What Israel’s latest attacks tell us about what Netanyahu’s next move

October 12

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Israel’s ground invasion of Lebanon is about to end its second week, as Israel’s war has already entered its second year. Appeals for a ceasefire have increased following an air strike in Beirut on Thursday night, and the wounding on Friday, for the second day running, of UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon by Israeli military fire.

A new offensive is taking place in Jabalia, in northern Gaza, despite persistent calls for the conflict there to end. Israel’s allies are also urging restraint as the country prepares to retaliate against Iran, following last week’s ballistic missile attack.

However, Israel will continue to pursue its own path, and resist this pressure, because of three factors: 7 October, Benjamin Netanyahu and the United States.

It was in January 2020 when Iranian general Qassem Soleimani landed at Baghdad airport on a night-time flight from Damascus. Soleimani was the head of Iran’s notorious Quds Force, an elite, clandestine unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps specialising in overseas operations.

The group – whose name means Jerusalem, and whose main adversary was Israel – was responsible for arming, training, funding and directing proxy forces abroad in Iraq, Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories and beyond. At the time, Soleimani was perhaps the second most powerful man in Iran, after the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

As Soleimani’s convoy left the airport, it was destroyed by missiles fired from a drone that killed him instantly.

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Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, left, and Iranian General Qassem Soleimani

Although Israel provided intelligence to help locate its arch-adversary, the drone belonged to the United States. The assassination order had been given by then US President Donald Trump, not Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“I never forget that Bibi Netanyahu let us down,” former President Trump would later say in a speech referring to the Soleimani assassination. In a separate interview, Trump also suggested that he had expected Israel to play a more active role in the attack and complained that Netanyahu was “willing to fight Iran to the last American soldier”.

While Trump’s account of events is disputed, at the time it was believed that Netanyahu, who praised the killing, was concerned that direct Israeli involvement could provoke a large-scale attack against Israel, either from Iran directly, or its proxies in Lebanon and the Palestinian Territories. Israel was fighting a shadow war with Iran, but each side was careful to keep the fighting within certain bounds, for fear of provoking the other into a larger-scale conflict.

Just over four years later, in April of this year, the same Benjamin Netanyahu ordered Israeli jets to bomb a building in the Iranian diplomatic compound in Damascus, killing two Iranian generals amongst others.

Then in July, the Israeli prime minister authorised the assassination of Fuad Shukr, Hezbollah’s top military commander, in an air strike on Beirut. The response of the current US president was reportedly to swear at him, according to a new book by Bob Woodward, who claims that President Joe Biden was aghast that Israel’s prime minister was prepared to escalate a conflict the White House had been trying to bring to an end for months.

“You know, the perception of Israel around the world increasingly is that you’re a rogue state, a rogue actor,” President Biden is reported to have said.

The same prime minister, characterised as being too cautious by one US president, was then castigated as being too aggressive by his successor.

What separates the two episodes is of course 7 October 2023 – the bloodiest day in the history of Israel and a political, military and intelligence failure of catastrophic proportions.

What unites the two moments, however, is Netanyahu defying the will of a US president.

Both factors help to explain the way Israel continues to prosecute the current war.

Israel’s most recent wars concluded after a few weeks, once international pressure built so much that the United States insisted on a ceasefire.

The ferocity and scale of the Hamas attack against Israel, the impact on Israeli society and its sense of security, mean that this war was always going to be unlike any recent conflict.

For a US administration pouring billions of dollars’ worth of weapons into Israel, Palestinian civilian deaths and suffering in Gaza have been deeply uncomfortable, and politically damaging for the administration. For America’s critics in the region, the apparent impotence of the superpower when it comes to influencing the largest recipient of US aid is baffling.

Even after US jets were involved in repelling Iranian attacks on Israel in April – a clear sign of how Israel’s security is underwritten by its larger ally – Israel continued to bat away attempts to change the course of its war.

This summer, Israel chose to escalate its conflict with Hezbollah, without seeking prior approval from the United States.

As Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, Netanyahu has learned from more than 20 years of experience that US pressure is something he can withstand, if not ignore. Netanyahu knows that the US, particularly in an election year, will not take action that forces him to divert from his chosen course (and believes, in any event, that he is fighting America’s enemies too).

Different calculation

Especially when it comes to the latest escalation, it would be wrong to assume that Netanayhu is operating outside the Israeli political mainstream. If anything, the pressure on him is to be tougher to strike harder against Hezbollah, but also Iran.

When a ceasefire plan in Lebanon was mooted by the US and France last month, criticism of the proposed 21-day truce came from the opposition, and the main left-wing grouping in Israel, as well as the right-wing parties.

Israel is determined to continue its wars now, not just because it feels it can withstand international pressure, but also because Israel’s tolerance of the threats it faces has shifted after 7 October.

Hezbollah has for years stated its aim to invade the Galilee in northern Israel. Now that the Israeli public has experienced the reality of gunmen infiltrating homes, that threat cannot be contained, it must be removed.

Israel’s perception of risk has also changed. Long-held notions of military red lines in the region have evaporated. Several acts have been committed in the past year that could, until recently, have led to an all-out conflict, raining bombs and missiles on Tehran, Beirut, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Israel has assassinated the head of Hamas while he was a guest of the Iranians in Tehran; it has also killed the entire leadership of Hezbollah, including Hassan Nasrallah; it has assassinated senior Iranian officials inside diplomatic buildings in Syria.

Hezbollah has fired more than 9,000 missiles, rockets and drones at Israeli cities, including ballistic missiles at Tel Aviv. The Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen have also launched large missiles at Israel’s cities, intercepted by Israeli defences as they re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere above central Israel. Iran has launched not one, but two attacks against Israel in the past six months involving more than 500 drones and missiles. Israel has invaded Lebanon.

Any one of these might, in the past, have precipitated a regional war. The fact that they have not will change the way a normally cautious, risk-averse Israeli prime minister decides on his next move.

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