On October 7, Beniamin Netanyahu lost the main argument that has kept him at the head of Israel for more than 16 years: that no one like him could protect the country from its enemies. Last Thursday, however, he put forward a new story: only he can prevent a Palestinian state.
Netanyahu has always believed that the Oslo accords were a mistake. From his father, Benzio, a radical Zionist, he inherited the idea that the Palestinians will never be trustworthy because their ultimate goal is to destroy Israel.
On Thursday afternoon, in a televised press conference, Netanyahu rejected the proposal that Antony Blinken had made the day before in Davos. The American Secretary of State had said that Israel will only enjoy “genuine security” when it admits a Palestinian state and closes a diplomatic agreement with Saudi Arabia. “Deal,” responded Prince Faisal bin Farjan, the Saudi foreign minister. If Israel accepts a Palestinian state, there will be peace.
Netanyahu's conditions for peace, however, are very different: total destruction of Hamas, demilitarization of Gaza, "deradicalization" of Palestinian society and total control of security in the strip as well as in the West Bank.
Gadi Eisenkot, former chief of the General Staff and one of the five members of the Israeli war cabinet, assured on Thursday that it is not possible to defeat Hamas and free the hostages. “Whoever talks about a total defeat of Hamas is not telling the truth,” he said on Channel 12 television. And then he added: “The hostages will only return alive if there is an agreement for a meaningful truce.”
This opinion also makes its way among senior military commanders. The war enters a new, slower phase, which requires fighting in the Hamas tunnel network and also repelling surface attacks at very close range. No contemporary army has faced a similar challenge.
The risk is enormous for Israeli soldiers. Twenty-four died on Monday, the darkest day for Israel since the start of the ground offensive. They were demolishing the ruined buildings closest to the border with explosives to allow the return of the Israeli population evacuated along the strip.
The army is searching for Yayha Sirwan, leader of the military apparatus, safely entrenched in the underground of Khan Yunis and surrounded by a hundred hostages on October 7. His death would allow Netanyahu to claim victory, although it would be at the cost of the hostages.
Until now, the General Staff has maintained that the hostages are important, but that the priority is defeating Hamas.
Last week, however, four generals confessed to The New York Times that it is no longer possible to save the hostages and destroy Hamas because a quick victory is no longer within reach and a slow war, such as the one that is emerging, will end with their lives.
Netanyahu, however, needs a slow war. The longer it lasts, the longer the threat from Hamas will endure and the stronger its electoral base will remain. “Netanyahu only thinks about his own survival,” a political observer who preferred to remain anonymous told me yesterday. “The longer the war lasts, the safer you will be.”
Over the past ten years, the prime minister has allowed Qatar to send tens of millions of dollars to Hamas through Israeli territory. He needed the Islamist movement to justify his messianic and ultranationalist drift, and also to erode the legitimacy of the Palestinian Authority and that of the PLO, Israel's allies in the Oslo agreements.
“Netanyahu naively believed that Hamas would never bite the hand that fed him,” the Israeli analyst explained to me. “It is a blunder, incomprehensible because this is precisely what he is doing with the United States.”
Netanyahu also did not heed the warnings of the head of military intelligence last summer about the preparations of the armed wing of Hamas to attack the kibbutzs surrounding Gaza.
The commission of inquiry that will be opened after the war will hold him accountable for the financing of Hamas and the October 7 massacre. Three corruption cases are also still open that could put him in jail for several years.
Supported by ministers like Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezael Smotrich, supporters of annexing the West Bank and expelling the Palestinians from Gaza, and abusing a society still in shock that does not feel empathy for the Arabs, Netanyahu believes he can save himself.
However, with 25,000 dead and 1.9 million displaced, Hamas has won the narrative, not only in Arab capitals, but also in European capitals and among the majority of Americans.
Netanyahu is alone. He cannot even count on Trump winning in November because he turned his back on him four years ago when he sought his support to support the falsehood that Biden had won by fraud.
A slow war involves the demobilization of tens of thousands of reservists. These soldiers – who have already lost 217 comrades – are likely to demand his head when they return home. His argument is very simple: the prime minister has violated Israel's reason for existing, which is none other than to protect at all costs the lives of a people who survived the extermination. Not prioritizing the hostages and not having prevented October 7 violate this principle. Therefore, peace is his condemnation.
Watching his fall from the front row is Benny Gantz, his great political rival, now in the war cabinet. He doubles his voting intention and is preparing for an electoral campaign that could be brought forward to this summer.
