Things could have been prevented had Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not been ‘asleep at the wheel’.
‘In the name of God, go”, screamed the Jerusalem Strategic Journal last October. Their target was Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the “lumbering, unsubtle child of unrelenting war, a man hardened in suspicion and fear who does not know the difference between justice and revenge”, according to the distinguished Jewish writer, Howard Jacobson. But Netanyahu remains stubbornly in post, refusing to budge even though the majority of Israelis want him gone.
Last Sunday marked 6 months since the horrific and brutal attack on innocent Israeli civilians when an estimated 3000 Hamas terrorists broke through the “impenetrable” fence surrounding Gaza, where some 2.3 million Palestinians are squeezed into an area of 365 square kilometres. The atrocities committed by the terrorists sickened the world as more than 1,200 Israeli’s were brutally murdered and some 250 were abducted as hostages. Some 134 remain in captivity after an exchange deal was made between the two sides last January, among them 11 foreign nationals. At least 34 of these are believed to be dead, many of them killed by Israeli airstrikes, according to Hamas. More than 33,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) in six months. Of these, 13,800 were children with 12,009 wounded, according to Save the Children,. UNICEF reports that at least 1,000 children have had one or both legs amputated. Overall, some 76,000 Palestinians have been reported injured and several thousand are missing, presumed trapped under rubble.
All this could have been prevented had Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not been “asleep at the wheel”. The terrorists entered Israel at 6.30 in the morning of 7 October, and it reportedly took more than 5 hours for the first IDF personnel to arrive at the scene of the tragedy. Netanyahu cannot offload blame for the intelligence, operational and tactical failures that led to this surprise Hamas attack. Anxious to avoid prison as a result of the corruption charges allayed against him, Netanyahu lost sight of his primary duty, which was to ensure the safety of his country’s citizens. As a result, his popularity has plummeted since the surprise attack that led to the deadliest day in Israel’s 75 years.
Referred to as ‘’King Bibi” by those who adore and detest him, Netanyahu is Israel’s longest serving prime minister, snatching that title in 2019 from the country’s founding father and first leader, David Ben-Gurion. In March 2022 he gained power for the third time when he formed a coalition with the anti-Arab far-right leader Itamar Ben-Gvir who became national security minister, a position that allowed him control over Israeli police. Living in one of the most radical settlements in the occupied West Bank, all of which are illegal under international law, Ben-Gvir has been convicted of incitement to racism, destroying property and supporting a “terror organisation”. Netanyahu’s other important coalition partner is the far-right Bezalei Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister. Known for his extremist politics and often racist and homophobic statements, Smotrich is also a settler in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. In the March 2022 election, Smotrich’s National Union party merged with Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power party to form the Religious Zionism party, crucially holding 14 seats in the Knesset. Both Smotrich and Ben-Gvir support the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, oppose Palestinian statehood, and deny the existence of the Palestinian people. By forming the coalition with the two extremists, Netanyahu unleashed major social fissures in Israeli Society whose resulting weakness Hamas easily exploited.
When they flattened part of the fence separating Gaza from Israel on 7 October last year, Hamas terrorists were able to carry out their murderous activities against the innocent Israeli citizens simply because Netanyahu was focussed almost entirely on the demands of extremist West Bank settlers, supported by Smotrich and Ben Gvir. He ignored the needs of his own people living in southern Israeli towns and kibbutzim, those small residential villages historically centred on collective farms.
There comes a time when those in power have stayed too long. The problem is that power is addictive and frequently leads to corruption. “All power corrupts”, is the well-known saying, but recently psychologists have theorised that rather being a corrupting influence, power amplifies a leader’s innate tendencies. In other words, power doesn’t necessarily corrupt, it’s a magnet to the most corruptible. Many Israelis are convinced that Benjamin Netanyahu falls into this category. On 21 November 2019 he was officially indicted for breach of trust, accepting bribes, and fraud, and on 24 May 2020 his trial began in the Jerusalem District Court when the prosecution listed no less than 333 witnesses. The trial is still ongoing.
Netanyahu’s trial triggered four years of political crisis in which Israel was split over whether he was fit to lead the country. After five general elections since 2019, in which politicians on both sides failed to form stable governments, the bloc of extremist and religious parties headed by Netanyahu’s Likud won a clear majority in November 2022. Flushed with success, Netanyahu then set about changing the relationship between the Knesset and the Supreme Court, to allow a simple majority of 61 in the 120-seat Knesset override almost any Supreme Court rulings and allow politicians to appoint most of the justices on the bench. Most Israeli’s were deeply suspicious of this move, as they believed Netanyahu’s plan was to select those judges who would dismiss the charges against him and therefore remove the possibility of him going to prison. This sparked the biggest protest movement in Israel’s history, with hundreds of thousands of protestors taking to the streets across the country week after week. Although the protests quickly dissipated in the aftermath of the 7 October attacks, there have been recent signs that the movement could ignite.
But more than the attempted gerrymandering of Israel’s legal system, the greatest threat to Netanyahu’s reign as prime minister is the public view of his disastrous handling of the war in Gaza. Almost three-quarters of the Israeli public want Benjamin Netanyahu to resign as prime minister. More than two-thirds say he is handling the war in Gaza badly, and more than half think his government is not doing enough to bring home the Israeli hostages held by Hamas. In a recent edition, the popular Israeli newspaper Haaretz called on Israelis to take to the streets to oust Netanyahu and his “irresponsible” government, holding him accountable “for the greatest disaster to befall Israel since its establishment.”
But Benjamin Netanyahu is totally dependent on his messianic far-right coalition partners. Both Smotrich and Ben Gvir are violently opposed to any hostage-for-prisoner deal with Hamas and want Jewish settlers to populate Gaza and the West Bank with the aim of forcing Palestinians out of the country. Both are threatening to bring down the government if Netanyahu “decides to end the war without a large-scale offensive in Rafah to defeat Hamas”, according to Haaretz. Rafah is the sole remaining city in southern Gaza where more than 1.5 million starving Palestinians have sought refuge. Many world leaders, including US President Joe Biden, are warning against the catastrophic consequences of an Israeli offensive on Rafah which “will only bring more deaths and suffering, heighten the risks and consequences of mass forcible displacement of the people of Gaza and threaten regional escalation,” claims Haaretz. Nevertheless, Netanyahu’s response to his coalition partners threat was a swift statement promising there is a “date for the offensive”, leading to many believing his calculations at the moment are “what do I need to do to keep the coalition going for a little longer.”
Writing in Israel’s biggest daily newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, the award winning chief columnist Nahum Barnea was sharply critical of Israel’s prime minister: “Netanyahu’s responsibility for what happened on 7 October is partial. His responsibility for what happened since that day is total. He is responsible for the procrastination in everything relating to humanitarian aid; he is responsible for the premature halt to the rounds of talks to release the hostages; he is responsible for turning the conquest of Rafah into a fight that pits Israel against the entire west; and he is responsible for the growing clash with the administration in the White House.”
Many Israelis agree and are convinced that Netanyahu is an obstacle to peace, arguing that he wants to keep the war going as long as possible to avoid a forced general election, which would be inevitable if his fragile coalition fell apart. A recent editorial in Haaretz argued that Netanyahu’s “refusal to hold a serious discussion of post-war arrangements for the Gaza Strip and his insistence on the ridiculous goal of total victory, increases the fear that he’s making decisions on the basis of his personal interests rather than the national interest.” The editorial concluded that “there has never been a more burning need to flood the streets, resume the anti-governmental protests and demand early elections. Netanyahu and his irresponsible government must go”. Seventy-five percent of Israeli citizens agree.
John Dobson is a former British diplomat, who also worked in UK Prime Minister John Major’s office between 1995 and 1998. He is currently Visiting Fellow at the University of Plymouth.