Needlessly, and cavalierly, Israel has lost one war and cannot easily triumph in another martial conquest crucial to achieving its immediate- and longer-term key objectives. Only by overcoming the palpable political considerations that are stifling its chances of victory can Israel turn dishonorable double defeat into something closer to a triumph. But Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu stands squarely in the way of such an advance.
Israel has already lost the information war (as this Newsletter has often said). Without favorable global public opinion or, at least, the favorable opinion in the camps of its usual allies and the wider world, Israel forfeits legitimacy -- even after the dastardly and immensely painful atrocities perpetrated by Hamas -- and relinquishes the strong sense of righteousness that comes from decades of honor, strength, and moral certainty.
Killings in Gaza that appear uncontrolled and immensely excessive -- less carefully targeted than indiscriminate -- naturally detract from Israel's status as the wounded victim. The (inadvertent? accidental?) massacre late last week of civilians grasping for humanitarian assistance supplies (mostly flour and water) to alleviate hunger hardly helped to improve Israel's standing in the information war. Indeed, reports of the massacre were met with understandable horror and consternation among those countries supportive of Israel's justifiable battle against Hamas. After all, at least 12,500 children have been killed, along with perhaps 10,000 adult non-combatants. Moreover, despite U.S. and Jordanian parachuted supplies, thousands more are malnourished and face starvation. One-sixth of all remaining children are dying from hunger.
Nations at war can never afford permanently to lose the information war, and legitimacy. But Israel, for one, could survive temporary losses in the information war if it were also achieving its prime battlefield objectives. Those goals, as enunciated by Netanyahu and his leading generals, are the extirpation of Hamas as a fighting force capable of attacking or threatening Israel, the killing of Hamas' on-the-ground leaders (others live in Beirut and Doha, the political command center), the permanent destruction of Hamas' infrastructure within Gaza, and the removal of Hamas as an administrative body within or for Gaza. The Oct. 7 atrocities gave Israel the authority as a victim to obtain appropriate redress, even the accomplishment of its main goals.
But that authority, that moral superiority, has been besmirched by what appears to much of the watching world as over-reaction and the failure so far to decimate Hamas. The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) has probably destroyed three-quarters of Hamas’ battalions and killed two of five brigade commanders, nineteen of twenty-four battalion commanders, more than fifty platoon leaders, and 12,000 of Hamas’ 30,000 foot soldiers, according to the IDF. That is, perhaps as many as 30 percent of Hamas' foot soldiers have lost their lives. The IDF also claims to have destroyed 40 percent of Hamas' 450 miles of tunnels. But it has not succeeded so far in finding and capturing or eliminating Hamas' major leaders. Nor has it as yet permanently destroyed the infrastructure that enables Hamas to continuing combating Israel. Hamas has even managed to shoot missiles into Israel amid the battles for control of a province that is only twenty-five miles long and eleven miles wide.
Hamas has managed to hide ever since Oct. 7 in some of its remaining tunnels, to move and regroup ahead of the IDF, and to keep control of about ninety-nine hostages. Netanyahu and Israel need to reclaim the hostages and to capture at least some of the top Hamas leadership before claiming real victory. Otherwise, Israel's much heralded military capability can be questioned, and its once proud esteem as a fighting force forfeited. Gaza and Hamas are a much tougher problem than the daring rescue of hostages in Entebbe.
Israel is rightly intent on destroying Hamas as a movement and counterpart to Hezbollah in Lebanon and, say, the Houthis in Yemen. But neither Netanyahu nor the IDF can yet claim such a victory. And the longer the IDF fails to flush Hamas and its leaders from their hideouts, the less acceptable civilian casualties can be, and less Israel appears credible as a victim.
As a Haaretz columnist and political analyst Dahlia Scheindlin put it so well on Friday: "Israel has clung to logically irreconcilable pairs of beliefs for decades. One is that Israel can permanently occupy Palestinian areas, but still be a Jewish state by having a Jewish majority. Another false pairing is that Israel can indefinitely remain an occupying power and remain a democracy. The most violent myth of all holds that Israel can stifle Palestinian freedom forever, while living in peace."
If only Israel had gifted leaders of the kind who led the state in the twentieth century! Then there could be some likely progress in resolving at least some of the irreconcilable pairs. But Israel's Achilles heel is that Netanyahu's premiership is hobbled by his personal need to stay in office and in power to avoid a jail sentence for corruption and to safeguard his personal legacy by remaining at the top despite his massive loss of personal standing since Oct. 7.
Netanyahu has shackled himself for personal survival to the most backward leaning elements in Israel politics -- the far-right gun-slingers of Orthodoxy, especially Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalal Smotrich, leaders of small parties of Mizrahi (immigrant Jews from North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia) opposed to and resentful of the Ashkenazi Europeans who hitherto dominated Israeli politics. Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, both cabinet ministers, want to remove Arabs from the West Bank and Gaza, to reduce the rights of the 2.3 million Israeli citizens who are Arab, Druze, and non-Jewish, and to turn Israel as fully as possible into a strict theocracy.
Even without a total victory against Hamas, which now seems unlikely, Israel could begin to gain back some of its lost legitimacy and suffer fewer information war losses if Netanyahu gave way to more sensible successors like General Benny Gantz or if he and Gantz ousted Ben-Gvir and Smotrich while pledging to cease invading the Palestinian West Bank, to stop withholding tax payments from the Palestinian Authority (PA), and initiated a discussion on how to improve the political viability of the PA. Moving in that direction would help mitigate Israel's pariah status, a designation that the extent of Hamas' atrocities should have prevented.
President Biden and other global leaders, even the surrounding Arab states, want Israel to commit to a two-state solution that would elevate the PA's status and perhaps its viability. That is an end goal that will be excessively difficult to achieve given the PA's administrative and moral bankruptcy among its supposed constituents in the West Bank. Its leadership is also wildly corrupt and has been since Yasser Arafat's day. But Netanyahu and Israel's only way of moving the information war needle back in their direction is to embrace at least the concept of a two-state answer to the problem. Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar need something tangible to which they can tie their own preferred erasure of Hamas. Better yet, would be a move in that direction absent Netanyahu. Doing so would promote confidence and, conceivably, an enduring peace.
A truce could be agreed upon later today or tomorrow. That would exchange hostages for Israeli prisoners. It might also give Israel a chance to rethink its further strategy in a Gaza that is out of control, without food and water, and increasingly prey to criminal gangs. Israel must do better, and so must its Western backers. If only President Biden could break with and help to remove Netanyahu, there might be room for real progress — even a permanent cessation of hostilities.
Correct in every respect, professor...with one small caveat (edit?) Netanyahu is not an Obstacle, he is The Obstacle.
Also, it has gotten to the point, sadly, that capturing Hamas's 'top leadership' will no longer do any good ... many more (now hundreds of thousands more) are waiting just behind to take their place. Hamas is and always has been a state of mind....and now in the wake of the all but indiscriminate slaughter in Gaza, it is hard to imagine there are few there who would back Hamas's removal and replacement by any entity that would support Israel.
Good summary. Netanyahu should be dumped but is similar to Trump. He is dishonest but is sustained by a tough, uneducated, hard right base. No quick or easy answer. FJS