What options does Israel have?

There are many misunderstandings about Israel in the international media, but one of the most bewildering is the suggestion that if it weren’t for the presence of Benjamin Netanyahu the war would end. It is one of those mistakes that at best mixes up hope with analysis, and at worst displays a dumbfounding ignorance.

Let me give you an example. In recent months I think I’ve interviewed everybody in Israeli politics who might some day replace Netanyahu. It doesn’t matter if they’re from the right or the left of the political spectrum, not one would be doing anything different from what he is doing now.

No one, left or right, would be doing anything different from what Netanyahu is doing now

You might ask why. The answer is obvious. If you had 1,200 of your citizens slaughtered in the most barbaric ways, what would you do? If hundreds of your citizens had been taken hostage and more than a hundred were still being held in a densely populated civilian area, what would you do? Add in a few other factors. Imagine if all this had been done by a terrorist group who do not wear uniforms that distinguish them from the general population, that the terrorists want to maximize civilian casualties on their own side, that much of the civilian population are actually complicit in hiding hostages, storing weapons in their houses or hosting entrances to the terrorists’ huge underground tunnel networks then, again, what would you do?

The geniuses in the armchair class tend to say things like “There should be peace,” as though this has never occurred to Israel. Or they say: “There must be an end to the fighting.” Again, as though this were some fantastically original insight. But all these things are wanted in Jerusalem. Who wants to have to fight a war in the same place for eighteen years?

Still, in Washington, Paris and London the mistaken idea continues that what is happening in Gaza might stop if there were only a change in Israel’s leadership.

I can say with a considerable degree of certainty that this war would be going almost exactly the same way whoever the prime minister of Israel was. No leader, from the left, center or right, would have been able to sit back and allow Hamas to get away with its massacre on October 7. No Israeli leader would have been able to allow Hamas to rape, torture and brutalize Israeli hostages without doing everything they could to get them back.

One of those suggested as a possible Israeli prime minister is Benny Gantz, a minister in the war cabinet and long-time rival of Netanyahu. Last month he went on a trip to the US which was highly controversial in Israel — seen as it was by some as an opportunity for Gantz to present himself as a more acceptable face in Washington.

What Gantz said on the visit might have surprised some of those at the top of the US government and the leadership of the Democratic Party. Then, as now, the whole world’s attention was focused on the south Gazan city of Rafah — the last hiding place for the remaining leadership of Hamas and the suspected holding place of the surviving Israeli hostages. Rafah is also home to a large population of Gazan civilians, which makes the operation infinitely tougher for the Israelis, though very helpful for Hamas, who forever boast about (and demonstrate) how much they love death.

The intense global focus on that operation alone is noteworthy. I was in Ukraine the year before Gaza and at no stage was there any comparable concern about the operations or tactics of the Ukrainian army. Nor was there then — or since — any special concern that the Ukrainians might be harming too many Russian or Ukrainian civilians in their effort to win the war. One explanation is that much of the world still sees Israelis as the aggressors and Hamas as the victims, even in a war which was demonstrably, provably, bloodily started by Hamas. But picking apart that particular pathology might be a job for another day.

What was interesting about Gantz’s appearance in Washington was that he said, clearly, that “ending the war without clearing out Rafah is like sending a firefighter to extinguish 80 percent of the fire.”

Indeed it is. Just as there is no point in putting out 80 percent of a fire, so there is no point in destroying 80 percent of Hamas and not getting all the hostages back. Calls from people like Britain’s foreign secretary, Lord Cameron, to stop the war ignore the fact that what they are doing is asking the Israelis not to win.

One of the other contenders for the top job in Israel told me a few months ago that he had the chance to destroy Hamas in 2009 when there was another round of the war, that time caused by the terror group launching rockets into Israel. He could have done it then, he said, but an international outcry caused domestic political pressure, and so he was pulled back from finishing the job. All that the people back then (who thought they had done such a wonderful service) had actually done was to cause every conflict that has occurred since, including the one that Hamas and Israel are currently engaged in.

Everyone who stands any chance of leading Israel knows that the only way to stop the “cycle of violence” is for Israel to win.

Some people will of course resile at that statement. Some who do so want a Hamas victory. Others believe that their calls are simply aimed at avoiding any more Palestinian casualties. They could not be more wrong. Anyone who wants to stop the endless rounds of violence should notice who started the fire and who is the firefighter. They should want Hamas to lose, for Israel to win, and for some non-Hamas Palestinian leadership to emerge out of Hamas’s defeat.

Will it happen? Who knows. At present the world is trying to force Israel to another draw. What they are in fact doing is setting the groundwork for ceaseless war.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s UK magazine. Subscribe to the World edition here.