FLASH
Shkruar nga Dr. Ramzy Baroud
In this sense, the war in Gaza is not simply a military campaign. It is the key pillar that holds together Netanyahu's political survival, ideological project, and regional ambitions...
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has wrapped up his visit to the US, returning home after reportedly securing another round of political support from President Donald Trump. As with previous meetings, the meeting provided Netanyahu with diplomatic cover and strategic assurance, reinforcing Israel’s ability to maintain its military posture in Gaza and across the region with limited external constraints.
The talks, held between December 29 and January 1, did not signal a shift toward de-escalation. Instead, they underscored Netanyahu’s central objective: maintaining a protracted state of war in the Middle East.
This is not necessarily about maintaining full-scale genocide in Gaza at all times, but about keeping the enclave trapped in a state of perpetual instability, a state that allows Israel to violate the October 10 ceasefire agreement at will, recalibrating violence while avoiding the political consequences associated with open mass killings.
This approach exposes a central contradiction in Israel’s official narrative. Netanyahu and key figures within his extremist coalition have repeatedly claimed that Israel has already “won” the war. If so, why insist on keeping the Gaza file open?
The answer lies in a convergence of political, ideological, and strategic calculations.
First, Netanyahu continues to gamble with the possibility that international and regional opinion could eventually become open to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and, subsequently, from the occupied West Bank. The ongoing war, humanitarian collapse, and forced displacement are not unfortunate byproducts of the conflict; they are essential mechanisms for keeping that option alive and politically conceivable.
Resistance in the West Bank has been largely suppressed.
This logic explains Israel's systematic manipulation of aid, including bargains for food, medicine, fuel, and cement. These items have little meaningful connection to the strength of the Gaza resistance. Their restriction is designed to keep Palestinians in Gaza suspended between survival and death.
It also explains why Israel, after constant pressure, agreed to open the Rafah border crossing only on one side, from Gaza. This too is part of a broader scheme to gradually expel Palestinians from the enclave, supported by a well-funded political and logistical machine that has been operating for months.
Second, the genocidal war in Gaza is being actively exploited to escalate conditions in the West Bank. Under the cover of the regional war, Netanyahu and his coalition partners have accelerated settlement expansion, intensified repression, and advanced a long-term colonial project of de facto annexation with minimal international scrutiny.
Throughout the genocide, many observers rightly warned of the worsening situation in the West Bank, with increasing Israeli violence, mass arrests, and the ethnic cleansing of entire communities. While Gaza was undergoing extermination, the West Bank seemed to disappear from global attention. In reality, the two were linked from the beginning.
The escalation in the West Bank was designed to achieve similar results to those in Gaza, fragmentation, dispossession, and control, albeit through different tactics. Unlike Gaza, resistance in the West Bank has been largely subdued through joint Israeli-Palestinian Authority "security coordination."
Third, the continuation of the war serves a critical domestic function. By maintaining a permanent state of emergency, Netanyahu and the Israeli far right in general can maintain political relevance while postponing any serious accountability for the failures of October 7 and the disastrous conflict that followed. War suspends accountability, divides the opposition, and reframes political survival as a matter of national security.
This pattern has been repeated since October 7, 2023. Each time Netanyahu faced increasing domestic pressure to investigate the events that led to the war, he destabilized the domestic political front by escalating one of several fronts that he had deliberately kept active.
Fourth, closing the Gaza file would inevitably intensify the pressure on Israel to pursue a political solution to the occupation of Palestine – precisely what Netanyahu seeks to avoid. Any meaningful political process would limit his ability to govern through force, crisis management, and continued escalation.
This explains the Israeli leader’s refusal to engage seriously in the Trump administration’s push for a broader regional solution, despite the fact that the initiative was deliberately designed by Washington to overwhelmingly benefit Israel. For Netanyahu, even discussing resolutions implies a commitment to a longer, more sustainable “peace process” — the antithesis of his governing strategy since he first became prime minister in 1996.
Fifth, the narrative of “unfinished business” in Gaza is being deliberately used to justify a broader regional agenda. Gaza functions as a pretext and a testing ground for expanding Israeli military and political ambitions in Lebanon, Syria, and beyond.
This assessment is reinforced by Netanyahu’s own language, including repeated references to reshaping the region into a “new Middle East” and rhetoric that aligns with the ideological concept of a “Greater Israel,” an early aspiration within the political imagination of Israel’s far right. In fact, Netanyahu has been very clear that the latter is his precise objective, declaring last August that he is on a “historic and spiritual mission” to pursue the “vision” of Greater Israel.
Finally, any return to normality would place Netanyahu back at the center of Israel’s unresolved legal and political crises. Ending the war would remove the shield of the state of emergency and reopen scrutiny of corruption cases and institutional failures.
Here, Netanyahu's legal team has played a crucial role, repeatedly invoking "national security" concerns to delay court appearances and obstruct proceedings.
In this sense, the war in Gaza is not simply a military campaign. It is the key pillar that holds together Netanyahu’s political survival, ideological project and regional ambitions, one that he seems determined to keep firmly in place./ Adapted from “Pamphlet” by “ArabNews”
Lini një Përgjigje