As the Biden administration and its allies try to secure an elusive ceasefire in Gaza, Israel appears to have gone rogue.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, came to Washington last week to deliver a defiant speech. Despite international condemnation, he vowed to continue the war against Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank, where Israel kills and imprisons dozens of Palestinians every week, without having a clear idea of what his ultimate goal is.
The assassinations of senior Hezbollah and Hamas figures abroad have significantly raised the risks of a larger regional war, analysts say, as Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah prepare to retaliate.
But the deaths of Fuad Shukr, a senior Hezbollah commander, and Ismail Haniyeh, a Hamas political leader, will not change the strategic dilemma facing Israel over how to end the war, govern Gaza or care for civilians. They are more likely to escalate the conflict than reduce it, making progress toward a ceasefire in Gaza even more difficult.
Israel says it does not want to occupy Gaza, but has no other solution to restore order; Hamas refuses to surrender, despite thousands of deaths. While Washington sees a ceasefire followed by a regional agreement as the answer, Netanyahu scorns the idea. He believes that only force will force Hamas to yield and restore Israel’s strategic deterrence against Iran and its proxies, especially Hezbollah.
Yet, in the absence of a clear objective in the war, Netanyahu’s defiance is dividing Israel from its allies and the country itself. It has further weakened confidence in his leadership. It is fuelling suspicions that he is keeping the country at war to stay in power. It is intensifying a deep divide within society – over the fate of Israeli hostages, the conduct of the war and the rule of law – that is challenging the institutional bonds that hold Israel together.
“Israel’s international image continues to take a hit since October: despite nine months of war, its military objectives have not been met and its social and domestic reputation is also damaged,” said Sanam Vakil, a Middle East analyst at Chatham House.
To form a government and stay in power, Netanyahu has empowered far-right, deeply religious and pro-settlement politicians who oppose any kind of Palestinian state. He has given a prominent role to Itamar Ben-Gvir, a convicted criminal who now heads the police and has influence in the management of the West Bank, and to Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister.
Both have acted to weaken the Palestinian Authority, support Western settlement expansion and oppose any deal with Hamas, while placing their own supporters in key positions in the Israeli bureaucracy.
They represent a populist revolt against the country’s traditional democratic institutions and ethics, including the military and judiciary. Like former President Donald J. Trump, Netanyahu, despite his long tenure in power, is riding that anti-elitist wave, arguing that he is the only politician who can stand up to the United States and the United Nations and prevent a sovereign Palestine dominated by Hamas.
“We are in a very dangerous process that could darken the basic DNA of this country,” said Nahum Barnea, one of Israel’s most prominent journalists and commentators. “Cultural confrontation is fine, but messianic politicians or radical populists who not only become part of the government but occupy crucial positions within it are not.”
Far-right politicians have an agenda, he said: “They want a real revolution in our regime and in our values.”
The most visible recent example came this week, when protesters gathered outside two military bases to support soldiers who had been arrested on suspicion of torturing and sodomizing a Palestinian prisoner in Sde Teiman, a military prison.
Hundreds of protesters, including at least three far-right lawmakers from the ruling coalition and uniformed soldiers, gathered outside the prison and a second base where the men had been taken for questioning. Dozens of protesters stormed both bases, pushing aside guards, as Mr. Ben-Gvir’s police forces arrived late and in small numbers.
Hours later, Netanyahu criticized the protests but also appeared to justify them, comparing them to months of anti-government demonstrations against his attempt to reduce the power of the judiciary and the Supreme Court in favor of parliament.
“The institutions of the state are being challenged even by people in uniform,” said Natan Sachs, an Israeli-American director of the Brookings Center for Middle East Policy, a centrist research institution. “It’s a symptom of something very worrying, a challenge not just to the institutions but to the connective tissue of a society that has always been very united despite its fissures.”
“People are very nervous,” said Shalom Lipner, a former adviser to the prime minister from 1990 to 2016 and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, also a centrist research institution. “And not just because of how others view Israel, but Israelis themselves are scared about what this means for the country itself. If this is how we behave, how is this project sustainable?”
To be sure, while a large majority of Israelis want Netanyahu and his far-right coalition gone, a large majority also want Hamas defeated and dismantled as a power in Gaza, to ensure that what happened on October 7 is never repeated. There is widespread agreement that Israel must remain strong and has the right to attack its declared enemies.
But there is inevitable disagreement over how best to achieve a more lasting peace, and many fear that an independent Palestinian state of the kind the Israeli elite hoped to negotiate would be dominated by more extremist factions, such as Hamas.
The revolt against the elites has been brewing for years. It was most visible in the proposed new law that would have diminished the power of the judiciary and the Supreme Court in favour of parliament, sparking nine months of street protests and exposing the country’s divisions.
The Hamas attacks on October 7 brought the country together, even as it absorbed the shock of a massive failure by the intelligence services and the military, largely sacred institutions. But the long war has also torn the country apart, with the far right attempting to undermine and infiltrate key institutions. Discipline in the military has also suffered.
And even as the military leadership tries to uphold its standards, Mr. Ben-Gvir and Mr. Smotrich brand as traitors those who want to punish abusers of Palestinian prisoners.
Though they represent a minority, the two men have become the face of Israel to the world almost as much as Mr. Netanyahu, his own image tarnished by his political dependence on them and his tolerance of their actions and excesses.
There has always been a tension between the rule of law and Israel’s security and counterterrorism operations, said Dahlia Scheindlin, an Israeli pollster and analyst.
“Israelis have become accustomed to the idea that the law is selective,” he said. “There are too many who are above the law, like the settlers, who are beyond the law, like the ultra-Orthodox and the security forces, and who are outside the law, like the Palestinians and many Arab citizens of Israel, who are often under martial law.”
The protests at military bases were “the closest thing I’ve ever experienced to a state breakdown,” said Scheindlin, who called the internal divisions on display a victory for Hamas and Hezbollah.
There are many Israelis “who do not believe in diplomacy, but think of Israeli security only in terms of preemption, intimidation and deterrence, and who think that they must always have the military’s back in the face of a ruthless, implacable enemy that you are always facing,” said Bernard Avishai, an Israeli-American analyst. “So anything you do to the enemy is justified.”
In 2005, violent protests by settlers and right-wingers against the military erupted over the forced withdrawal of Israelis from settlements in Gaza and the West Bank. But many Israelis point to a controversial episode that followed as the real turning point for the country.
In 2016, an Israeli soldier, Elor Azaria, killed an incapacitated Palestinian who had attacked an Israeli with a knife. Despite angry protests, he was convicted of manslaughter but served only half of his 18-month sentence. The right hailed him as a hero, while the left argued that he deserved a harsher sentence.
Azaria has since supported soldiers accused of beating Palestinian prisoners and has been the target of US-imposed sanctions.
“After Azaria, the lines were drawn,” said Mr. Avishai. Settlers and supporters of force over diplomacy mobilized against “statists” such as military chiefs and the current defense minister, Yoav Gallant, “who believe that national morality is a function of the rule of law and that the army must respect international law,” he said.
The statist vision is “disappearing under Netanyahu, and the cultural war is now central,” he said. “A continued war of attrition and preemption in Gaza and elsewhere is good for them politically.”
At Monday’s protests, he said, “for the first time there is violence between these two rival conceptions of Israel’s future.”
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