracy.
While the October 7th attack brought national unity against the HAMAS terrorists, Netanyahu's effort to turn Israel into an authoritarian state had many consequences prior to the attack. One was that a 100,000 air force reservists, and those in many other parts of Israel's reserve sector (designed to supplement the small IDF in times of need), refused to report for service. As many analysts have argued, this emboldened Israel's enemies, such as Iran and its proxies, including HAMAS, to increase their military pressure on Israel.
The ill-conceived Israel attack on Gaza began immediately after the HAMAS terrorist attack. Rather than develop a strategic plan, the IDF was sent to bomb the small Gaza strip (about the size of New York City). Using 2000 lb. "bunker busting" bombs and "dumb" (unguided) bombs, Israel has killed over 26,000 Gazans (many buried under building rubble), and wounded more than 62,000. Many women and children have been killed while amputations and permanent physical and psychological ailments among children provide fertile soil for a new generation of extremists. Palestinian death toll in Gaza surpasses 25,000 while Israel announces the death of another hostage
Netanyahu's refusal to consider a permanent ceasefire in exchange for Israeli hostages held by HAMAS has severely damaged Israel's international standing and largely wiped out the sympathy people throughout the world felt for the victims of HAMAS' brutal October 7th attack.
Even the United States, Israel's strongest ally, has decried the large number of civilians casualties in Gaza. The Biden administration has called for establishing a Palestinian state when the war ends - an outcome abhorred by Netanyahu and his far right supporters - and is considering slowing arms deliveries to Israel to pressure Netanyahu to wind down the war. US mulling using arms deliveries to Israel as leverage to pressure Netanyahu: Report
Netanyahu's failure to delineate when the war will end and detail a post-HAMAS Gaza and who will govern it, together with the large numbers of civilian deaths caused by Israel's bombing and shelling of northern and southern Gaza, has incentivized Iran and its local proxies to enter the fray. This has taken 3 forms: 1) constant shelling of northern Israel by Lebanon's powerful Hizballah militia; 2) attacks by Iranian trained and funded militias in Iraq on US forces stationed there; and 3) attacks by Iranian funded Houthi forces in northern Yemen on ships navigating the Gulf of Aden, the Bab al-Mandab entrance to the Red Sea and the southern Red Sea itself.
The Hizballah shelling has taken a social psychological and economic toll on the residents of northern Israel and increased the desire of hawkish members of Netanyahu's cabinet to attack the militia and push it back from the Israel-Lebanon border. However, others Israelis remember the fiasco which resulted from Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon and the human and material losses it suffered until it withdrew its forces in 2000.
Hizballah today is a very formidable military force. Both Iran which funds it, and the militia, seek to avoid an all out war with Israel. Lebanon suffered greatly during the 2006 Israel-Hizballah war with much of its infrastructure damaged by Israeli air raids. Today, Lebanon is a failed state, with its economy in shambles and 40% of the population living in poverty. But an Israeli ground attack seeking to push Hizballah forces back into Lebanon would leave the militia no choice but to respond.
With over 150,000 missiles supplied by Iran, many with precision targeting capabilities, no place in Israel would be safe from Hizballah missiles which could overwhelm Israel's "Iron Dome" anti-missile system. Under such circumstances, the United States would feel pressured to intervene in the fighting. Such an eventuality could bring Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in neighboring Syria into the conflict leading to a regional war in the Middle East.
Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping is causing serious economic damage to global shipping. Insurance rates for ships passing through the Bab al-Mandab en route to the Suez Canal have skyrocketed. Many shipping companies are rerouting their cargo around the Cape of Good Hope to avoid Houthi attacks. This decision increases travel time from the Gulf of Aden to Europe and the United States by 40 days, adding millions of dollars to shipping costs, constraining supply chains and raising prices to consumers.
Operation Prosperity Guardian, an international effort organized by the Pentagon to interdict Houthi drones and missies and to destroy their caches of arms, has thus far been unsuccessful. An invasion of Yemeni territory held by Houthi fighters - battle hardened, by years of fighting with Saudi and UAE forces - would embroil the US and Western partners in yet another unending military adventure.
The continuing attacks by Iranian funded militias in Iraq and Syria on US forces forces stationed in the region finally resulted in the deaths of three service members at Tower 22, a base at the intersection of the Jordanian, Syrian and Iraqi borders. The Biden administration has promised a strong military response to these deaths.
Meanwhile, GOP hawks in the US Senate, including Lindsay Graham (R-SC), John Cornyn (R-TX) and Tom Cotton (R-AK), have called for the United States to strike Iran inside its borders. However, such a strike could lead Iran to close the Straits of Hormuz at the entrance to the Persian Gulf, thereby choking off much of the world's oil supplies. Such action in response to an American attack on Iran itself could provoke a regional war in the Middle East.
As I argued in an earlier post, all the problems mentioned above, including the HAMAS attack, could have been avoided if Benjamin Netanyahu had agreed to establish an independent Palestinian state. There are numerous moderate Palestinian leaders who, since the 1990s, have recognized Israel's right to exist as a sovereign state. Among the most prominent are Mustafa Barghuti, Salam Fayyad (a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Princeton University's School of Public and International Studies this academic year), and Sari Nusseibeh. Establishing an independent Palestinian state under the control of secular moderates would have helped marginalize terrorist groups such as HAMAS, which is really more loyal to Iran than it is to the Palestinian people. Beyond Historical Amnesia, Revenge and the Good-Evil Binary: Solving the Israel-Palestinian Conflict Once and for All
The question now becomes: when will rational, solution-oriented leadership on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute take control of the process to bring this 75 year old conflict to a final, peaceful resolution?
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