Israeli soldiers during an operation in Gaza on March 31, 2024. Photo / Avishag Shaar-Yashuv, The New York Times
In the aftermath of the Israeli attack on Hamas leaders in Doha, Qatar, on September 9, an unnamed Israeli official told Axios that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had so fallen “in love with being the regional bully that nobody can expect his next move”.
Indeed, Israel had demonstrated over the past two years both its unmatched intelligence capacity and its willingness to strike anywhere in the region — including, in Qatar’s case, a country that is not an enemy state, that is operating as a mediator and that also happens to be an ally of its biggest patron.
What’s more, it was willing to do so amid negotiations aimed at ending the war in Gaza and bringing Israeli hostages home.
Since the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023, Israel has ostensibly been focused on re-establishing its security in the region, both by rebuilding its ability to deter adversaries and dismantling their military capabilities, but also by being willing to engage in perpetual war, a state of affairs that has transformed Israeli society and power dynamics in the Middle East.
Israel has been brazen, unpredictable, and, until the recent proposed ceasefire, all but unstoppable.
In most arenas, it continued to use force without engaging in any viable diplomacy.
The most notable example of this is, of course, Israel’s destruction of Gaza, which has made the strip largely unliveable, as some Cabinet members openly intended.
United States President Donald Trump’s proposal last month to end the war — which is essentially not a peace plan, but an ultimatum to Hamas — has the potential to bring about an end to the bloodshed and destruction of Gaza, the release of hostages and give everyone on the ground a chance to start healing.
But its success relies on prolonged political engagement and sustained US pressure on both Israel and Hamas.
Netanyahu has embraced the Trump plan as a win. Yet the security gains his country has made are fragile or debatable, and its international isolation may deepen. Altering Israel’s bellicose character is not necessarily part of the equation.
All of this should concern Israelis.
Even if the war ends, there will then need to be a moment of soul-searching about the collective society’s responsibility for the years of mass killing and displacement.
Palestinians desperately need this war to end. But so do Israelis.
The liabilities of Israel’s security doctrine have become increasingly evident. It was ultimately the failed attack in Doha — striking the heart of the Gulf, where Israel has benefitted from the continued shield of the Abraham Accords — that backfired, prompting concerted pressure on Netanyahu to meet Trump’s demand for an end to the war.
The Netanyahu coalition’s recent push into Gaza City not only unfolded against the will of some in the Israeli military and most Israelis, it helped fuel a growing global consensus that Israel’s campaign in Gaza amounts to genocide.
Israel’s diplomatic isolation — on full display at the United Nations last month as major Western nations recognised the State of Palestine and Netanyahu addressed a hall of largely empty seats — was making the country look more and more like a self-defeating, irrational actor than the regional hegemon it aspired to be.
Israel’s strategy has yielded some tactical wins.
In Gaza, Israel has debilitated Hamas’ military strength. Its operations in Lebanon dealt a decisive blow to Hezbollah and — almost certainly unintentionally — contributed to the fall of another adversary, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.
While Israel’s 12-day war in Iran arguably did not achieve Netanyahu’s goals of eliminating Tehran’s nuclear programme and substantially weakening that regime, it did chip away at Iran’s offensive and defensive capabilities, and, maybe above all, showed that Israel and the US are not afraid to strike deep inside the country.
Yet in each case, instead of building on its gains and moving towards peace as a practical resolution, Israel has doubled down on the path of war — even when that has worked against its own interests.
As the US envoy Tom Barrack recently pointed out, Hezbollah has “zero” incentive to give up its remaining arsenal when “Israel is attacking everybody”.
When a US-negotiated ceasefire in Gaza went into effect at the start of the year, Israel could have taken the opportunity to get the hostages back and achieve its goals of an improved regional security landscape.
Instead, it broke the ceasefire and proceeded to cause widespread starvation among Palestinians in Gaza.
In Syria, after al-Assad’s ouster, Israel launched strikes to disable the country’s military capabilities and destroy suspected chemical weapons sites.
Israeli soldiers took up positions inside the country and Israel’s military prevented the new government from asserting control in Druze areas.
Even if these were temporary actions to serve Israeli security, it doesn’t explain why, amid reports that Israel and Syria were close to reaching a security agreement, Defence Minister Israel Katz apparently decided to mock his adversaries by posting a photo of himself alongside Israeli soldiers in an area Israel had invaded and occupied, writing, “Not moving from Mount Hermon”.
Usually, a victory might be understood as an endpoint, or at the very least a decisive outcome that does not require further action.
In Israel, though, winning has seemed only to yield more rounds of warfare. Israel is not a victor, but a perpetual fighter.
Last month, Netanyahu delivered what has come to be known as his “super-Sparta” speech.
Comparing the country to the ancient cities of Athens and Sparta, Netanyahu acknowledged that Israel is becoming increasingly isolated and that its economy and military will have to become more self-reliant.
This was not a slip of the tongue: Just as he had conditioned Israelis to become accustomed to constant war, he was also working to normalise the country’s isolation.
It has become a political axiom in Israel that Netanyahu’s only strategy is political survival, that he’ll do anything to stay in power; that Israel’s forever war has all been a form of megalomania. This isn’t the whole story.
It’s true that a majority of the Israeli public and military have, for months, called for a deal to end the war.
But none of the actions Israel has taken over the past two years would have been possible without a willing military, news media and society, including tens of thousands of reservists carrying out orders.
It is not just that many Israelis have no problem with the idea of expelling Palestinians from Gaza, or are averse to Palestinian self-determination and a two-state solution. At the heart of it, many Israelis — whether out of conviction, fear or deference to those in power — seemed to believe that the way to security is to maintain dominance and crush everyone in their path.
Trump, for all of his bluster and self-interest, has tried to alter that equation.
Until the announcement of the new peace talks, which prompted the Israeli military to say it was shifting to a defensive posture in Gaza despite continued airstrikes, none of the growing diplomatic, economic, or cultural pressure had influenced Israeli policy, nor made a significant impact on peoples’ daily lives.
At the same time, a ceasefire, while long overdue, would be likely to ease growing international pressure on Israel to change its policies not just in Gaza but vis-à-vis the Palestinians writ large.
And, for now, even if there is a ceasefire in Gaza, Israel will still be occupying territory in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and maintaining a military presence in Lebanon and Syria, beyond the already occupied and annexed Golan Heights.
Israelis will know true security only when it is felt by everyone around them, not one country, alone.
- Mairav Zonszein is a contributing New York Times Opinion writer and the senior analyst on Israel with the International Crisis Group.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Mairav Zonszein
Photographs by: Avishag Shaar-Yashuv, Arash Khamooshi
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