Israel and forever wars

The agreement that seems to be advancing in the international community to end the conflict between Israel and Hamas triggered by the attacks of last October 7 is articulated around two express principles: the departure of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the initiation of negotiations leading to a two-state solution for the territory of the former British mandate over Palestine. But there is also an implicit principle, which is what will likely end up marking the evolution of the conflict in the coming months and years: contrary to what Netanyahu and his allies, including the sponsors of the Abraham Accords, have been maintaining, the complete annexation of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, occupied following the 1967 war, will not lead to the “extinction” of the Palestinian problem, but rather it will deepen the political, social and religious divisions that are darkening Israel’s future.

The assassination of Isaac Rabin in 1995 was an alarm bell that the international community as well as Israeli public opinion preferred to ignore for three decades, while tolerating the intensive colonization of the occupied territories that violates international law. Although Palestinian leaders have invariably been blamed for the difficulties in reaching a peace agreement — an agreement that, whatever its nature, would always contain some form of territorial settlement — the truth is that large sectors of Israeli society — as reflected in the parliamentary majority that supported Netanyahu for years and brought him back to power — refuse to make concessions like those proposed by Rabin, who paid for his beliefs with his life, cut shot by a radicalized settler.

Since then, little or nothing has changed in the underlying current in Israel, except that the forces that were on the margins of the political system now occupy a central place, polarizing Israelis, on the one hand, and blocking, on the other, any negotiated solution with the Palestinians. And no solution means no solution — territorial or legal — since Netanyahu passed a law defining Israel as a Jewish state, more than six decades after its creation. The intention was not to state the obvious, but to establish a legal order that would lead to an apartheid system if the resolution to the conflict was not a two-state solution — which Netanyahu and his allies oppose — but a single-state solution, with equal rights for both Palestinians and Israelis — which they also oppose.

Based on minimum democratic requirements — without even going into his possible offenses for not having anticipated an attack like the one perpetrated by Hamas and ordering in retaliation a military operation that has caused 34,000 deaths, the destruction of hospitals and civilian infrastructure and a famine affecting the two million civilians in Gaza — a leader like Netanyahu could not remain at the head of any government. But believing that Netanyahu’s fall — if it happens at all — will allow a shift in Israeli policy with respect to the occupation and the treatment of the Palestinians does not take into account the ticking time bomb that Israel itself has been fueling since 1967, when it began the occupation. As far as is known, Israeli citizens reproach Netanyahu for having paid more attention to his problems with the justice system and efforts to bring it to heel, than to his duties as prime minister, starting with preserving the country’s security. But when it comes to how he is conducting the military operations in Gaza and his objective of ending Hamas, the agreement is broad, the only debate is whether a ceasefire should be declared to negotiate the release of the hostages.

But it is precisely the way in which Netanyahu is conducting military operations and his goal of ending Hamas that is sending Israel down a dead end; the same one, incidentally, that the United States rushed into by declaring a “war on terrorism” after the September 11 attacks. Both are forever wars, wars that must be fought indefinitely, not because the enemies have an inexhaustible capacity for resistance, but because those who declare them define victory in terms that prevent it from being achieved by military means, forcing armies to endlessly race against their own shadow. By military means, Israel could — who knows — take the perimeter of Gaza, that is if it knew what to do next with the territory and its inhabitants.

Ending Hamas, on the other hand, is an unattainable goal, because as long as just one of the organization’s militants — just one — commits an attack and claims responsibility in Hamas’ name, the war will not have ended. This is the reason why Netanyahu and his allies are reluctant to declare any ceasefire — be it in response to the calls from the U.N. Security Council or the demands of the families of the hostages, who want to negotiate their release. For Netanyahu and his allies, ceasefires are partial victories for Hamas, since they force Israel to recognize the group, politically strengthening an enemy they are seeking to annihilate militarily.

Even supposing that Netanyahu stops being prime minister and even supposing, furthermore, that his eventual successor wants to and is able to declare the end of the war despite the attacks that Hamas would immediately carry out to claim victory — a pyrrhic one, no doubt, but a victory nonetheless, as it would not have been destroyed — Israel is still facing a dark horizon of internal division. At this time, Israel’s successive governments have allowed half a million settlers to settle in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Since Rabin’s assassination, political forces have been utilizing these armed civilians to thwart any decision that could lead to a territorial concession in favor of the Palestinians. This being the case, is it possible to imagine, in the short or medium term, an Israeli government that has the parliamentary majority and the social consensus required to address the two-state solution and dismantling the settlements? If a new government attempts this, will the political, social and religious fracture deliberately fueled by Netanyahu and his allies reach a point of no return? The two-state solution, moreover, is limited to remembering — with a tragic 76-year delay — the need to comply with Resolution 181 by which the United Nations divided the British mandate over Palestine between the Zionist pioneers and the native inhabitants.

The question, as always in the Middle East, is what to do. But the answer, this time, only depends on the Israelis. Specifically, the decision they make about which country they want to live in and what they want the nature of their state to be. Can they continue the occupation and settlements while ignoring the most elementary rights of the Palestinians, violating international law and accusing anyone as antisemitic if they say their attacks on Gaza far exceed the limits of legitimate self-defense? Time, meanwhile, is running out for the Palestinians, because they continue to die every day under bombs that are an obscene display of force, just force. But time is also running out for the Israelis, who are increasingly divided as Netanyahu and his allies, trying to impose a solution that is no solution, persevere in their endless war, which now threatens to engulf the entire region and escalate even further.

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