Opinion | What I’m Thinking About on the First Anniversary of the War
www.nytimes.com
One year after being attacked, Israel has not won the battle on the ground or the battle for a good story to tell about itself and this war.

But the lack of a good story is hurting Israel in other ways. Israelis are being asked to send their sons and daughters to fight every day against Hamas and Hezbollah foes — yet cannot be sure if they are going to war to save the state of Israel or the political career of their prime minister.

Because there is more than enough reason to believe that Bibi wants to keep this war going to have an excuse to postpone testifying in December at his corruption trial, to postpone an independent commission of inquiry as to how his government failed to prevent the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust, as well as to forestall new Israeli elections and maybe even to tilt our presidential election to Donald Trump. Netanyahu’s far-right Jewish supremacist partners have told him they will topple his government if he agrees to stop the war in Gaza before an undefined “total victory” over Hamas and if he tries to bring the West Bank’s Palestinian Authority, which has embraced the Oslo peace process, to help govern Gaza in the place of Hamas — something that Hamas greatly fears.

This absence of a story is also hurting Israel strategically. The more Israel has a legitimate Palestinian partner, like a reformed Palestinian Authority, the better chance it can get out of Gaza and not preside over a permanent insurgency there, the more allies will want to help create an international force to fill any vacuum in Southern Lebanon and the more any Israeli military strike against Iran would be understood as making Israel safe to try to make peace with the Palestinians — not safe for an Israeli annexation of the West Bank and Gaza, which is what some of Netanyahu’s far-right partners are seeking.

I cannot guarantee that there is a legitimate Palestinian partner for a secure peace with Israel. But I can guarantee that this Israeli government has done everything it could to prevent one from emerging — by strengthening Hamas in Gaza at the expense of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

  • @[email protected]
    2•3 days ago

    I mean, while one must imagine a mutually recognized Palestinian state would probably still be on Iran’s side of the conflict between Iran and Isreal at this point, if it was more focused on rebuilding itself than in conflict to free itself from Isreal, that would technically be closer aligned to Isreal than the current situation of Hamas being actively at war with them, if only in the sense of "a less negative number is closer to a positive number than a more negative one.

    I guess there’s technically also an option that Isreal could offer to withdraw from and recognize a Palestinian state in return for that state acting as an ally against Iran, but if the resulting state has anything more answerable to it’s people than a literal puppet government answering to Isreal, it seems hard to imagine that lasting long.

    • @[email protected]
      1•3 days ago

      There is no way either side would trust each other after all that’s happened. At best, it would be some kind of stalemate and occasional show of aggression like North and South Korea have. But that requires both sides have a fighting force capable of inflicting severe casualties on the other. This conflict is pretty one-sided for Israel.

      I guess there’s technically also an option that Isreal could offer to withdraw from and recognize a Palestinian state

      They would never. Not only because they know they would always have an internationally recognized enemy country right beside them. They need to use Hamas to help de-legitimize the state of Palestine in the eyes of the international conflict so they can slowly colonize more and more land complete their ethnic cleansing.