It’s too late. Humility – the readiness to say “I am only that big, only that smart, and only that right’’ – will never penetrate Bibi Netanyahu’s mind.
The prime minister’s response to his chief spook’s accusations under oath – “lies” – means King Bibi will never in his life say what King David said after his own sins were laid bare: “I sinned.”
Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar’s charges, that Netanyahu asked him to surveil demonstrators, obstruct the PM’s trial, and oppose the High Court in case of a constitutional crisis – are part of a 12-year moral slide that began when this column warned against Netanyahu’s granting of a cabinet seat to a convicted bribe taker (“Strategic threat looming,” November 2, 2012).
Morally, that was Netanyahu’s original sin as prime minister, but his premiership was marred by two other original sins as well – one political, the other strategic.
The political sin, as argued here in the past (“Netanyahu’s last opportunity,” February 14, 2024) came in 2014, when Netanyahu divorced the political Center, ultimately pawning his future, and ours, with ultra-Orthodoxy and the far Right.
The third original sin concerns the Palestinian problem, the predicament Netanyahu has misread for more than half a century and now leads him, and us, into a strategic dead end.
At this writing, the IDF is reportedly preparing a grand attack on Gaza, an assault that will presumably involve scores of aircraft, hundreds of tanks, and thousands of troops. Just what that assault’s exact purpose will be is unclear, but some of its results can already be assumed.
First, the IDF will lose soldiers, possibly many. Second, our troops will return to patrol Gaza’s angry streets. And third, Hamas, though decimated, will survive. To these, one might add the low likelihood that a ground attack will liberate our hostages.
The kind of decisive victory the IDF achieved in Lebanon is not at stake in Gaza – not because of the military difference between the two arenas, daunting though it is, as Gaza is a densely built urban thicket, whereas south Lebanon is a disjointed and mostly rural countryside.
The difference is political. Hezbollah was part of a sovereign country with a complex society that could potentially confront the minority that had hijacked it. That, in fact, is what is happening there now, following Iran’s effective eviction, and its Shi’ite proxy’s consequent loss of clout.
Gaza, by contrast, is not heterogeneous and not a country. It’s a political no-man’s land populated by Sunni Muslims and fully conquered by jihadists. There is no equivalent there of Lebanon’s sectarian mosaic of Christian, Druze, Shi’ite, Sunni, Armenian, and other tribes and sects. That is why any change in Gaza will have to involve some kind of political reengineering.
Military action, no matter how imaginative and brave, will not deliver this change. For Gaza to change politically, its government must be redesigned not by Israelis, but by Arabs.
The good news is that a blueprint for such an Arab redesign has emerged. The bad news is that Netanyahu, in line with his time-honored Palestinian strategy, and despite his strategy’s manifest collapse, has already rejected that Arab plan.
Egypt's plan for Gaza reconstruction and management backed by Arab allies
The plan, introduced in Cairo on March 4 by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, was vague on details but clear on one thing: Hamas would cease to rule, and the Palestinian Authority would not take over immediately. Instead, a government of non-political experts would oversee reconstruction, which would be financed and managed by Arab governments.
Anyone familiar with Middle Eastern dynamics understood the subtext. The governments of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates – all of which endorsed the plan – would join Egypt in overseeing Gaza’s reconstruction.
Is this a panacea? Of course not. Is this a wholesome plan? It isn’t. It is, however, the potential beginning of an Arab alternative to Hamas. Underpinning that thinking is the Egyptian, Saudi, Emirati, and Jordanian fear of the Islamist scourge. They care about it greatly, and want it defeated no less than Israel, maybe even more.
Israel could therefore have said about that plan, “We have our reservations, but this is a beginning, let’s talk.” Instead, Netanyahu ignored the plan. Netanyahu did not bother explaining his rejection, but its two parts – what he doesn’t want and what he does want – are clear.
What Netanyahu doesn’t want is any form of Palestinian statehood, an aim that Sisi’s plan indeed recommends. Netanyahu also doesn’t want any role for the Palestinian Authority, which the plan does offer, albeit in a delayed, conditional, and piecemeal way.
What, then, does Netanyahu want? Well, he wants to continue riding the Islamist tiger.
People don’t change at age 75, and Netanyahu is not prepared to admit that his big gamble – invest in Hamas, pit it against the PA, and rule the Palestinians – has failed. That is why he – alone among Israel’s relevant policymakers in recent years – resists the establishment of an independent commission of inquiry.
Such a panel would prove that Netanyahu consciously cultivated Hamas as the ruler of Gaza, hoping it would divide the Palestinians nationally and marginalize them internationally.
It should be said in Netanyahu’s favor that this quest, to sweep the Palestinian problem under the rug, did not begin with him. Rather, it is part of Revisionist Zionism’s attitude since well before he was born.
What began with Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s dismissal of the partition idea in 1937 was followed by Menachem Begin’s refusal to include a Palestinian deal in the Camp David Accords in 1979, and by Yitzhak Shamir’s rejection of Shimon Peres’s London Agreement with Jordan’s King Hussein in 1987.
At some point, the ostrich will have to take its head out of the sand. Yes, Hamas and any other Palestinian out to kill us deserve death. The rest, however, exactly like us, deserve a life. www.MiddleIsrael.net
The writer, a Hartman Institute fellow, is the author of Ha’Sfar Ha’Yehudi Ha’Aharon (The Last Jewish Frontier, Yediot Sefarim, 2025), a sequel to Theodor Herzl’s The Old New Land.