Benjamin Netanyahu stated that after Hamas’s final defeat, Israel would retain “complete control of security” in the Gaza Strip “indefinitely.” The Prime Minister wants to save the pudding and eat the entire delicacy at the same time.
The Israeli government has already indicated that it has no intention of administering Gaza as an occupying power in the postwar period, as a return to the status quo in place between 1967 and 2005 would place the burden of providing public services on 1.3 million hostile Palestinians. The idea of replacing Hamas with a coalition of Arab countries including a reformed Palestinian Authority is being articulated in diplomatic circles. However, such actors would never accept the role of minor collaborators with the Israel Defense Forces.
The solution would only work as a transition to the creation of a Palestinian state, which was ultimately emphasized by the White House. Since 2009, Netanyahu has been sabotaging peace negotiations and building a tacit partnership with Hamas. His postwar statement represents the continuation of this policy under the new conditions created by the implosion of the implicit agreement of violent coexistence between Israel and Hamas.
The field of war extends from the prime minister to fringe fanatics circulating in the ideological court of Jewish suprematism. “Now one goal: Nakba!” shouted Likud MP Ariel Kallner, referring to the Palestinian “catastrophe” of 1948 and calling for bloodthirsty “ethnic cleansing” in the occupied territories. Peace in the Holy Land depends primarily on an overwhelming political defeat of the Netanyahuled coalition.
The field of war is fed by the myth that Israel is the current incarnation of the Jews in the German Reich who are besieged by National Socialism. The flag of destruction of the Jewish state, raised by the Iran/Hezbollah/Hamas axis and dramatized by the July 10 terrorist massacre, acts as a decisive argument for the Knights of “Greater Israel.” It is solely the constant noise of antiSemitism that gives Netanyahu’s speech a false credibility.
But the Iranled Axis is not alone. The slogan of the oppression of Israel leads a procession of important currents of the Western left. The antiSemitic message is spreading far beyond the delusional cults that roam the tunnels of social media.
“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” US Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib joined the chant driving demonstrations in the squares of major cities in the West. Tlaib cynically interpreted it as an “ambitious call for freedom and peaceful coexistence, not for death, destruction or hatred.” In fact, his specific geographical allusion does not call for peace in two states, but rather the abolition of the Jewish state.
Different languages, same content. Israel would be “a disgrace to humanity” as it “does not deserve to be a state” (Gleide Andrade, PT Treasurer and Itaipu Advisor). The textbook tactic is to draw parallels between Israel and Nazi Germany. Hence the ritual use of the term “genocide” to refer to actions by the Jewish state.
Genocide is the deliberate operation to physically destroy an entire people. It is not synonymous with war crimes. The US invasion of Iraq and the Russian war of conquest in Ukraine left behind tons of civilian victims, but do not fall under the definition of genocide. The ICC opened an investigation into Israel’s (and Hamas’s) war crimes without taking the path of rhetorical inflation.
Netanyahu, Kallner and their supporters need figures like Tlaib and Gleide Andrade. Iran and its trained militias do not constitute a sufficient image to describe Israel as a fortress besieged by antiSemitism. The cohesion of the Israeli war camp depends on the breadth of the antiIsrael war camp.