Israel/Palestine: 20 Questions

 

1. Does Netanyahu want a ceasefire?

No.

2. Does Hamas want a ceasefire?

No.

3. Whom do they think they're fooling?

Everybody.

4. Who are they actually fooling?

Nobody.

5. Why do millions on either side continue to support them?

Because people with authoritarian beliefs believe leaders lie to the public for their own good, and everyone who doesn't see what the the leader sees is too dumb to understand the truth.

6, Who is responsible for this impasse?

Technically, the Israeli and Palestinian governments, but actually it's everyone who supports the Israeli right (probably 3 out of every 8 Jewish citizens), along with everyone who supports Hamas (unable to be calculated). There is a sizeable part of both sides who still support Netanyahu and Sinwar because they long for this war to go on perpetually until one side is vanquished, which they delusionally believe is possible. Neither side will ever vanquish the other side, but they may yet get their wish for the first half of that question: a long war that prolongs the tenures of both Netanyahu and Sinwar (or a replacement) until things get sufficiently violent to make both sides dread war's cost enough to demand new leadership.

The Israeli military is responsible in that it must carry out the policies of a lunatic government. Netanyahu refuses to give up the Philadelphi Corridor, a small plot of land connecting Egypt and Gaza, and this is a sticking point without which bringing hostages home is impossible. His own defense minister wants him to concede it, his own general staff wants him to concede it, his own intelligence agencies want him to concede it, but Netanyahu refuses to give it up because he says it's how Hamas reloads (and in all fairness, he may be right, but clearly the military thinks they can manage it).

Without hope of a ceasefire, the hostages become of no value to Hamas, and most of them will be killed. Fortunately, Hamas can't be seen as walking away from a ceasefire either, and that buys the hostages time. If negotiations cease, many of the hostages are doomed, but both sides must be seen as going through the motions of negotiations they have no intention of agreeing to nor honoring.

7. What would it take to unseat Netanyahu and Sinwar?

Surprisingly little, and yet like the Israel/Palestine conflict itself, enacting the obvious solution depends on millions giving up their most cherished beliefs. Only five defections of Knesset members in Netanyahu's coalition would bring down the government.

8. How likely is it that five members would leave?

Almost impossible. Meaning Netanyahu has an unbreakable hold on power until Israeli law mandates elections must be called in 2026

9. How is Netanyahu still in power?

Because like a leech he drains the Israeli body politic of everything that was once good about it. From its beginnings, Israel's greatest virtue was that however chaotic the country and the body politic, they banded together in a crisis. Israel was briefly united after October 7th, that unity now seems a grand delusion.

10. What is it that Netanyahu exploits to stay in power?

The chaos of the Israeli multi party system of government. This chaos used to be thought Israel's great strength, it is now clear that like so many unstable governments, it was waiting for a demagogue to exploit it to sit atop the chaos like a dictator.

Hamas has announced it's bringing suicide bombing back to Israel. When it happens, Netanyahu will get a whole new group of supporters

11. What are the chances to negotiate the return of more hostages?

Almost impossible. Even now.

12. What would make it possible?

The negotiated settlement neither Hamas nor the Israeli right wants.

13. What will happen to the hostages if they're not returned home?

Many of them will be killed, some deliberately placed under Israeli bombing raids, others shot to prevent nearby Israeli soldiers from rescuing them. Others will fester in Palestinian captivity for years.

14. Does Netanyahu care?

Of course not.

15. Does Netanyahu even believe his own rhetoric?

Nobody believes his own propaganda more than this guy. Even after all this, Netanyahu believes the State of Israel is his personal property. If Netanyahu decides total victory is more important than getting back the hostages, no one can convince him otherwise.

16. Does anyone believe Netanyahu's rhetoric?

A large number of Netanyahu's supporters believe he does not go far enough and wants him to simply announce perpetual occupation and further settlement in the West Bank.

17. Is there anyone who opposes Netanyahu's plan?
Nearly 70% of the country does. Some estimates show that as many as 700,000 participated in this weekend's protest to demand a ceasefire just in Tel Aviv, along with tens of thousands in protests around the country elsewhere.

18. Whose fault is all this?

Everyone's, yet no one's. 40,000 Palestinians are likely dead, yet the truth is that were Israel not successful in deterring Palestine, 40,000 dead Jews is a mere trifle compared to what Hamas would visit on Israel's Jews. It's not going to happen, and yet it could...

Nevertheless, even if Israel were correct to see itself as the side of democratic civilization against totalitarian barbarism, Israelis are so much more powerful than Palestinians that there is far less distance to travel between bloody thoughts and bloody actions. Israel has an obligation to show their model of how to go about things is the superior model, and yet by convincing themselves that they are the unquestionable side of democracy and civilization in a civilizational conflict, they become the barbarism they despise. When people believe they're in a struggle between good and evil, there is no evil act they cannot convince themselves to do.

Israel is changing as rapidly as any country in the world. Israelis complain about Islamic birthrates, but the birthrates of Israel's religious are breathtaking. 20% of the country is orthodox and half of that is ultra-orthodox. Birthrates have nearly doubled in the ultra-orthodox population in a mere fifteen years. This could give the orthodox enough power to make Israel a semi-theocracy sooner than we can fathom, a theocracy sitting atop a nuclear stockpile that will dwarf anything in the Arab world, even should Iran successfully develop a nuclear weapon.

Netanyahu knows this, and he means to drain the efficacy of secular Israel and be succeeded by the religious right, which can be the majority of Israeli society sooner than you think.

19. What is Netanyahu's ultimate goal?

Superficially, to stay in power and avoid jail, and in order to do that he must placate the far far right members of his coalition by having no negotiated settlement.

More broadly, it's to create a conflict large enough that the US becomes directly involved, therefore the US bombs Iran's nuclear program using their military capabilities that still dwarf Israel's. Iran's nuclear program is so deep under mountains that no Israeli weapon can reach it.

But Netanyahu can't be seen as causing the conflict himself, so he waits, and subtly provokes, until the axis of resistance commits a terrible mistake that kills American forces or the number of Israelis that are now killed in Gaza. And make no mistake, Netanyahu would view 50,000 Israeli deaths as mere collateral damage in a much larger conflict in which victory would save millions of lives from nuclear annihilation. Netanyahu will wait a long while yet, because neither Hamas nor Hezbollah have set a foot wrong. But in their manipulation of public opinion around the world, their tactics are astonishingly modern.

20. What could stop Israel from becoming a theocracy?

Ironically, antisemitism abroad, causing mass migrations from countries with lots of Jews. It doesn't happen until it does. That is the great lesson of Jewish history.

* I may be wrong about all this.

One last question:

Was the authoritarian drift of Israel inevitable?

Maybe, but if it was, then the drift of the world toward authoritarianism is inevitable too. The functionality of the world depends on the ability to tolerate contradictions: Israel itself has always been such a contradiction: secular yet based upon a religion.

Israel was a compromise that had to happen in order to keep Jews alive. If your ideology prevents you from seeing the necessity of places like Israel, your ideology is too simple to work in the real world. If your ideology prevents you from seeing why Israel must aspire even through its battles to be as liberal a democracy as can exist in these circumstances, your ideology is too simple to work either. Either way dooms Israel, and writ large, dooms the world too. The real world demands pragmatism, not ideology, and embracing the contradictions.

The world is leaving pragmatism behind, and without it, there is no real world anymore.