An overwhelming majority of Israelis say they want a cease-fire deal to get the remaining hostages in Gaza back alive. Most also say they’re unhappy with the government, and their prime minister is prolonging the war for personal reasons. So, as talks appear to stall and the risk of a another war — with Hezbollah in Lebanon — seems closer than ever, you might assume Benjamin Netanyahu would be in trouble politically. Far from it.
Netanyahu’s popularity ratings are back in the black this month, overtaking opposition leader Benny Gantz as the best man to lead Israel for the first time since the conflict began, according to a poll by Israel’s Lazar agency for Maariv, a daily newspaper. And when the Israel Democracy Institute asked if people wanted their country to expand the war to take on Hezbollah in Lebanon, the answer was mostly yes.
As I’ve written before, for Israel to open a second front by choice would force an unpredictable conflagration that’s likely to draw in Iran, the US and perhaps others, none of which would gain by it. Yet there is a substantial body of opinion in Israel that believes this is exactly the right time to force a showdown with Iran and the ring of proxies it arms around the nation. That’s unlikely to change after Sunday’s morning’s massive exchange of rocket fire with Hezbollah was followed by statements on both sides indicating they don’t intend further escalation for now.
The argument goes that while Hamas itself may not pose an existential threat, the larger power that it works with in Tehran does — and there will never be a better time to eliminate that threat than now. That’s because Hamas has been largely crushed as a military force, removing one arrow for Iran’s quiver; Israeli settlements along the northern border with Lebanon have already been evacuated, a requirement for any invasion; US forces are already deployed across the region to help neutralize any backlash from Iran over Gaza or the July assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh; and the regime in Tehran has yet to develop a nuclear deterrent.
I asked Avi Melamed, a former Israeli security official I’ve found to a reliable interpreter, to help unpack all this. The bottom line, he said, is that “Israel is now fighting for its existence, with the major threat coming from the Iranian regime, and I am not sure people in the West understand this.”
Much of the world may be focused on the existential threat that ordinary Palestinians already face in Gaza, but seen from Tel Aviv, Iran has spent decades building what Melamed calls a “strangling loop around Israel’s neck,” starting with Hezbollah and moving on to include Syria, militias in Iraq, Hamas and the Houthis in Yemen.
Now it’s trying to and add Jordan to the loop, says Melamed. And once Iran has a nuclear deterrent, its umbrella will allow Tehran’s proxies to act against Israel with still greater impunity. There will be a conflict with Iran, he says: “It’s now or later, it is inevitable, and right now some elements play into our hands.” In fact, for some Israelis, the very reluctance of Iran and Hezbollah to start a war now means that Israel should, because it means the other side clearly isn’t ready.
I agree with much of this analysis. Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis are all open about their goal, which is to eliminate the state of Israel. The murders and rapes of Oct. 7 gave a preview of what that could in future mean for Israelis.
But before concluding that this is what “Israel” wants, it’s worth delving into the poll data a little. What it shows is a severely divided nation, with the 20% Arab population often responding very differently from liberal Jews, and liberal Jews again thinking very differently from respondents on the religious and nationalist right.
So while most Israelis say they’re unhappy with the government, for some that will be over Netanyahu’s continuation of the war and for others the failure to conduct it more resolutely. In the same way, a lot more right-wing Jews support invading Lebanon to deal with Hezbollah than do left-wing Jews. The result also shows a confused picture because it must: What most Israelis want, regardless of faction, is to get the remaining hostages back alive and at the same time eliminate Hamas. These are incompatible goals.
There are really just two ways for the war in Gaza to resolve; either through a mediated and internationalized accommodation between Israelis and Palestinians that aims to sideline Hamas and normalize Israel’s place in the Middle East over time, or through a once-and-for-all showdown between Israel, backed by the US on one side, and Iran and its many proxies on the other.
Neither the new political leader of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, nor Netanyahu is interested in the former. Just as important, both are in a position to wag their much larger protectors by their tails. It’s tempting to argue that Sinwar’s desire to expand the war is born of desperation, while Netanyahu’s is born of confidence that the combined firepower of the US and Israel would roll all before it. But both assumptions worry me.
The first is of concern because the theatrically savage nature of the attack Sinwar organized on Oct. 7 suggests that he has wanted to draw Hezbollah and Iran into the fray from the start. This smacks less of desperation than strategy. Melamed thinks it’s possible Hezbollah’s signal on Sunday that it doesn’t want to escalate further with Israel could get Sinwar to lose hope of expanding the war and accept the amended cease-fire deal that’s still under discussion. I hope he’s right. If not, it’s worth at least considering whether it would be wise to give Sinwar the regional conflict he wants.
As for Israeli confidence, military tools always look more decisive than their softer alternatives, even though it's been proved too many times – in Vietnam, Lebanon, Afghanistan (twice), Iraq and now Ukraine — that this is more often than not an illusion. Israel is in an unenviable position that too few outside the country are willing to recognize, but a bigger war is less likely to bring the stability the country craves than new sources of threat and insecurity.
Credit: Bloomberg
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