Netanyahu faces tough questions on Iran – because we Israelis don’t need any more forever wars
Israelis woke up on Sunday morning with a tentative collective sense of relief. For the first time ever, Iran had attacked Israel directly, sending a barrage of more than 300 drones and various missiles intended to rain down on Israel. Instead, Israel and a coalition of its allies intercepted 99% of the threats, according to Israeli authorities – mostly before they reached Israeli territory. Those that arrived caused only limited damage.
Many Israelis felt the country had dodged a bullet. But members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government want to fire back, which would add one more front to a war that is already dangerously overstretched. The ultra-nationalists in Netanyahu’s cabinet insist that the only way to achieve fear and admiration in the Middle East is to “go berserk”, in the words of Itamar Ben-Gvir, an extremist minister who holds the portfolio, ironically, of national security. He is joined by a posse of fanatical men running the government who are beating war drums.
But how would that work out for the state of Israel, founded as a safe haven for Jews (and all of its citizens, in a democratic view), to live safely and flourish? Escalation with Iran stands to suck all sides into a vortex of full-scale war. It would also be unprecedented, since the two countries have never been at war directly and openly. Such a war would drag in numerous other countries of the Middle East, and superpowers too. All-out war between the two best-armed actors in the Middle East might be someone’s definition of national security, but as an Israeli citizen, it’s not mine.
The dramatic Saturday night attack also distracted attention from the terrible escalation in the West Bank on Friday. A 14-year-old Israeli Jewish boy who set out from an outpost called
Angels of Peace – though no such outpost is established to bring peace (it is in fact a political project to expand Israeli control of the West Bank) – was murdered by Palestinians. Even before his fate was known, settlers rampaged through a nearby Palestinian town, with pogrom-like collective-punishment violence, killing one man and burning property. Yet, inconceivably, the incident feels like a new normal after similar events just over a year ago. The West Bank is in a disastrous situation, with Palestinians living under virtual lockdown for the past six months, the widespread loss of jobs since Israel cancelled their work permits and restricted crossings, and with rising settler violence backed by the army stoking fury.
In Gaza, the attention last week turned to Israel’s withdrawal of a commando division from the south, but don’t be fooled. The war is not over, and will not be over for as long as Israel has neither plans nor intentions to end it. The humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza won’t truly end until then, and tens of thousands of Israelis displaced from the south still cannot go home. Netanyahu and his coalition partners from the Religious Zionist party and Jewish Power resist any plans that dare to consider a ceasefire, risking the lives of Israeli hostages daily.
The northern border is not at all quiet; the 80,000 Israeli evacuees cannot return home there either. Escalation with Iran bodes badly for the ongoing brinkmanship between Israel and Hezbollah. Members of Israel’s government have advocated escalation in the north since the early days of the war with Hamas; the majority of the Israeli public support this, and some say Iran’s attack makes this more urgent. Anything less projects weakness, they say.
What’s horribly ironic about this everywhere-is-war reality is how badly Netanyahu’s policies have violated his own prized goals. His spectacular failure regarding Iran – after pushing the US to bolt from the 2015 deal with Iran to limit nuclear enrichment – should now be clear: Iran is closer to nuclear weapons than ever. Netanyahu boasted that he was Mr Security, and would remove the Palestinian issue from national or international agendas, until 1,200 Israelis were slaughtered on one day in October. He basked in Israel’s Middle East integration, which is now strained, or slowed at best.
Looking beyond Netanyahu, this is a failure of the dreams of Israel’s founders and generations of Israelis. Whether one supports or abhors Zionism, consider its aims: a safe haven for the Jewish people (updated for a democratic country, this means a safe society for everyone). A place for the Jewish people – and everyone – to fulfil their potential, living in security. Forget the “light unto the nations” fairytale; in many ways, Zionism hoped that Jewish people would become equal to others, not better or worse. Thus, it was both a movement of exceptionalism and chosen-ness, in part aimed at becoming average.
Instead, Israel is careering towards pariah status. Israelis are cowering in shelters, forced to flee from their sovereign lands, squeezed into shrunken borders within their own country. Stalwart allies stuck by Israel during Saturday night’s direct state-to-state attack from Iran, but Israel’s war in Gaza, following nearly six decades of occupation, has lost vast swaths of the public in the Middle East and in the west. In democratic countries where people vote freely, they will choose leaders in the future who are far less kind to Israel.
To be sure, Israel has real, sometimes implacable enemies, and not everything can be blamed on the occupation or even the Nakba (the destruction of Palestinian society from 1947 to 1949); Hamas and other militant Islamist factions are quite clear that they will not be satisfied until Israel is gone in any form. Iran hasn’t extended its hand in peace lately either.
But it is impossible to see how escalating forever wars on multiple fronts will diminish any of those threats. Too often, Israel resorts first and last to force; a popular quip holds that “whatever doesn’t work through force will work through more force”. This ignores the extraordinary and enduring success of peace – full, end-of-conflict peace, like with Jordan and Egypt.
On Saturday evening, Jordan stepped up to help intercept Iranian missiles, at considerable risk; now Israelis joke that they’ll name their new babies “Jordan”. They would do better to remember the hard power of peace, before endless wars destroy whatever is left.
Dahlia Scheindlin is a Tel Avivbased political analyst and the author of The Crooked Timber of Democracy in Israel
and analysts had expected a measured retaliation. Importantly, Iran had given Israel and its partners ample time to prepare for an assault. Iran also engaged in back-channel talks to make clear that it was not seeking to trigger a war. Once the attack was over, the Iranian mission to the United Nations issued a statement saying that the “matter can be deemed concluded”.
But the direct nature of the attack, which made it so spectacular and frightening, may still compel a strong Israeli response, possibly triggering a new and dangerous cycle of escalation. In a warning to Israeli leaders, Hossein Salami, the commander of the IRGC, hailed the attack as establishing a “new equation” in which Israel can no longer attack Iranian “people, property, or interests” without triggering a “reciprocal” response launched from Iran.
The Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant, has declared that “the campaign is not over yet”. In taking the fight to Iran, Israel sees an opportunity to regain international support, so eroded by its horrendous conduct in Gaza. But it is unclear whether the United States will help Israel strike back.
President Biden’s statement on the Iranian attack reiterates the US’s “ironclad commitment to the security of Israel”, but it also includes some remarkable language. The statement makes clear that Iran attacked “military facilities”, downplaying the threat to civilian lives. It emphasises that the defence was successful and that Israel’s enemies “cannot effectively threaten” its security, pre-empting arguments that Israel faces an existential threat from Iran. Biden vows to coordinate a united “diplomaticresponse” to Iran’s aggression, ruling out an immediate military response. The statement concludes by making clear that American forces had not been attacked – a crucial signal to the American public.
During the third debate in the 2012 presidential election, both the president, Barack Obama, and his opponent, governor Mitt Romney, were asked about Iran and whether they would declare that “an attack on Israel is an attack on the United States”. This was once the widely understood meaning of the US’s “ironclad commitment to Israeli security”. But today, the American electorate no longer understands what national security interests are at stake in the Middle East, and increasingly believes that ironclad commitments should have brassbound conditions. Notably, most American voters now disapprove of Israeli military actions in Gaza.
As Iran’s leadership has doggedly pursued the dismantling of the longstanding security architecture in the Middle East, including the withdrawal of US forces, it has sought to expose the limits of American security guarantees. To this end, it has developed an acute understanding of Biden’s deep reluctance to enter a new war, most recently evidenced by his response to the death of three US soldiers in an attack at the al-Tank military base in Syria in January.
This may explain why Iran opted for a direct, if calibrated, attack on Israel. It did not directly restore Iranian deterrence, but it did expose a critical American reluctance. The effect may be the same.
Biden’s statement makes it clear that Israel remains perfectly capable of defending its territory and will have US support in doing so. But if Israel continues to go on the offensive, it may be forced to do so alone. This fact, more than anything else, may moderate Israel’s next move.
Esfandyar Batmanghelidj is the founder and CEO of the Bourse & Bazaar Foundation thinktank
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