After killing more than 42,000 Palestinians in just over 12 months of fighting in Gaza, many of Israel’s reasons for starting the conflict remain unheeded, analysts tell Tel Aviv Tribune.
Its internal security appears even more precarious than when it began fighting on October 7, the day of a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel in which 1,139 people died and about 250 were captured.
Israel said Thursday it had killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, accused of planning the October 7 attack, a man it had long considered the root of all evil. But instead of talking about a ceasefire and negotiating the return of the captives, Israel appears to be becoming even more belligerent.
Description: החטופים הביתה״ pic.twitter.com/40aG1MnUqF
— צבא ההגנה לישראל (@idfonline) October 17, 2024
Translation: The Chief of Staff: “We will not stop until we have caught all the terrorists involved in the September 10 attacks and brought all the abductees home. »
The facades
Israel launched military attacks on one and then a second front after the attacks of October 7, 2023.
It began with Gaza, sparking a war against the besieged enclave that, after more than 12 months of fighting, only resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians.
Increasingly, he finds himself returning to areas he had previously declared clear, claiming that the Hamas fighters he had declared expelled had regrouped.
On October 8, 2023, the Lebanese group Hezbollah launched a cross-border firefight with Israel, targeting Israeli military targets to pressure the latter to stop the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza.
Israel responded to Hezbollah attacks with air strikes against civilian areas, often claiming after the attack that it had “targeted Hezbollah’s hidden assets” – an excuse it often used in Gaza after killing hundreds of people in strikes he said he targeted. “Commander of Hamas”.
As it fought, Israel seemed strangely gripped by war as a concept.
For many Israelis, Ori Goldberg, a Tel Aviv-based analyst, said that over the past 12 months, the war had become an integral part of Israel’s existence.
“People believe war is necessary,” he said. “We believe in it with passion, even if we no longer know why or for what purpose. We just know that whatever the problem, war is the solution. »
Meanwhile, 12 months of bloody attacks on Gaza and, more recently, Lebanon, have sparked deeper societal changes in Israel, exacerbating long-standing divisions and creating chasms in a society that Israeli scholars say , could be on the verge of collapse.
Rising tides
The past year has upended Israeli politics with the formation of a coalition cabinet by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu following October 7, 2023, exacerbating the rise of right-wing elements in Israeli politics. These factions were already emboldened by the leading role they had played in a campaign to impose a judicial overhaul aimed at limiting legal oversight of government policy and parliamentary legislation.
Within the new body, political newcomers, such as far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and ultra-Zionist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, acted in concert, giving themselves an effective veto on Israeli politics and, therefore, an inordinate number of votes. voice in the national debate.
Under the guise of the need to reclaim Gaza’s captives, the goals of the two ministers and their growing group – which lean more towards expansionism on Palestinian lands – have advanced significantly.
Over the past year, Israel’s internal security apparatus, which is responsible for maintaining order throughout the country, has transformed itself almost into a direct extension of its minister, Ben-Gvir.
In appointing radical Deputy Commissioner Daniel Levy as police chief in August, Ben-Gvir hailed him as someone “with a Zionist and Jewish agenda” who “will lead the police in accordance with the policy I have given him fixed”.
These policies include Ben-Gvir’s plan to establish a voluntary “national guard” that would be deployed in the face of Palestinian unrest resulting from Israeli land grabs, armed raids and general subjugation of Palestinians in their own country.
In the occupied West Bank, Ben-Gvir’s ideological brother and fellow settler, Smotrich, now has unprecedented power over construction with the right to seize Palestinian land for Israeli settlements in violation of international law and equal veto power over Palestinian construction.
The “crazy-eyed right” scares away Israelis
In response to Hamas attacks and the human and financial costs of the war on Gaza, divisions between what many Israelis view as their “rationalist” secular majority and what Israeli daily Haaretz describes as its “crazy-eyed right” were dug. one analyst told Tel Aviv Tribune that Israel is closer than ever to civil conflict.
The implications of this are becoming increasingly clear to many members of Israel’s traditional secular elite, who, spurred by the rise of the far right, are silently leaving the country, according to a report by two leading academics. Israelis.
Without citing specific figures, the authors suggest that the scale of the exodus was such that, with the state’s loss of revenue and the growing divide in Israeli society, “there is a considerable likelihood that Israel will cannot exist as a sovereign Jewish state for decades to come,” says the document released in May by economist and professor Eugene Kandel and Ron Tzur, an authority on government administration.
“Major national scar”
Throughout the past year, the attacks carried out by Hamas on October 7 and the fate of the captives have been guidelines. Recovering the captives continues to upset Israelis and provoke the largest protests of the war so far.
“I don’t think the pain, the humiliation and the anger of October 7 have ever really gone away,” former Israeli ambassador and government adviser Alon Pinkas told Tel Aviv Tribune.
“There were brief pauses, like the one following the assassination of (Hezbollah leader Hassan) Nasrallah, but…October 7 and the absence of the hostages created a major national scar, one of which we do not understand still really the scale.
“It will last. How long, I don’t know, but it will last,” he said.
The cause has been co-opted by politicians of all Israeli political shades, with the pain left by the captives’ absence used to support the administration’s ferocious military assault on Gaza.
And yet, despite an Israeli attack that defense analyst Hamze Attar says has reduced much of Hamas’ capabilities, Hamas fighters remain an active military presence on the ground.
“Hamas no longer has the capacity to organize another day of October 7,” Attar said. “However, Hamas still has many fighters.”
Senior Hamas officials have rejected Israeli claims that the group was destroyed as a military force and instead spoke of “new generations” recruited following Israeli attacks on camps, hospitals and residential areas in Gaza .
“I know Israel claims to have killed between 14,000 and 22,000, but they don’t really know that,” Attar said.
“The group continues to carry out well-coordinated and well-timed attacks against the Netzarim Corridor (the heavily fortified strip of land established by the Israeli army that divides Gaza) and is rapidly retaking areas previously cleared by Israel,” he said. -he declared.
Despite the assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in July – which international observers and families of the captives say has made the prospect of their return less likely – Hamas has assets that Israel cannot beat, he said. explained Attar.
“Hamas’ greatest strength lies in its ability to govern civilly. Every time he takes out his bulldozers (to clean up the damage caused by Israeli assaults); presents the police, which restores stability; and produce the entire infrastructure of local government, they contradict the Israeli line and, I would say, undermine Israel’s plans to divide Gaza into controllable islands,” he said.
Future
As Netanyahu continues to wage wars against Gaza and Lebanon, observers in Israel note with concern what they describe as the increasingly “messianic” trend in hostilities.
“There is no plan, no strategy, nothing,” Pinkas commented of his interactions with officials.
“Since Nasrallah’s assassination, Netanyahu has become truly messianic. On the one hand, it’s really weird, but it also corresponds to the way he wants to see things,… like a war of civilization.
“He’s at the UN (in September) to tell them he’s fighting their war. Before that, he was at the United States Congress in July and said he was fighting for their values.
“He sees himself as a sort of Churchill, pushing back against Iran’s ring of fire. This is not a man who will sue for peace, not until his failures of October 7 are overshadowed and he feels vindicated.
“This is complete madness.”