Netanyahu’s missing political vision

The decision by the Israeli security cabinet to approve Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal for the Israeli army to take over Gaza City, home to around 800,000 Palestinians, has produced outrage and condemnation inside Israel as well as from abroad. The families of the remaining Israeli hostages still held in Gaza staged an angry protest in Tel Aviv on the eve of the cabinet vote and, when it was announced, accused the government of sentencing their loved ones to death. Opinion polls regularly report that a majority of Israelis support the call by the hostage families for the government to call an immediate halt to the war and negotiate the release of their loved ones, even if this means leaving Hamas in power in Gaza.

Opposition leaders called the decision by the security cabinet to step up rather than halt the war, in defiance of public opinion and the demands of the hostage families, a disaster. They accused Netanyahu of sacrificing the security of Israeli citizens for political calculations by bowing to pressure from the extreme right-wing members of his coalition, who advocate a full reoccupation of Gaza 20 years after Israel pulled out completely from the strip.

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While Netanyahu has long been adept at wrong footing his political rivals and resisting calls for an end to the war, opposition to the latest move has also come from the highest echelons of the military itself. Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir warned that such a move would endanger the lives of the hostages. So far the army has been careful not to operate in areas where it thinks the hostages are held, since Hamas has warned it will execute them if Israeli forces come near. A year ago, Hamas made good on this threat by killing six hostages when the army drew close to where they were being kept. Pushing into more of Gaza therefore puts more of them at risk. Zamir also warned that, after 22 months of war, his forces were exhausted and a new push to reoccupy more of Gaza would cause the “erosion” of the army.

Harrowing accounts of civilian suffering in Gaza had prompted even Israel’s allies to call for a ceasefire, even before the latest cabinet decision to instead intensify the war. A statement by 25 Western nations on July 21 said the conflict must end immediately as the “inhumane” killing of civilians and the “drip feeding” of aid which had brought the suffering of Gazans to “new depths.”

So why has Netanyahu decided now to defy such calls for a halt to the war both from inside Israel and from its allies, and instead to step up the military campaign?

Three days after the statement by Western countries, the peace talks taking place in Doha, aimed at reaching a ceasefire and release of hostages broke down. The US presidential envoy, Steve Witkoff, returned home accusing Hamas of having no desire to reach a ceasefire. Netanyahu, who had condemned the Western statement as playing into the hands of Hamas, drew the lesson – rightly or wrongly – that it had emboldened Hamas to escalate its demands in the ceasefire talks. And when President Trump said Israel had to “finish the job” in Gaza and get rid of Hamas, Netanyahu will have felt he had the backing of his strongest ally to carry on the war.

The prime minister is also even more reliant than ever on the support of the two small extreme right parties in his coalition, who insist on pressing on with the war until Hamas is eliminated. This is because of the decision by one of the parties representing Haredi – ultra-orthodox – Jews to pull out of Netanyahu’s coalition government over the issue of the draft. Ironically it is the refusal of Haredis to serve in the army that is causing much of its manpower shortage, as well as stoking resentment from mainstream Israelis, whose sons and daughters are spending months on the front line in Gaza.

So the combination of Hamas intransigence, pressure from his coalition partners and an apparent US green light appear to have pushed Netanyahu into deciding that expanding the campaign is the only way forward. But there are serious military and political questions over such a strategy. If the aim is to really defeat Hamas or pressure it to resume negotiations, why is the military focused on Gaza City, rather than the central Gazan refugee camps of Deir al-Balah, al-Nuseirat and Khan Younis, where Palestinian analysts say Hamas presence is strongest? Nor is Hamas a regular army that will surrender and disarm when faced with military defeat. It will declare victory simply if one fighter emerges from the rubble holding a Kalashnikov and a Hamas flag. A conventional army loses if it does not win, while a guerilla army wins if it does not lose, as Henry Kissinger observed.

But most seriously of all, there remains no political vision in Netanyahu’s plan. He speaks vaguely of “Arab forces” taking over control of Gaza from the Israeli military. But as long as he rejects any Palestinian Authority role in securing and governing Gaza, Arab countries will not take on the onerous task of fighting Hamas and then securing and overseeing the rebuilding of the territory.

It is true that countries and organisations who blithely call for a ceasefire, rebuilding of Gaza and implementation of a two-state solution fail to explain how any of that is possible while Hamas remains in power. But the current Israeli government is equally at fault for pressing on with the war in Gaza without providing any positive vision of the future for the long-suffering inhabitants of that devastated land.

Read more: Netanyahu says new Gaza offensive will start soon