There is a method to Netanyahu’s madness. The prime minister is learning from his senior colleagues, the European leaders who have adopted the exact same strategy in the Ukrainian conflict.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a new phase in the Gaza military operation where the IDF is set to enter Rafah, a city in the southern Gaza Sector, packed with refugees. According to Netanyahu, ‘there will be no victory in Gaza’ without capturing this city.
To some, it may come across as an odd statement to make. Indeed, six months into the hostilities, it has become abundantly clear that Israel has no winning hand in Gaza, with or without Rafah. The operation has hit a stalemate. After mobilising all of their resources, barring the nukes, and receiving the exhaustive military aid from the US, the Israeli leadership has failed to achieve any of its goals in Gaza, whether it be the eradication of Hamas or the displacement of all the Palestinians.
Tel Aviv only seems to have succeeded in wreaking havoc on the civilians. According to the government media office in Gaza, 150 days into the war, 70,000 homes were destroyed and a further 290,000 homes were damaged. The Israeli strikes resulted in a total of 30,000 civilian deaths.
Another Israeli ‘achievement’ is the country’s global isolation. The carpet-bombing campaign and the appalling maltreatment of Palestinian POWs, evidenced by a huge amount of video footage shot by the IDF, have pointed to the Israelis’ stance towards the Arabs as second-class citizens. Their disgusting behaviour has largely shattered the empathy that the civilised world had for Israel in the wake of the 7 October massacre.
In fact, empathy has given way to accusations of genocide levelled at the Israeli people and Benjamin Netanyahu, in particular, by the Global South. The Middle East countries, including those that sought to mend relations with Tel Aviv, have got back to viewing Israel as a toxic political player and are showing silent and even active support for the Houthis trying to blockade any trade with Israel via the Red Sea routes. Even though the blockade is taking a toll on the Arab countries as well and both insurance companies and tanker owners are opposing shipments to Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, none of the Arab leaders seems to mind it. Otherwise, it would have been interpreted as the indirect support for Israel’s Gaza policy.
But the ones that do challenge the blockade include Israel’s allies, above all, the US. Having fully backed Israel’s talking points on Gaza, including the allegations of Palestinians firing at their own hospitals, Washington expected the military operation to be a blitz. They were hoping that Israel would reach its goals while avoiding atrocities wherever possible. But the US did not end up attaching its name to the routing of Hamas. What it did, though, is become associated with the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs and Muslims. This association soured the US relations with its Arab allies and thwarted its plan to involve these nations in their anti-Russian sanctions war.
No wonder the high-profile figures in the current administration are now urging President Biden to pull the plug on his support of Netanyahu’s policies. To make matters worse for Israel, their possible hopes of rekindling the relations with the White House seven months from now have recently been all but dashed. The presidential race front-runner Donald Trump, a Republican politician and a longtime supporter of Israel, has told the Israeli authorities, ‘You have to finish up your war.’ The most obvious reason he cites is that they are ‘losing a lot of the world’ and ‘a lot of support’.
Worse still, Netanyahu’s support has been plummeting domestically. The Israeli cities are swept with mass protest rallies. Dozens of thousands of people are slamming the prime minister over his inability to release the captives Hamas abducted during the 7 October attack. They are also clamouring for a snap election to be held. This echoes the aspirations of the opposition forces that see Netanyahu’s debacle as a perfect opportunity to get rid of the country’s leading right-wing politician.
It would seem only natural for Netanyahu to start seeking a diplomatic solution: reaching out to Hamas via the Arab mediators and trying to hammer out a compromise and negotiate the release of the captives by ending the military operation and thus limiting the damage. Instead, he seeks to send his troops to Rafah that will lead to even greater damage and a higher civilian death count with no win in sight. Why is that?
The rationale can only be deduced here if we look at it through the lens of Netanyahu’s own interests as opposed to those of Israel. The negotiations and the scrapping of the military operation will not cast Benjamin Netanyahu as a winner. His supporters will decry him as a traitor, while his critics will go, ‘I told you.’ As a result, the prime minister is not just facing losing his job – he may end up behind the bars too. His only shot at keeping things the way they are, if for a short while, is by maintaining the war effort.
That being said, there is a method to Netanyahu’s madness. The prime minister is learning from his senior colleagues, the European leaders who have adopted the exact same strategy in the Ukrainian conflict.
They, too, realise there is no way Russia is getting defeated. They know full well that the protracted war will only result in more civilian woes and a higher battlefield casualty count as well as more losses for the European economy. What the EU leaders are doing is essentially ruining their countries’ future and destroying Europe’s chance of becoming a sovereign player in the multipolar world by balancing out the EU–US ties and improving their relations with Russia. By assuming a stance on Ukraine that is even more hawkish than that of their transatlantic allies, the European leaders are stomping on an opportunity to help shape the future of the European security system that will be decided between Washington and Moscow. But the only consideration that trumps it all is that a less hawkish position may see them ousted of their offices or even jailed.
That is why, just like Benjamin Netanyahu, they are trying hard to redress their personal pursuits as the national needs and are doubling down on their military involvement as they announce new aid packages to Kiev.