FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
TEL AVIV – “One hundred and no more one hundred!” On Shabbat evening they returned to Geiselplatz. Thousands of them. Bibi Netanyahu and the families of the kidnapped deny this: Next Saturday there will be 100 days of war, “and we don't want to get to 100: bring them home!”
Besieged, nervous, scared: That's how they describe the Prime Minister in these hours. This is shown by the latest incident, a draft law that would require all ministers who will take part in war cabinets to undergo a lie detector test. Bibi could not digest the leaked news from Thursday evening, the dispute between the military and the extreme right over the establishment of a commission of inquiry into the mistakes of October 7th. “These leaks are a plague, we can't keep doing this…” So here is an old obsession of the Prime Minister: the lie detector, with sensors attached to ministers to measure their heartbeats and political loyalty.
The White House fears a Netanyahu who will be too cornered and exposed to dangerous temptations to continue to lead a political life. “The war could easily spread and metastasize,” warns American Secretary of State Anthony Blinken: We must protect the civilian population, “enable the Palestinians to return home,” he says on the day the Israelis admit they accidentally killed one to have a three-year-old girl at a checkpoint north of Jerusalem while “they were trying to thwart an attack.” The IDF announces that it has defeated Hamas in northern Gaza, but there is concern in Washington: “If the war ended tomorrow,” a senior official confided to the US press, “Netanyahu's political career would be over. “It could motivate him to expand the conflict into Lebanon.”
This is despite the fact that it is clear that Hezbollah does not want any escalation for the time being and that the American DIA services advise against the Israeli army setting fire again in a confidential report: “They would be too weak.” Meanwhile, yesterday Hezbollah has Israel's Northern Air Control Unit attacked on Mount Meron in Galilee, “the eyes of Israel in the north of the country”: According to Israeli media, it used Kornet-EM missiles, against which the Israeli Iron Dome air defense system is apparently not efficient.
Too many fronts: Israel appoints Aharon Barak and Malcolm Shaw, aged 87 and 76, as judge and internationalist to represent it in the genocide trial in The Hague; President Isaac Herzog is forced to publicly deny that they want to deport Gazans elsewhere. And then the Bibi mine, which was fought over by the square and his supporters, at the end of Blinken's long Middle East tour. The centrist minister Benny Gantz assures: “Our only consideration is for the interests of Israel.”
In reality, the fourth month of the war would change the outlook. Yesterday, a photojournalist, the nephew of Sheikh Yassin, the historic father of Hamas, and two other journalists were killed in the bombings. We also found out where the biggest fish, Yahya Sinwar, is: We are ready to attack him, says Yamos Yadlin, former head of the Mossad, but we hesitate because the terrorist would use the hostages as human shields.
However, it seems clear that the “total annihilation” of the Islamic movement remains a distant goal. And for this reason, now that those directly responsible for October 7th have been killed, we could pursue a more realistic “mitigation.” Blinken's stay in Qatar, where there are plans to forcibly exile terrorist leaders, also touched on this idea. The Qataris told him clearly: enough with targeted killings – in Lebanon and Iraq – otherwise there is nothing else we can do to stop the war.