Netanyahu’s endgame and the Israeli far-right’s regional ambitions

Despite what it says in public, the Netanyahu government knows that Hamas cannot be eliminated by force and that the attempt to do so will only radicalize far more people, both in Palestine and around the world against Israel. Those people will take action, be it violent or not, against Israel in the years to come. Only a fool doesn’t know that. And whatever else the Israeli leadership may be, they are not fools. So what is their endgame?

They have made it clear that they do not prioritize the release of the hostages being held in Gaza. If they did, they would long ago have found a path to a ceasefire to secure the hostages’ release, a path that has already been proven to be effective, while Israel’s assault has gotten dozens of hostages killed already. 

So if the stated goals are false — and they clearly are — it leaves one wondering what Israel’s endgame really is. Is there some goal in Israeli actions that is not being stated? The events of recent days suggest that we may be seeing that endgame take shape.

In a matter of a few days, Israel penetrated deep into Lebanon for a targeted assassination of a Hezbollah leader; confiscated a large piece of Palestinian land in the Jordan Valley; destroyed an Iranian consulate in Damascus, killing seven Iranian military advisers; and carried out a murderous, extended operation targeting World Central Kitchen vehicles, killing six international and one Palestinian aid workers. 

These may seem to be disparate events, connected only by having been perpetrated by an Israeli military that has gone completely off the rails, yet continues to enjoy support and impunity from the United States and Europe. But there may be more connecting them.

Israeli far-right seizes an opportunity

It is widely, and correctly, believed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin has a strong incentive to prolong the operations in Gaza. There is also great concern that Israel is trying to expand the conflict to Hezbollah, and possibly even Iran, an expansion of the fighting that could well push the United States in as well. 

The recent incidents would seem to indicate that Israel is accelerating its moves in that direction. And this is where we need to look at the Israeli right wing, rather than focus on Netanyahu’s narrow personal interests.

For decades, the Israeli far right has been resentful of the restraints it has to operate under due to Israel’s reliance on U.S. military and political support and the massive amount of trade it does with Europe. In more recent years, Israel under Netanyahu has worked to diversify its trading partners and even looked into increased arms deals and political arrangements with other countries. But it has been unable to replace the U.S. and Europe as Israel’s main patrons.

But now, the Israeli far-right is in a position of power it has never been close to before. It is at the height of its popularity in Israel, especially with the younger generation of Israelis. The Overton Window of Israeli politics has moved farther rightward than ever, so much so that a radical settler leader like Naftali Bennett was seen as occupying the political center, albeit somewhat to its right. 

Yet before October 7, the far-right was still not powerful enough within Israel to bring the country fully into its fascist camp. Its attempt to do so was met with a furious and unrelenting backlash throughout the country — the regular demonstrations that we all saw. 

But Hamas’s attack changed things dramatically. For the hardliners in the Likud, Jewish Power, and Religious Zionism parties, a golden opportunity had presented itself. 

The country was galvanized with anger, hate, and fear. The key leaders in the government had to do everything they could to deflect blame for the cataclysmic results of Hamas’s attack from their own incompetence, which bore a considerable amount of the responsibility for the bloody success the attackers had. They were going to act in whatever way they could to channel the country’s anger and bloodlust toward Gaza, lest more of it turn inward and see Israelis demand accountability for their leaders’ failures.

Netanyahu would obviously be all in on anything that could not only allow him to remain in office but would also give him the opportunity to re-establish his leadership of Israel (though he’s managed to blow that opportunity). But, for the larger group of far-right ideologues, they had an opportunity to finally put their preferred “solution” to Israel’s security issues — unrestrained, overwhelming violence — to the test.

This thinking is what has driven the Gaza assault. Making Gaza uninhabitable, wiping out Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, and killing tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza is not just an expression of violence or rage. It is the Israeli right’s attempt to “win” the 1948 war. It is an effort to “solve” the “Palestinian problem” by wiping out the Palestinian national movement. 

As far as Hamas may be from having majority support among Palestinians, it has come to represent the armed resistance to Israeli occupation, dispossession, and displacement of Palestinians. As always, it’s important to remind the world that an occupied people has the right to armed resistance, and whether Hamas or other groups have always acted within the boundaries of that right is a separate question. Gaza is where the stubbornest part of the Palestinian national movement resides, the area where, no matter what Israel has thrown at it over the decades, Palestinian steadfastness remains. 

By destroying Gaza and tightening its grip — and, later, escalating its violence — on the West Bank, the Israeli far-right intends to end the endless debates over a two-state solution by rendering the question moot. That is, of course, what settlement expansion and the various “security measures” have been slowly trying to achieve for years, but October 7 presented an opportunity to speed up that process, as the far-right has always desired. 

World powers looking elsewhere

Israel had an unusually free hand. There was an American president who was fully supporting the efforts in a way no president had ever done before. Russia is much too busy in Ukraine to be of any help to the Palestinians or even to their Syrian ally. Europe will follow the American lead for the most part and is also already experiencing divisions over its involvement with Ukraine. China does not involve itself so directly in foreign conflicts. This all combined to give Israel as good an opportunity as it was ever likely to have to pursue an endgame, with minimal interference from outside powers. 

Their ambition goes much farther than Gaza. In a little-reported move, Israel stole eight square kilometers of Palestinian land in the Jordan Valley in the West Bank two weeks ago. The move was carried out by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich by declaring it “state land.” He carried out this theft on the very day that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Israel for talks with Netanyahu. 

The timing was not accidental. Smotrich wanted to see if the U.S. would respond. It didn’t. So much for Biden’s commitment to a “two-state solution,” as the annexed land is part of the area around the settlement of Ma’ale Adumim that bisects the West Bank, making a viable Palestinian state there even more impossible than it already was. While the two-state solution has been long dead in reality, Biden has kept it as a useful fantasy. Now, he has demonstrated once again how illusory it is. 

The land theft goes hand in hand with Israel’s escalating violence, regular raids, and the impunity it grants to settlers for their pogroms in Palestinian villages that have already caused many to be abandoned. Further escalation in the West Bank is very likely after Israel is done with Gaza.

Israeli regional opportunism

But the opportunistic right is not stopping with Palestine. Its incursions deep inside Lebanon have been a significant concern even in Washington, which fears a regional conflagration. Thus far, Hezbollah has been willing to avoid major escalation with Israel. But it has refused to redeploy north of the Litani River, as it is obliged to do by UN Security Council Resolution 1701 after the 2006 war, and it continues to fire rockets, mostly at military targets, in northern Israel, in solidarity with Gaza. As with all of this, it goes away as soon as Israel halts its genocidal campaign.

But as Israel kills more Hezbollah fighters and Lebanese civilians, Hezbollah may feel compelled to engage Israel in a more robust conflict. The Israeli incursions deep into Lebanon’s northeastern areas seem intended to provoke Hezbollah into just such an action. 

The ultimate goals of bringing Hezbollah more directly into battle with Israel are two-fold: first, to eliminate Hezbollah’s ability to confront Israel, and second, to finally draw Iran into a direct conflict. This was very likely the thinking behind striking the Iranian consulate in Damascus earlier this week. 

This notion does not seem to have escaped the White House. They were unusually quick to disavow any knowledge of or involvement in Israel’s attack in Damascus, yet were not so quick to try to cover for Israel in this matter. 

For Iran’s part, they are not willing to let the U.S. off the hook so easily. After all, Washington routinely blames them for the actions of their allies, whether or not Tehran had anything to do with it. Iran is similarly holding the U.S. responsible, and whenever they respond, it is possible they will hit U.S. forces in the region, Israeli citizens or sites abroad, or both. 

Israel had to know this would be the result of the attack on Damascus. Their excuse for attacking the consulate — that it was used for military purposes — was paper thin. Consulates routinely function as waypoints for military and intelligence figures to do business, hold meetings, and the like. No one thinks that makes them legitimate targets. 

No, this was a deliberate provocation, and one intended to draw an Iranian response and help push the United States into greater involvement in aggression against Iran. 

Some may consider it far-fetched that the Israeli far-right, which has not shown great competence in strategic thinking, or even professionalism in government, could come up with such schemes. 

That would be an accurate assessment. But Israel hasn’t come to this by design, but rather by capitalizing on opportunities when they presented themselves. October 7 was the key, giving the Israeli right the chance it has always lusted after — to use overwhelming, unrestrained force to settle the century-old conflict between Zionism and Palestinian nationalism once and for all. As that operation has proceeded, the opportunity to confront the regional nemesis, Iran, developed and is being seized as well, albeit more gradually since Israel doesn’t have the advantage of overwhelming force against a defenseless foe as it does in Gaza. 

While Joe Biden reacted strongly to the killing of the World Central Kitchen aid workers, it can be hoped that he, or those advising him, recognize the danger that Israel is posing with its other actions. The quickness of Washington’s denial of involvement in the Damascus attack might hint that someone in the White House sees what’s coming. Biden’s reported demand for a ceasefire in Gaza may, one can hope, also indicate that he is trying to counter Israel’s efforts to draw the United States into a regional war. 

This opportunistic attempt by Netanyahu to ignite a wider war in the hope of finally defeating both the Palestinians and Iran is a place where other Israeli leaders would be different. Benny Gantz, Yair Lapid, even a figure as far to the right on Palestine as Gideon Sa’ar are not the sort who would be willing to risk permanent and major damage to the U.S.-Israel relationship and a regional war that Israel is by no means sure of winning. 

But Biden has also seized a cynical opportunity, though for a potentially positive purpose, by using Europe’s and the American public’s disgust at Israel’s wanton murder of aid workers to finally level a real threat against Netanyahu. Already, this has forced Israel to agree to broaden the avenues through which humanitarian aid can enter Gaza (one wonders how Biden and Blinken square this agreement with their ludicrous claims that Israel was not violating international law by blocking aid). 

It remains to be seen if Biden is really willing to safeguard American national interests and avoid being drawn into the regional war that Israel’s current leadership wants. It is reasonable to hope that Washington is aware of this, which motivated the shift in the past weeks toward blaming Netanyahu and calling for Israelis to oust him — a call Benny Gantz has clearly heeded. 

Biden has made it clear that no amount of Palestinian suffering means a thing to him. But when white Europeans and Canadian-Americans are killed, he has no choice but to respond to that. Hopefully the same can be said about keeping the United States out of a regional war that cannot start if there is no hope of Israel drawing the U.S. into it. The only way to stop it, though, is to stop the genocide in Gaza.