By David Rothkopf* – Haaretz, Israel
Of all the mistakes made by Netanyahu before Hamas’ despicable assault, from attacking Israeli democracy to personal corruption, from embracing Putin to promoting extremists, his strategy of shunting the Palestinians aside has been a catastrophe – and has undermined the popular global support Israel might have expected
Do you think the pro-Palestinian protests worldwide would have been so large or come so soon after the horrors of 10/7 committed by Hamas if Benjamin Netanyahu and his governments had not so damaged Israel’s international standing over the past several years?
If the Biden administration actually trusted Netanyahu and his government, do you think the U.S. would have felt it necessary to repeat as frequently as they have how essential it is for Israel to respect international law in its response to the 10/7 atrocities?
There is widespread agreement within Israel that Netanyahu is responsible for the country being left vulnerable to the Hamas attacks that occurred just over two weeks ago. But, remarkably, the damage he and his government have done is much deeper and has left Israelis more at risk than they have been in decades.
Not only has Bibi divided the country with the anti-democratic policies and abuse of power that sparked an unprecedented protest movement at home, but today the country faces the prospect of a long, costly, possibly escalating, potentially regional conflict. Further, Netanyahu has compounded his errors by repeatedly having chosen the wrong friends at home and abroad. In addition, critically, he has either failed to realize or exacerbated the greatest threats the country actually faced.
The gravity of some of Netanyahu’s errors are not fully appreciated even as the high costs of his other mistakes are so readily apparent.
As many Israeli observers have already argued, the prime minister and those closest to him bear great responsibility for the conditions that led to the October 7th horrors. These include the fact that Netanyahu and his team were preoccupied with keeping the PM in power and out of jail.
But they also include a focus on advancing the extreme right’s agenda with regard to further annexations in the West Bank. This in turn resulted in shifting military resources north. More aggressive anti-Palestinian actions in the West Bank and via steps like the Jewish Nation State Law also exacerbated tensions in ways that made the terror attacks more likely. Finally, as is now widely acknowledged, what warning signs there were of an impending action by Hamas were ignored.
Also well-reported has been the efforts by Netanyahu to weaken the Palestinians through a divide and conquer strategy regarding their leadership. Clearly, in retrospect the decision to promote Hamas and even permit its funding, which Netanyahu used to boast about as a way to build support for his coalition, was a terrible error.
But that error was linked to a broader campaign to weaken the Palestinians to the point that, rather than having to negotiate the tough issues of peaceful co-existence with them, Israel could just begin to ignore them.
This included chipping away at Palestinian control of the West Bank via de facto annexations. It included consigning Gaza to a blockade and repelling efforts to unify Palestinian governance between Gaza and the West Bank, both designed to weaken and isolate them.
The boldest element of the strategy and perhaps the most central however, was the prime minister’s “normalization” campaign with regional powers. While many of those countries argued, at least rhetorically, that normalization would give them more leverage to advance Palestinian interests with the Israeli government, clearly, the goal of Netanyahu was simply to shunt the issue aside.
The point the prime minister and his Israeli political allies repeatedly sought to make by pursuing this strategy was to argue that the Palestinian issue was no longer really of consequence to the greater issues of peace and stability in the region. They wanted to erase the memory of its centrality and thereby effectively to minimize, to the point of erasure, Palestinian concerns from the consciousness of the global community. Call it memoricide.
The deal that was pending between the Saudis and Israel would have been the ultimate example of Netanyahu’s strategy at work. While there was to be lip service paid to the Palestinians as part of the deal, in the weeks before the attacks, observers began to believe that both the Saudis and the Israelis were willing to throw real progress for the Palestinians under the bus.
They would have offered some language that Palestinian concerns would be addressed, but no real concrete steps toward ameliorating them would be taken. Having the Saudis, custodians of the Two Holy Mosques, bless this as a way forward would have been a crowning achievement of Bibi’s plan to say, “See, the Palestinians just don’t really matter anymore.”
Clearly, that did not work out as planned. The dangers inherent in the approach manifest themselves in the indefensible carnage of earlier this month. Now, a long war and the likelihood of huge losses on both sides as well as the possibility of another conflict engulfing the region loom.
By trying to sweep the Palestinian issue under the rug, Netanyahu and company have just succeeded in making it bigger, more central and in making Israelis and Palestinians alike much less safe.
While much is unresolved in these days before a full invasion is undertaken, one thing is clear: Not only has the effort to shrink the memory of the Palestinian issue to irrelevance been a catastrophe, that approach is also now well and truly dead.
In fact, not only is finding a just and sustainable political solution that guarantees the security and rights both of Israelis and Palestinians back on the table as it should be (note how many times President Biden and other leaders have renewed calls for a two-state solution), but because of the other actions Netanyahu has taken to alienate the liberal democratic world.
From attacking Israeli democracy to personal corruption, from embracing Putin to promoting depraved extremists into his cabinet, expressions of support for the Palestinians around the world substantially exceed what you might have otherwise expected in the wake of attacks as despicable and heart-wrenching as those perpetrated by the Hamas terrorists.
That is as remarkable as it may be profoundly disturbing to Israelis and friends of Israel in the wake of the human toll of what happened on October 7th and the undeniable guilt and repulsive ferocity of the Hamas perpetrators. But Netanyahu’s leadership failures have been such that he has undermined the kind of popular support another government might have expected following such hideous atrocities.
What support there is also likely to fall further if Israel’s incursion into Gaza results (as it inevitably will) in more civilian casualties. Indeed, of those who did step up to support Israel in the immediate wake of the attacks, many will be hard-pressed to continue to do so in a long war if the cost to innocents is as high as it is likely to be. And that includes Israel’s staunchest supporter, President Joe Biden.
That is why the U.S. has worked so hard to try to promote restraint, prioritizing humanitarian aid and longer term solutions. That is why the U.S. policy toward Israel now might be characterized as “Hold your friends close, and the allies you don’t trust even closer.”
Indeed, the failures and errors, the misdeeds and misjudgments of Netanyahu have been so great and have produced such massive damage to Israel’s interests, her people and her standing in the world, that it now seems unlikely that no lasting recovery from the current dangers is likely to occur until Netanyahu and the extremist coalition he has assembled are out of power.
In fact, the dark irony is that ultimately, it will be the difficult task of erasing the memory of Netanyahu rather than that of the Palestinian ‘problem’ he tried to pretend no longer existed that has now become one of the essential first steps that must be taken on the long road ahead toward lasting peace and security for Israel and its neighbors.
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*David Rothkopf’s latest book is ‘American Resistance: The Inside Story of How the Deep State Saved the Nation.’ He is also a podcast host and CEO of TRG Media. Twitter: @djrothkopf