Netanyahu’s war to end all wars

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, having rejected a US-initiated Gaza ceasefire and calls from Western allies to avoid a wider Middle East war, has put into motion his own more bellicose plan: to secure Israeli military dominance in the region he feels has slipped away.

Netanyahu considers Hamas’s military defeat a first step toward closing loopholes left over from the conclusion of past wars that, in his mind, guaranteed future ones. The Israeli leader clearly wants only decisive victories.

Beyond the military and political destruction of Hamas, Netanyahu’s wider goals are to:

• Eliminate armed opposition in the West Bank and dismantle the Palestinian Authority that governs parts of the territory.

• Erase the ability of Hezbollah, a Shiite Muslim army and political party in Lebanon, to threaten Israel militarily.

• Undermine Iran’s leadership of the anti-Israel “Axis of Resistance,” which includes not only Hezbollah but also Syria and Houthi rebels in Yemen, the Shiite Muslim organization that has been blocking ship traffic in the Red Sea that leads to the Suez Canal.

• Put an end to the “two-state solution,” a peace formula long promoted by the United States that would grant Palestinian sovereignty over the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

Netanyahu’s vision is an updated version of goals set by the late Ariel Sharon, an Israeli army general and bellicose one-term prime minister late in the 20^th century.

Numerous protests have broken out in Israel against Netanyahu’s management of the Gaza war—but only in regard to arranging a ceasefire with Hamas to secure the release of about 100 hostages held in Gaza. His broader objectives have incited wide support and almost no domestic opposition.

“Even if an opposition party came to power, Israel’s strategic position is unlikely to be dramatically altered,” said Hugh Lovatt, a senior researcher at the European Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank based in Washington.

“While Netanyahu’s departure could open the possibility of a ceasefire agreement in Gaza and perhaps a less confrontational approach towards the Palestinian Authority, no major Israeli Jewish political party is currently advocating for a two-state solution or an end to Israel’s illegal settlement project.”

Here are the outlines of Netanyahu’s plans:

Pacifying Gaza

Hamas initiated the Gaza war when it raided a set of Israeli communities and killed more than 1,200 civilians. Israel retaliated with massive bombing from the air and infantry ground assaults. The toll on Palestinian life has been heavy.

Gaza medical officials have reported more than 40,0000 deaths, including thousands of women and children. Hamas offers no statistics on military casualties.

More than two million Gaza residents have been displaced from their neighborhoods into makeshift tent camps. Camps and other refuges have in turn been subject to assaults, forcing the internal refugees to flee again.

International aid agencies estimate that at least 70% of residential housing in Gaza has been severely damaged, along with numerous schools, businesses and hospitals.

More than 40 million tons of debris are strewn across the enclave–enough to fill dump trucks lined up from New York City to Singapore, according to Bloomberg, the US-based financial news agency.

Israeli military officials have declared victory. Hamas can no longer mount “significant resistance” to Israeli forces from there, officials said last week. Intelligence officers nonetheless cautioned that armed remnants continue to operate as “a terror group and a guerrilla group.”

Efforts to ensure Israel’s permanent physical control of Gaza is underway. Israel is constructing a limited reoccupation of the area. The project is meant to close loopholes in the efforts by Sharon to subdue Gaza resistance.

Sharon was prime minister from 2001 to 2006, and in 2005 decided to abandon the coastal enclave, raze 21 settlements there and send 8,000 Israeli citizens home.  It was the end of a troublesome occupation that began in 1967 during the Six Day War. He considered that fence around the land borders and an off-shore naval blockade sufficient defense.

October 7, 2023, shattered that notion. Netanyahu has embarked on a pared-down reoccupation. Inside Gaza’s northern and eastern borders with Israel, military engineers have cleared housing and vegetation a half mile deep.

The clearance forms a buffer zone that will ease military surveillance, patrolling and create a free-fire zone. Israeli naval vessels will continue to patrol the sea coast.

There is, however, a gap: Netanyahu’s proposal to militarize the southern border abutting Egypt. Israeli troops currently patrol the “Philadelphi Corridor” along the frontier, and Netanyahu wants them left there permanently.

In recent negotiations, Netanyahu complained that Hamas had smuggled weapons into Gaza from Egypt through underground tunnels. But Egypt objects.

It wants no changes in a 2005 treaty with Israel which specified that Palestinians would be in control. “Egypt reiterates its position. It rejects any military presence along the opposite side of the border crossing,” said Egypt’s Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty during a press conference in Cairo last week.

The comment was made in the presence of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who did not object.

To further buttress control, Israel is constructing an east-west road through central Gaza from Israel to the Mediterranean Sea, cutting the narrow enclave in half. Passage across it to the north or south is already under the watch of Israeli troops who examine travelers and cargo. Residents will be given biometric identity cards in order to check whether they are on “terrorist lists.”

The corridor will also be lined with fences and sprinkled with watchtowers to surveil the area – another throwback to Ariel Sharon’s policies. He built such roads and structures throughout the West Bank countryside to separate Palestinian areas from Israeli settlements and from Israel itself.

West Bank and Palestinian Authority

The West Bank has faced persistent low-intensity combat since August 2023. It will likely intensify. This month, Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant described Israel’s military tactics in the West Bank as “mowing the lawn.”

The phrase refers to the tactic of mounting armed incursions into nominally Palestinian-governed territory. They are meant to ease the preemption of armed groups, either by detaining or killing their members. Gallant played on lawn-care metaphors by describing the increase of West Bank raids as “pulling out the roots.”

Since October 7, 716 Palestinians have been killed during Israeli incursions, according to the Palestinian Authority (PA). Save the Children, an international child relief organization, says that 158 of the victims have been children.

The PA appears unwilling or helpless to either tamp down armed resistance that invites Israeli retaliation or resist Israeli incursions he deems harmful to civilians. His inert response leaves civilians to fend for themselves.

Last week, fighting broke out between PA police and residents of the West Bank town of Jenin after the police dismantled a hidden roadside bomb on a street used by Israeli forces to enter the town. Pro-Hamas protests in Ramallah, the administrative center of PA rule, have broken out occasionally, prompting PA police to break them up.

The last time PA President Mahmoud Abbas, who sees himself as the leader of all Palestinians, spoke up about the Gaza conflict was in April, when he threatened to break relations with the United States over its arms supplies to Israel.

When particularly widespread pro-Hamas demonstrations broke out in July, he appealed to Palestinians “to unite, be patient and steadfast in the face of the Israeli occupation.”

As if to remind Abbas that his control in Palestinian territory is limited, Israeli forces raided and closed the offices of Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based global news network. It is one of the few major broadcasters that reported directly from either PA or Hamas territory. Three al-Jazeera journalists have been killed in Gaza during the war. They are among 116 reporters and broadcast technicians killed so far during the Gaza war.

Abbas has ruled the West Bank since 2007 after a civil war with Hamas ended PA control of the Gaza Strip. However, his failure to block the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, along with charges of corruption and his hazy public stand on the Gaza war, has drastically shrunk his popularity.

According to a survey by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah, if presidential elections were held today, only 9% of voters would favor Abbas. His popularity is a distant second to jailed Palestine Liberation Organization member Marwan Barghouti, with 32% support, and current Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, at 31%.

Nonetheless, the Biden administration has put its faith in a “reformed” PA to handle post-war negotiations. “The future of the Gaza Strip is firmly linked to the future of the PA and its president Mahmoud Abbas,” wrote Naomi Neumann of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “A weakened PA will hardly be able to fill the leadership void that many would like to see filled in post-war Gaza.”

Lebanon and Hezbollah

With the reduced intensity of the Gaza war and the West Bank subject to small-scale raids, the Netanyahu government has shifted its war machine to  Lebanon. The result has been a massive intensification of bombing and a series of remote assassinations.

Since October 7, the Israeli army and Hezbollah forces have traded rocket, artillery and armed drone fire across Israel’s northern border. It was kind of a calibrated conflict that produced few casualties.

However, that changed last week. Netanyahu announced the goal of driving Hezbollah away from the northern border in order to permit some 60,000 Israeli residents who had fled the area since October 7 to return. “I’ve already said, we will return residents of the north safely to their homes. And that is exactly what we will do,” he announced.

His words coincided with news that Israel has transferred two army battalions—about 20,000 soldiers, along with tanks and transport of mobile artillery–to the Lebanese border.

Israel heralded its offensive by detonating remote-controlled explosives embedded in hundreds of small hand-held electronic pagers that killed around 300 Hezbollah operatives and bystanders in Beirut.

The Israelis followed that attack fby similar detonations of walkie-talkies, whose blasts killed 400 Hezbollah members. Around 2,000 more were wounded. Israel then launched bombing raids aimed at Hezbollah’s rocket launchers.

Hezbollah responded on September 20 with 150 rockets fired into Israel and Israel’s air force attacked again. Over the weekend, Hezbollah launched some 200 rockets about 50 miles into Israel, near the port of Haifa. One person was killed and an unknown number of people were injured due to panic car accidents, Israeli media said,

Violence has entered a “new phase,” deadpanned Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. “The center of gravity is shifting to the north through the diversion of forces and resources,” he added.

Netanyahu’s minimal strategy is to guarantee Hezbollah returns north of the Litani River, where its army had agreed to go under a United Nations accord to end a 2006 war in Lebanon. Since then, Hezbollah fighters and weaponry had filtered back across the river.

But Netanyahu wants more, Israeli observers contend. “The idea that Israel cannot realize its sovereignty over the northern parts of the country is something that cannot be tolerated,” said Kobi Michael, an analyst for Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies.

For that, the public supports Netanyahu’s project, a survey by INSS shows. A poll conducted in August showed 52% of Israeli Jews supported a wide-scale offensive in Lebanon (44% if Israeli Arabs are included).

“Netanyahu and the opposition believe that there is no third option on their northern front but for Hezbollah to acquiesce and accept to withdraw north,” said Gilbert Achcar, a professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.

Achcar judged that Israel’s army and intelligence services would gain prestige by  launching “a fierce war” that could “reinforce the state’s deterrent capacity, significantly diminished on the Lebanese front since 7 October.”

Meanwhile, Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, appears to also be thinking about his organization’s military reputation.

“What happened could be described as a declaration of war,” he said in a televised appearance. “Without a doubt, we have suffered a major blow, unprecedented in the history of the resistance in Lebanon at least.” As he spoke, Israeli jets broke the sound barrier over Beirut to mock his broadcast.

On paper, Hezbollah would seem to have enough weaponry to make an Israeli invasion painful. Its rocket arsenal poses a threat to Israeli towns. Israeli intelligence estimates that the arsenal amounts to roughly 150,000 rockets and guided missiles, including a few ballistic missiles that can reach targets throughout Israel.

The group Hezbollah has approximately 30,000 active fighters and up to 20,000 reservists. It is uncertain exactly how many died in the pager and telephone blasts, as well as bombing in south Lebanon since then.

“Eliminating the threat from Hezbollah’s rockets will be extremely difficult. The rockets can be launched from trucks, increasing their mobility and therefore survivability, or from underground bunkers, as was common during the 2006 war,” predicted an analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank in Washington.

“The consequences of a war between Israel and Hezbollah would be catastrophic,” wrote Daniel Elkin, a researcher for the Atlantic Council, another Washington-based think tank. “Such a conflict would likely draw in the United States in a far more substantive way. This is…a combustible situation that threatens to escalate into what could be characterized as ‘a forever war on steroids.’ ”

In any event, Israel has no intention of limiting its attacks to Hezbollah-controlled areas of Lebanon. “It is important that we be clear—the one responsible for the fire from Lebanon is not only Hezbollah or the terrorist elements that carry it out, but also the government of Lebanon and the Lebanese state that allows the shooting from its territory,” said Benny Gantz, a minister without portfolio in Netanyahu’s cabinet. “There is no target or military infrastructure in the area of the north and Lebanon that is not in our sights.”

Netanyahu has fingered Iran as the source of instability on its borders. And Iran faces either coming to the aid of its proxies on Israel’s border or seeming to be a paper tiger.

Iran has taken no steps so far to help Hezbollah, its longtime ally, fend off the Israeli assault. Iran pledged to avenge the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, killed by an Israeli missile that flew into his room at a Tehran diplomatic guest house. To date, no revenge action has been taken.

Nonetheless, on September 23, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif said vengeance will come, someday: “We want to move in a more peaceful, more stable world for our citizens and for the citizens of the world. We don’t seek war, but we will defend ourselves,” he said.

Biden’s Valedictory

Speaking on September 24 to an annual gathering of the United Nations General Assembly, US President Biden reacted with alarm about the expansion of war in the Middle East. He offered a stew of platitudes that neither outlined ways to get a Gaza ceasefire nor truncate the newly intensified war in Lebanon.

“Full-scale war is not in anyone’s interest. Even as the situation has escalated, a diplomatic solution is still possible. In fact, it remains the only path to lasting security,” Biden said while urging world leaders to find diplomatic solutions both in Lebanon and Gaza.

In reference to Lebanon, he added, “Even though the situation has escalated, a diplomatic solution is still possible. In fact, it remains the only path to lasting security, to allow the residents from both countries to return to their homes on the border safely. And that’s what we are working tirelessly to achieve.”

Rather than a one-off diplomatic failure, Biden’s performance exemplifies Washington’s diminished influence in the Middle East. The US’ inability to forge a Gaza ceasefire, deter Israel from intensifying the war with Hezbollah, and, for that matter, to clear the Red Sea of periodic attacks from Iran’s Houthi allies in Yemen all add up to a spectacle of a downgraded superpower.

Netanyahu also rebuffed the US call for a two-state solution, a formula that has been official American policy for more than 35 years. It was something Boden hadn’t promoted before and mentioned for the first time when the war in Gaza began to drag on.

Andreas Krieg, a senior lecturer at the School of Security Studies at King’s College, London, criticized Biden for engaging in “performative foreign and security policy” by dropping food aid into Gaza as the territory was “besieged by Israel whose war is largely funded by the US.” The act showed “the impotence of US power projection in the region,” Krieg concluded.

It would be hard to imagine that Biden, who was a member of the US Senate Foreign Relations committee during his long legislative career, did not know that Netanyahu has been a staunch opponent of the two-state solution even before he was first elected prime minister in 1996.

Thirteen years earlier, Netanyahu wrote a book that laid out, according to its blurb, how real peace is possible “only if it takes the nature of Middle East politics and the volatile forces within Arab and Islamic society.”

Writing at a time when Israel controlled both the West Bank and Gaza Strip, he explained, “One simply cannot talk about peace and security for Israel and in the same breath expect Israel to significantly alter its defense boundaries.”

He promoted a different two-state solution: the creation of “a Jewish state” between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea and another, “the state of Jordan” where “they may exercise Palestinian Arab self-determination.”