The Guardian view on Israel’s political strategy: it cannot just be unassailable military strength
Israel has some of the most advanced armed forces in the world, but in its war against Hamas it lacks an equally sophisticated political strategy. The humanitarian catastrophe occurring in Gaza is taking on frightening dimensions. Bread is running out. Scabies and diarrhoea rip through overcrowded shelters. Brackish water is making people sick. Even US officials now admit the civilian death toll is likely to be far higher than the 10,000 reported. It is talking, not fighting, that will end the war.
The absence of a sustainable peace plan divides Israel and its allies. When Benjamin Netanyahu suggested Israeli forces could be in Gaza indefinitely, Washington made it clear it wanted no permanent reoccupation. Mr Netanyahu backed down. But he has not ruled out shrinking Gaza’s territory to create a “buffer zone” or forcibly displacing Palestinians. Mr Netanyahu leads the most rightwing government in Israel’s history: one minister recently suggested dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza.
Israel, which lost 1,400 people in a single day of horrific Hamas violence, remains in a deep state of shock. It is not only the loss of life that Israel is dealing with. Many Israelis also personally feel they are in danger, no matter where they live in the country. Mr Netanyahu was wrong to reject a ceasefirefor-hostages deal in Gaza. Freeing innocents from Hamas’s clutches need not stand in the way of making sure the militants pay for their atrocities.
What is also at stake is whether Israel’s leadership can continue with a policy of active and unrelenting hostility towards the Palestinians. This political strategy sought through unassailable military strength to end claims for an independent Palestinian state over the West Bank and Gaza with a capital city in East Jerusalem. Paradoxically, this meant strengthening the extremist elements among the Palestinians, who also rejected the two-state solution.
Mr Netanyahu has said for years that he will never permit a Palestinian state, and has spent his entire career fighting against the idea. It was Donald Trump who backed Mr Netanyahu, leaving 5 million Palestinians without an honest broker in the Middle East. Much of the world had also given up on the conflict’s honourable resolution, in view of Israel’s steady building of illegal settlements in the West Bank and a divided Palestinian leadership. Just a week before 7 October, US officials were boasting that “the region is quieter today than it has been in two decades”. Those words ring hollow today.
Earlier this month, Israel’s prime minister said his country faced a “long war” in Gaza. But how long and to
what end? Modern Israel’s longest war to date was a clash with Hamas five years ago that took almost two months. The longer the fighting, the more likely war spreads to nearby countries and the higher the Palestinian civilian death toll. The latter statistic is a recruiting sergeant for Hamas, prompting Joe Biden’s top military adviser to warn that time is short in Gaza for the Israelis.
But it is not clear if these are the voices that Mr Netanyahu is listening to. Unfortunately, he is more likely to hear the words of his younger brother, Iddo, who wrote last Thursday that only the urgent “terrible fear of our power” could pacify Palestinians, rather than Israel waiting for them to rid themselves of “abysmal hatred”. It is this approach, and thinking, that has failed both Israelis and Palestinians – and needs to change.
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