FLASH
Shkruar nga Jonathan Freedland
Polls show that only a minority trusts Netanyahu, while an overwhelming majority, around 74%, want this terrible war to end.
Will the war in Gaza last forever? It is not an entirely rhetorical question. There are days when I fear that the death and destruction that have continued for 650 days will never stop, that it will eventually turn into a constant, low-level war within the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a war within a war, becoming a backdrop to world affairs, just as the Troubles in Northern Ireland continued for 30 years. In the same nightmare, coincidentally, I see Benjamin Netanyahu, who has now sat in the chair of Israel’s prime minister for almost 18 years, occasionally staying in place for another 18 years or more, ruling the country until he is 100.
Israelis want none of this to happen. Polls show that only a minority trust Netanyahu, while an overwhelming majority, about 74%, want this terrible war to end. As the leader of one of the ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, parties, which this week left Netanyahu’s governing coalition over the government’s failure to pass a bill that would permanently exempt young Haredi men from military service, recently said: “I don’t understand what we’re fighting for there… I don’t understand what the need is.”
If the supposed benefit of the war escapes even Netanyahu’s former partners in government, its cost is obvious to all the watching world. Every day brings news of another 10, 20 or 30 Palestinians killed in Gaza, often while waiting in line for urgently needed food or water. The UN estimates that in six short weeks some 800 people have been killed in or around food distribution points, most of these deaths in the vicinity of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), the joint US-Israeli venture established after Israel decided that the UN could not be trusted to keep aid out of the hands of Hamas and whose short history has been one of chaos and bloodshed.
Even the staunchest defenders of Israel do not claim that those killed in these incidents were Hamas fighters or that they posed any kind of military threat. It is simply the completely unnecessary deaths of innocent civilians, day after day after day.
Inside Israel, an endless war means the death of Israeli soldiers and, remember, almost every 18-year-old (non-Haredi) Jewish, Druze and Circassian is a conscript and another day chained in the dark to the 20 living Israelis believed to be held hostage by Hamas and its allies in Gaza. That is why three out of four Israelis want this war to end immediately.
So why isn't it ending? Some believe there could be movement toward a ceasefire and hostage release agreement in the coming days, with one U.S. official saying it's "closer than ever." If that's true, one contributing factor is worth explaining - because it's damning.
Next week will mark the end of the current session of the Israeli parliament, with the Knesset on recess until October. During those three months, it is procedurally more difficult to topple an Israeli government. So Netanyahu will soon be less vulnerable to ultranationalists Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, who have long threatened to leave his coalition if he makes a deal that ends the war.
Underlying this is the assumption that Netanyahu has so far preferred to keep the hostages in their cells and Palestinian civilians dying rather than risk his own survival. In other words, if a deal is reached soon, it will be a deal that could have been reached earlier but was delayed to keep Netanyahu in office.
Confidence in attributing such selfish and amoral motives to Netanyahu is bolstered by a comprehensive New York Times investigation over the past 21 months, which methodically confirms with hard evidence what has long been assumed by most analysts: that "Netanyahu prolonged the war in Gaza to stay in power."
The article focuses on several key moments when a ceasefire was within reach, when Israel’s military commanders demanded it, but when Netanyahu chose to leave, fearing that if he didn’t, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich would destroy his government. Stripped of power, Netanyahu would lose much of the armor that protects him as he faces trial on corruption charges. Like his nationalist compatriot, Donald Trump, Netanyahu has a deep fear of going to prison.
So, in April 2024, Netanyahu was ready to present to his cabinet a proposal for a six-week pause in the war. This would have involved the release of more than 30 hostages and negotiations for a permanent ceasefire. The plan was written and ready to be implemented. But cabinet minutes obtained by the newspaper show that, at the last minute, Smotrich, who, like Ben-Gvir, wants Israel to occupy Gaza and rebuild Jewish settlements there, warned that if Netanyahu signed the rumored “surrender,” his government would be at an end. The proposal was shelved, and the war continued.
At the time, the death toll in Gaza was 35,000. Today it is estimated at 58,000. Of course, it is possible that a deal could have failed in April 2024, that Hamas would have said no, or that it would not have lasted. But there was a chance, and it is at least possible that 23,000 lives could have been saved.
This was not the last such opportunity. In July of last year, international mediators gathered in Rome believing that the stars had finally aligned for a ceasefire. But, according to the New York Times, Netanyahu suddenly presented six new demands that destroyed any chance of a deal. Earlier, Ben-Gvir had stormed the prime minister’s office, warning him not to make “a reckless deal.” Once again, Netanyahu put his own political survival ahead of the lives of Israeli hostages and Palestinian civilians.
You would think that this record would be enough to see Netanyahu scorned by the Israeli electorate: the evidence against him is so devastating. But he will present himself in the upcoming elections, which could be just six months away, as the man who defeated Israel's most powerful enemies.
Hezbollah no longer threatens Israel from the north; Bashar al-Assad is gone; and Iran has been humiliated, its air defenses destroyed, its nuclear ambitions damaged. Hamas still exists, but Israel is no longer surrounded by a “ring of fire” formed by Tehran. Netanyahu says that the success is entirely his own, while the failures that led to the Hamas massacres on October 7, 2023, are everyone else’s fault. As an electoral argument, it may work.
The Israelis will indeed have to face a great reckoning for the destruction they have caused in Gaza. But the first to be judged should be Benjamin Netanyahu, who held the power of life and death in his hands and chose the death of others so that his political career could live on. He should carry the shame of this until his last breath. / Adapted from “Pamphlet” by “TheGuardian”
Lini një Përgjigje