Israel: How Benjamin Netanyahu is changing the country with war

The speech with which Joe Biden wanted to end the war in the Middle East was ready in the spring. His relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu had long since reached a low point. Biden saw the Israeli prime minister as an obstacle on the way to calming the situation. Netanyahu had repeatedly undermined American initiatives to de-escalate the Gaza Strip. It got loud during phone calls between him and Biden. They hadn’t spoken to each other for weeks.

But now, at the end of May, the US President wanted to address the Israeli people directly, as a fatherly friend. The speech manuscript outlined two images of Israel’s future. Either: endless war in the Gaza Strip, violence in the West Bank, a resurgent Hamas, growing danger of a regional conflagration and Israel’s increasing international isolation. Or: a strong, prosperous Israel at peace with its neighbors, supported by the West and new allies in the Middle East.

Integration or isolation? Biden wanted to present Israel’s public with this choice in order to win them over for a ceasefire and an exchange of hostages. And Netanyahu should face a fait accompli.

Would the plan have worked? The world won’t know. The manuscript disappeared into a drawer after Netanyahu beat Biden to the punch at the last minute with his own hostage deal initiative. Months later, the Times of Israel revealed the contents of the speech that the US president never gave.

Bibi, the manipulator

A missed opportunity for peace?

Undone by Bibi, the manipulator who let Joe Biden go nowhere time and time again, as he did last week when he gave the order to kill Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah – just as the US and France were taking a break in combat wanted to achieve in Lebanon? Like again on Monday evening, when Netanyahu’s cabinet gave the army the go-ahead for a ground offensive in the neighboring country to the north – and the supposedly most powerful man in the White House could only shout after them. “I won’t feel comfortable until they stop.”

The impression comes to mind when you think of all those affected by the violence that began with Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, 2023: on the one hand, the 1,139 victims of the Hamas pogroms, the traumatized survivors of the attack, the relatives of the hostages and the more than 700 soldiers who have died so far. On the other hand, the 17,000 war orphans in the Gaza Strip, the relatives of the 15,000 children killed in Israeli attacks, the hungry, the injured. And now also the misery in Lebanon, where over 1,000 people have died in the last two weeks and more than a million people have had to flee their homes.

And yet: The idea that this war would have ended long ago if only it weren’t for Netanyahu and his right-wing extremist partners is deceptive.

Because it fails to recognize how dramatically October 7, 2023 changed Israel. And keeps doing it.

Israel is now a traumatized country in which an unscrupulous minority seeks to use the fears that the Hamas terror has stirred up in a majority for their own advantage. As bombs fall on Gaza, radical settlers board a tour boat off the coast to get a glimpse of the territory they plan to seize. In the wake of the war, Israel confiscated more land in the occupied West Bank for settlement expansion this year than in the previous 25 years combined. The settlers there make up barely more than five percent of Israel’s population, but their influence is disproportionately high, especially because Netanyahu has included their representatives in power to secure his own.

“Iran made a mistake and will pay for it”

But even a change of government would hardly bring any change. Surveys show that the feeling of existential threat has also shaken the trust of many Israelis in their democratic institutions. The war, no matter how superior Israel conducts it, seems to do little to change this. “I don’t have the impression that people feel safer today,” says Israeli pollster Dahlia Scheindlin. “It will be years before we can fully appreciate what October 7th did to us.”

Even a year later, a majority of people draw the conclusion from the tragedy that Israel must continue to fight, the more uninhibited the better. The fact that Iran has now directly and massively attacked their country with ballistic missiles for the second time in six months should only strengthen their belief. And Netanyahu, who seemed finished because as prime minister he was politically responsible for the state’s failure on October 7th, can continue to increase his poll numbers with every escalation.

Now, after Israel’s drastic airstrikes against Hezbollah, the Yemeni Houthi militia and Iranian Revolutionary Guard positions in Syria, why should he keep the weapons silent? “Iran has made a big mistake and it will pay for it,” Netanyahu said on Tuesday evening, raising the prospect of a direct military retaliation by Israel against Iran. Tehran, in turn, has threatened to attack oil production facilities across the Middle East if Israel attacks Iran’s refineries or nuclear facilities.

The spiral of violence in the Middle East seems unlikely to stop. Because all actors are caught in the logic of escalation.

The war will decide who will be in charge in Israel in the future

The longer the war lasts, the more it shifts the balance of power between Israel’s old, secular elite and the people from the periphery beyond Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem, who have felt disadvantaged for decades. Many, but not all, of them belong to the national-religious spectrum, which is close to the settler movement. These Israelis are Netanyahu’s most loyal supporters. Similar to Donald Trump, he has managed to portray himself as an advocate for the underdogs, even though he himself is a scion of the old elite they despise.

Nowhere is the growing power of this other Israel more evident than in the army. In many elite units that were once dominated by seculars from the kibbutz movement, they now make up the majority. Among normal recruits for a long time. The war accelerated the rise of national religious groups in the troops because a disproportionate number of those who died came from their ranks.

An action like the protest of the 200 fighter pilots who resigned from their service in March 2023 because of the judicial reform initiated by the government would be unthinkable today. At the 69th Air Wing alone, 37 of 40 pilots did not show up at their base to denounce Israel’s “march to dictatorship” under Netanyahu. While the liberal camp still celebrated them, most of the army already considered them arrogant. Last week, this very unit carried out the prime minister’s order to attack Nasrallah.

“Peace? Is impossible for decades”

“What we have been experiencing for the past year is a struggle for hegemony,” says Gershon Hacohen, retired Israeli general, in an interview with Stern. The combat operations in Gaza and Lebanon will also decide who will be in charge in the country once the war is over. It is already clear that the space for protest is becoming narrower. Also because the majority of those returning home from the battlefield want calm, not demonstrations. This is the experience of the relatives of the remaining 101 Hamas hostages, whose daily rallies in Tel Aviv are usually only attended by a handful of supporters.

So all calls for moderation are in danger of being silenced for the time being in this country that is determined to seek salvation in battle without knowing what victory might look like. Meanwhile, Israel’s ruthless warfare is creating a generation of new enemies.

“Peace? I think it will be impossible for decades,” says an interlocutor from high Israeli security circles who has fought for a two-state solution for decades.

When the guns eventually fall silent, Israel will be a different country than it was before October 7th. Olaf Scholz once said of ancient Israel that it was “a democratic state with very humanitarian principles.” It is unclear whether the same can still be said about the new Israel.