LONDON: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu considers assassinations a weapon of war and necessary for the country’s survival.
Even a year ago this question would have been met with ridicule, but recent events have led many observers to entertain such a possibility. Israel’s bafflingly obstinate Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, bent on the unachievable twin aims of defeating Hamas and releasing the hostages, is making erratic decisions that have dramatically increased the risk of a regional war. Add to this the growing internal divisions in the country, and you have a lethal combination that raises the possibility that Israel could eventually implode and cease to exist. 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 award-winning Jewish writer Howard Jacobson, is in a desperate position, and desperate people do irrational things.
Take for example the murder in Teheran last week of Hamas’ political leader, Ismail Haniyeh. Although Israel has not claimed responsibility, few doubt that the Israeli Defence Forces carried out the assassination. On Monday, Iran’s new President, Masoud Pezeshkian, confirmed that Iran will respond firmly to the assassination, which came a day after Hezbollah military commander Faud Shukr was killed by Israel in a targeted attack in Beirut. With the world holding its breath, Iran is preparing a response that will probably involve its “axis of resistance”—Hezbollah in Lebanon, Houthi rebels in Yemen, and militia groups in Iraq and Syria—either taking individual action or, in the worst case scenario, launching attacks simultaneously. This could draw the whole region into a catastrophic war with untold consequences for the world.
Many considered Haniyeh to be moderate and pragmatic compared to the more hard-line Hamas leaders. His role had become vital in sustained diplomatic efforts to secure a ceasefire in Gaza and his death will further endanger the already fragile negotiations. “How can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side” said Sheik Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, Qatar’s Prime Minister. Tahani Mustafa from the International Crisis Group agreed: “He was not just a diplomat but someone willing to consider that reconciliation and diplomacy with Israel was the right route to take. The more you assassinate or get rid of moderates, the more the hardliners come to the fore, or you convert moderates into hardliners. To think that something like this is going to bring Hamas to its knees, or forcibly moderate the movement, is a serious miscalculation”.
Since the beginning of the year, Israel has assassinated no less than 14 Arab military and civilian leaders in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and now Iran—Netanyahu’s decapitation policy. These killings have put the region closer to spiralling into a larger war than at any other moment to date; a war that Israel cannot ultimately win. Islamist hardliners in Iran and military groups across the Arab world view the assassinations, together with Israel’s continuing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, as further proof of their belief that the state of Israel is a menace that must be destroyed at all costs.
But Netanyahu, struggling to keep his job and avoid prison for corruption, sees things differently. The three-time Israeli Prime Minister considers assassinations a weapon of war and necessary for the country’s survival. He argues that the answer to any problem is extreme violence, boasting that mass bombing of both militants and civilians “makes it clear to our enemies that there is no place that the long arm of the state of Israel will not reach.” Many believe that the last thing that Netanyahu currently wants is a ceasefire and even US President Joe Biden has opined that Netanyahu has been intentionally stalling the talks for “internal political reasons”. The Times of Israel last week carried the story of Biden telling Netanyahu to “stop bullshitting me” on telling him during a telephone call that Israel was “moving forward with negotiations on hostages-for-ceasefire deal with Hamas and would soon send a delegation to resume talks”. This was classic Netanyahu, repeatedly obfuscating or ignoring Biden’s “red lines” while enjoying standing ovations from right-wing US lawmakers in Congress.
Although he enjoys America’s “rock-solid” support, in reality Netanyahu’s future is entirely dependent on the two ultra-Orthodox far-right ministers in his cabinet, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalei Smotrich. Without their backing, Netanyahu’s government would collapse. Ben Gvir (Minister of National Security) and Smotrich (Finance Minister) live in Israel’s West Bank, a region which according to the “two-State Solution” should be exclusively Palestinian, but where now live some 700,000 Jewish settlers with more arriving every day. Both Ben-Gvir and Smotrich believe that Palestinians living in the West Bank should be moved to Jordan and those in Gaza to Egypt in an act of ethnic cleansing, leaving only Israeli Jews living in a “greater Israel”. On Monday, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported the hard-line Smotrich saying that “starving” over two million Palestinian in Gaza “to death” may be the “right and moral” thing to do until all Israeli hostages held by Hamas are rescued.
Smotrich and Ben-Gvir give substance to the theory that internal divisions within Israel could lead to the country’s demise. In a piece published last month, Jake Wallis Simons, editor of The Jewish Chronicle, argues that Israel can no longer avoid a clash with its ultra-Orthodox citizens growing in numbers year on year. From a community that had been decimated by Hitler’s Holocaust, the small minority of Orthodox Jews that settled in Israel after WWII has now grown to be more than a million, making up 13% of Israel’s population. What’s more, the fertility rate among ultra-Orthodox is currently 6.6, while that among secular women is just 2.0. Compounding this difference over several future generations leads to the inevitable conclusion that Israel will become more and more Orthodox as time moves on.
The implications of this changing demography are not just the appearance of more and more black hats, sidecurls and frock coats, but a growing chasm in Israeli society. As Simons claims, the dominant trend in the Orthodox world is opposed to the existence of the modern state, resting its hopes instead on a Jewish kingdom that is prophesised to follow the coming of the Messiah. In the meantime, many ultra-Orthodox Jews wish to exist as a sealed society in which women commonly have more than 10 children and men study the Torah for 15 hours a day. Men also look after the children, while the wives, when not giving birth, bring in whatever money they can.
In the modern world, this type of society is not only economically unproductive and a burden on the rest of the community, but in the state of Israel with a tiny population of just 10 million, it’s having a serious effect on the number of young men available to defend the country. This is because Israel’s first leader, David Ben Gurion, allowed ultra-Orthodox men to be exempted from having to serve in the army in order to continue their studies indefinitely. In peacetime this ruling had little effect on Israeli Defence Force numbers, as all males serve 3 years and females 2 years before moving to the Reserve. But in wartime it’s a different matter. Last week, Israeli Defence Minister Gallant announced that 671 soldiers had been killed since the beginning of the war last October and some 4,000 had been wounded, unavailable for further action. He also told the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, that the army is 10,000 soldiers short. It’s not surprising, therefore, that while Gallant was speaking, Israel’s High Court lifted the ultra-Orthodox exemption from national service in a move that triggered anger and protests among the Orthodox community. Now, some 70,000 or so young ultra-Orthodox men are available for the draft, even though they will need kosher food, cannot be exposed to women and must stick to a rigid prayer schedule, constraints that will not be welcomed by the generals.
So, is this beginning of the end of Israel as we know it? Will the external forces unleashed by Netanyahu’s reckless assassinations of his enemies abroad bring about a military defeat and the establishment of a Palestinian State from “the river to the sea”? Will the growth in the ultra-Orthodox population change Israeli society so much that the state cannot function as we know it? The answer is “probably not”, at least in the short term. But history is replete with states that have disappeared over time because of external or internal pressures, not unlike those currently facing Jerusalem. We might not be witnessing the end of Israel; but we might be witnessing the beginning of the end.