Netanyahu’s Dangerous Gambit

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the ultimate political survivor. Today, caught between domestic pressures that threaten to end his political legacy and external security threats that present an existential threat to Israel, Netanyahu has turned to the US to provide a foil that he sees as being able to resolve these problems in ways that further his political viability. That’s a dangerous gambit.

On a recent visit to Washington, Netanyahu addressed the US Congress — a speech notable not so much for its content but rather for its theatrical nature, with 58 standing ovations that took up nearly half the speech’s time. The red-hot welcome given by those in attendance contrasted with the comparatively lukewarm receptions Netanyahu received when he visited the Pentagon, where he talked about the difficult military situation Israel faces in its months-long struggle with Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and the Houthis. Netanyahu faced a similarly tepid response from the White House, where the Israeli prime minister’s hard-line positions in opposition to a cease-fire in Gaza clashed with those of US President Joe Biden.

The gaps between Netanyahu’s hard-line positions and the more conciliatory stance embraced by the Biden administration to both resolving the Gaza crisis and preventing a wider conflict from erupting were unbridgeable. Both sides were aware of this reality prior to Netanyahu’s visit, which raises the question as to why Netanyahu made the trip to begin with. The answer, it seems, rests in the domestic political reality faced by Netanyahu inside Israel, and how he navigates the razor-thin margin between starting a larger regional war and managing escalation in a way that assuages popular opinion at home.

The Domestic Imperative

Even before the current crisis began on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas carried out its large-scale assault on Israel, Netanyahu was a leader under siege. His effort to subordinate the Israeli judiciary to the will of the Knesset (parliament) was seen by many Israelis as a frontal assault on democracy and the rule of law since the motives were to shield Netanyahu from prosecution on charges of corruption. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets in protest, creating a situation so divisive that Israeli President Isaac Herzog warned that the nation was on the cusp of a civil war.

The Oct. 7 attacks further enraged the Israeli population, as the failures of the Israeli intelligence and security services, including the vaunted Israel Defense Forces (IDF), in preventing the attack became manifest. For Netanyahu, who has positioned himself over the past decades as the man most capable of providing Israel with the security it needed, the Hamas attack was a frontal assault on his credibility and legacy.

Under normal circumstances, a leader who has suffered such a loss of credibility would be removed from office. But Netanyahu is the consummate political survivor and instead turned the personal crisis of confidence into a national existential conflict where continuity of governance and leadership was deemed to be more important than political accountability. There would be a time for investigation and justice, Netanyahu argued, but only after Israel was secure from the threat posed by its enemies.

Thus, the conflict that Netanyahu failed to prevent became one that sustained him politically, creating a Kafkaesque reality where the Israeli prime minister’s political viability is linked to a conflict that, as soon as it ends, could spell the end of his political career. In short, to survive politically, Netanyahu had to extend a conflict he was empowered to bring to an end.

To accomplish this delicate balancing act, Netanyahu had to find a way to offset the growing frustration over his inability to bring closure to the Gaza crisis and increasing concern that he was dragging Israel deeper into the abyss of an unwinnable regional war. This is where Netanyahu’s congressional appearance factors in — by getting the US Congress to demonstrably support him, Netanyahu created the impression that he and he alone was the leader the US trusted in these difficult times. In Israel, where US relations are paramount, this endorsement was critical in buying Netanyahu the time he needed to craft a solution to his predicament.

Escalation Management 101

One of the major problems confronting Netanyahu is that the IDF is neither configured for a long-duration conflict nor capable of prevailing in a broader conflict pitting Israel against all of its regional enemies simultaneously. The IDF premised its operations on the principle of technological supremacy, hoping that this posture would either deter Israel’s enemies from engaging militarily or, if deterrence failed, provide Israel with the capability of rapidly defeating an emerging threat in as short a period as possible, with minimal losses to Israel.

In 2022 and 2023 Israel conducted large-scale exercises designed to “stress test” the IDF through a scenario where Israel had to defend itself from all potential enemies — in particular Hezbollah and Iran — simultaneously. Notable in the scenarios tested, Hamas never factored as a major threat — Israel assumed that the worst-case scenario for Gaza and the West Bank in such a conflict would be large-scale unrest akin to the Intifada insurrections of the past, and containable with beefed-up security forces.

It is also notable that in the exercises, Israel was not able to prevail, even with the help of the US, a former IDF ombudsman, Yitzhak Bric, said on Israeli television after the 2022 exercise. Moreover, Israel never envisioned a scenario where a regional war was triggered by a massive Hamas assault that bogged down the bulk of the IDF in a costly quagmire in Gaza even before Israel engaged with Hezbollah or Iran. Ten months into the current conflict, the IDF is exhausted physically and mentally.

One of the interesting features of this conflict is the extent to which Israel and its principal regional adversaries, Hezbollah and Iran, have managed escalation. Netanyahu, responding to the need to sustain a state of emergency for his own political benefit, has threatened to extend the conflict into Lebanon while carrying out attacks, such as the suspected Israeli bombing of the Iranian consulate in Damascus, that threaten a broader war with Iran. Iran responded in a calculated way.

The assassination of senior Hezbollah and Hamas leaders in Beirut and Tehran should also have, under normal circumstances, triggered escalatory responses from both Hezbollah and Iran that either advanced to the precipice of a regional war or crossed the threshold. But again, both have so far reacted with care, as they weighed the consequences of greater retaliation — the loss of any prospect of a cease-fire in Gaza on terms acceptable to the Palestinians, the erosion of Hezbollah’s strategic goals in furthering its role in the governance of Lebanon and the stalling or reversal of Iran’s opportunity to improve its economic and geopolitical standing through engagement in forums such as Brics.

The most recent exchange between Israel and Hezbollah underscores the importance of managed escalation — a massive wave of preemptive strikes by Israel followed by a limited and targeted rocket and drone attack by Hezbollah — with both sides immediately toning down the rhetoric as attention again returned to the issue of Gaza.

Netanyahu is gambling on his ability to manipulate the shared desire of the US, Iran and Hezbollah to prevent a wider conflict while establishing himself as a leader capable of standing up to Israel’s enemies. It is a dangerous game, which, if lost or miscalculated, could have disastrous consequences for all involved.

https://www.energyintel.com/00000191-942e-d8c8-a3d5-bceef4000000