A blow to Hamas

With the assassination of Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut, where he presumably acted as a liaison with Hezbollah and the Iranian regime, Israel has scored a military success in line with the goal of liquidating the terrorist organization, which underpins its war in Gaza, but at the same time it has increased the risk of the conflict spreading to the neighboring country. The government of Benjamin Netanyahu could well take advantage of it to meet the requirements of the United States to move to a phase of the war that is less bloody for the Gaza population, compatible with letting in humanitarian aid and more focused on surgical operations in the Strip. But this selective action abroad, carried out with a missile delivered by a drone, not only eliminates a prominent military commander but also removes one of the leaders with the most experience in political negotiations.

The Israeli prime minister is surrounded on all sides. His government, filled with messianic and racist supremacists, is pressing to take advantage of the war to steal more Palestinian territory in the West Bank and keep the entire Gaza Strip, even at the cost of expelling the majority of Gazans. The families of the hostages demand that their release be made the main objective of their government through negotiation with Hamas. The White House is asking him to temper his militaristic and expansionist impulses, avoid escalation and set the negotiation of a Palestinian state in the occupied territories as a political objective after the end of the war. The international community is clamoring — almost entirely — for an immediate and permanent ceasefire. The Supreme Court of Israel, finally, has just disavowed the judicial reform of his government by which the latter sought to avoid any judicial control over the conformity of its decisions with the basic law of the state, which, in the absence of a written Constitution, requires the executive to respect the criteria of reasonableness in its legal initiatives. Netanyahu’s response to so many political and judicial difficulties has been to maintain the war tension and even to increase it. To the murder of al-Arouri, which nobody has claimed responsibility for, are added the attacks this Wednesday in Iran, which have caused more than 95 fatalities and about which little is known at the moment, except that they have the potential to also contribute dangerously to an escalation in the region.

Netanyahu does not have much room to react to the judicial setback, in a ruling that contains the seeds of a state crisis, since the Supreme Court has rejected a law tailored to remove judges’ current power of arbitration over government decisions. The current prime minister’s executive, unanimously described as the most extremist in the history of Israel and at the lowest moment of voter support, has entered the realm of illiberal democracies, just when it is looking suspect before international organizations and even judicial bodies of war crimes, genocide and of building an apartheid system. A charge of particular relevance has been brought by South Africa, as a signatory of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, against the State of Israel, which also adhered to said United Nations legal document, and is now in the process of answering for its actions in Gaza and submitting to the arbitration of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which resolves disputes between partner countries.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition