On May 1, 2003, U.S. President George W. Bush donned a cool-looking flight suit, climbed into an S-3 Viking aircraft, and landed aboard the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln. Standing beneath a banner reading “Mission Accomplished,” he announced the end of major combat operations in Iraq. “The United States and our allies have prevailed,” he declared proudly, as his approval ratings shot skyward and the neoconservatives who had engineered the war congratulated themselves on their boldness and wisdom. Conditions in Iraq soon deteriorated, however, and his decision to invade is now universally seen as a huge strategic blunder.
I was reminded of that incident as I watched Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his supporters celebrate Israel’s latest pummeling of Lebanon, culminating (but not ending) with the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah along with many of the militant group’s top leaders. Over the past year, Netanyahu has defied his own defense minister, his legion of domestic opponents, the families of the Israeli hostages still held by Hamas, and the Biden administration as he relentlessly extended and expanded the war that began with Hamas’s assault on Israel nearly one year ago. The country once touted as the “start-up nation” has become the “blow-things-up nation,” and Netanyahu was quick to remind Israel’s opponents that none lay beyond its reach. Given the damage that Israel’s armed forces and intelligence services have inflicted on its various adversaries (killing tens of thousands of civilians in the process), it’s not surprising that Netanyahu was taking a victory lap. Just as Bush did.
On May 1, 2003, U.S. President George W. Bush donned a cool-looking flight suit, climbed into an S-3 Viking aircraft, and landed aboard the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln. Standing beneath a banner reading “Mission Accomplished,” he announced the end of major combat operations in Iraq. “The United States and our allies have prevailed,” he declared proudly, as his approval ratings shot skyward and the neoconservatives who had engineered the war congratulated themselves on their boldness and wisdom. Conditions in Iraq soon deteriorated, however, and his decision to invade is now universally seen as a huge strategic blunder.
I was reminded of that incident as I watched Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his supporters celebrate Israel’s latest pummeling of Lebanon, culminating (but not ending) with the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah along with many of the militant group’s top leaders. Over the past year, Netanyahu has defied his own defense minister, his legion of domestic opponents, the families of the Israeli hostages still held by Hamas, and the Biden administration as he relentlessly extended and expanded the war that began with Hamas’s assault on Israel nearly one year ago. The country once touted as the “start-up nation” has become the “blow-things-up nation,” and Netanyahu was quick to remind Israel’s opponents that none lay beyond its reach. Given the damage that Israel’s armed forces and intelligence services have inflicted on its various adversaries (killing tens of thousands of civilians in the process), it’s not surprising that Netanyahu was taking a victory lap. Just as Bush did.
There is no question that Israel’s actions over the past several weeks have been a stunning tactical achievement. Israeli intelligence exploited superior signals intelligence and cracks in Hezbollah’s organizational structure, plus some baffling mistakes by its top leaders, and successfully pulled off a complicated and audacious plan to booby-trap the pagers and walkie-talkies that Hezbollah used to communicate. As they have in Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces have used the advanced weaponry provided by Uncle Sam to kill Nasrallah, inflict massive damage throughout Lebanon, and partially degrade Hezbollah’s rocket and missile capabilities. The Israeli Air Force has followed up by striking the Houthis in Yemen, Israeli ground forces are now entering southern Lebanon, and Iran is undoubtedly going to face Israeli retaliation for its recent missile attacks. Netanyahu and his far-right ministers have also used the war (and America’s supine response to it) to ramp up violence and land seizures in the occupied West Bank, as part of their long-term campaign to create a “Greater Israel.”
What’s to stop Netanyahu from running the table and permanently shifting the regional balance of power in Israel’s favor? Tactical achievements do not guarantee strategic success, but one could argue that if you can accomplish enough of them, you might alter the strategic environment in significant and lasting ways. That’s what Netanyahu is aiming for, but there are good reasons to doubt he will succeed.
For starters, the damage Israel has inflicted on the so-called Axis of Resistance is not going to put it out of business or cause it to run up the white flag. Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and Iran have all survived powerful blows in the past, and their desire for payback will only increase in the wake of the past year’s events. It’s a funny thing, but dropping tons of explosives on people doesn’t seem to win them over; it makes them yearn for revenge or at least the ability to get their tormentors to stop. Hezbollah is still firing rockets and missiles at Israel, making it impossible for the roughly 60,000 Israelis who have fled their homes in the north to return, and it will reconstitute itself over time. Assassinated leaders are already being replaced, cadres will be rebuilt and rearmed, and new tactics will be developed based on what they have learned. Israel is now sending troops back into southern Lebanon to try to prevent this, but its previous incursions into the south did not end well.
As for the Palestinians, whose mistreatment at Israel’s hands is the taproot of the problem, they have little options but to continue trying to resist what Israel is doing to them. Things might be different if Israel were offering them an appealing alternative—such as a viable state of their own or equal rights within a Greater Israel—but Netanyahu has foreclosed those possibilities. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat made peace with Israel, and Egypt got the Sinai back; the PLO made peace with Israel and got more illegal Israeli settlements. The only options Israel is offering the Palestinians today are expulsion, extermination, or permanent apartheid, and no people would accept those fates without a fight. It is no wonder, therefore, that the Palestinian Authority—which accepted Israel’s existence, cooperated with it in the hope of gaining a viable state, and got nothing in return—has become less popular among the Palestinian people while support for Hamas has grown.
Similarly, Iran’s occasional efforts to improve relations with the United States (and by extension, Israel) under Presidents Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Hassan Rouhani were steadfastly thwarted by Israel and its backers in the United States, most notably when they convinced a gullible Donald Trump to abandon the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the landmark deal severely limiting Iran’s nuclear program, in 2018. These responses strengthened the hands of Iranian hard-liners, and the current crisis in the region will do the same, even though Iran’s new president has repeatedly signaled his desire to lower tensions. Iran has responded to Israel’s efforts to debilitate or eliminate its regional allies (including the assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July) by firing its own missiles at Israel, a risky step that will lead Israel to retaliate, but Tehran undoubtedly felt it could not stay on the sidelines and retain its credibility.
Unfortunately, these events make it more likely that Iran’s leaders will decide to go beyond being a latent nuclear weapons state and build an Iranian nuclear arsenal. Such a decision would make an all-out regional war more likely, but Israel keeps giving them additional incentives to want the ultimate deterrent. If that happens, Israel’s recent successes will look remarkably shortsighted.
Israel’s recent actions have also increased its geopolitical isolation and may eventually jeopardize its special relationship with the United States. The sympathy that Israel rightly enjoyed after the Oct. 7 attack has evaporated as the world watched the carnage inflicted on the civilian populations in Gaza and Lebanon. The International Court of Justice has declared Israel’s occupation of the West Bank a violation of international law, and Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant may face arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Recognition by Saudi Arabia and other Arab states is now on hold, much of the global south has turned against it, and European governments are increasingly irritated. The walkout that greeted Netanyahu’s speech at the U.N. General Assembly last week was a symbolic gesture, but it was still a telling reflection of how he and Israel are seen by many.
Netanyahu and his supporters might take comfort in the blank check they’ve received from the Biden administration, the standing ovations that greeted Netanyahu in his address to Congress, the active support they are getting from the U.S. military, and the Israel lobby’s success at suppressing criticisms on college campuses and elsewhere. These are also short-term tactical successes, and they could easily trigger a dangerous backlash. Most people don’t like being bullied, and the imposition of speech codes and other restrictions intended to silence legitimate criticism of Israel’s actions will generate a lot of resentment, especially when it is being done blatantly and openly to protect a country engaged in a genocidal campaign of violence and ethnic cleansing.
Moreover, if Israel’s actions lead to a broader regional war and the United States gets dragged into it, Americans might seriously question the value of the “special relationship.” The neoconservative campaign to topple Saddam Hussein in Iraq was partly inspired by a desire to make Israel more secure (which is why the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and Israeli leaders like Netanyahu helped the Bush administration sell the war), but it was not the only reason why the war occurred, and neither Israel nor the lobby was blamed for it. If the United States starts losing soldiers or sailors in another Middle East war, however, it will be widely and correctly viewed as putting Americans in harm’s way on behalf of a perpetually ungrateful client state that takes money and arms from the United States and then does whatever it damn well pleases. Moreover, if President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s mismanagement of the situation costs Kamala Harris the election in November, both Democrats and Republicans will begin to question whether reflexive support for Israel is still the smart political stance. And if any of this happens, the risk of a backlash against Israel’s supporters in the United States will increase. If you are worried about rising antisemitism in the United States, that possibility should scare you much more than some mostly innocuous demonstrations on college campuses.
Finally, there is the impact on Israel itself. In the aftermath of Oct. 7, Israelis had an opportunity to ditch Netanyahu (whose decisions had left Israel vulnerable to Hamas’s brutal attack) and steer the country back toward normalcy. That didn’t happen, however, and Netanyahu’s recent tactical successes are strengthening his political position, along with that of the right-wing extremists whose policies are based on a fervently religious and messianic vision of Israel’s future. Moderate and secular Israelis—who are central to the high-tech sectors that have fueled the economy in recent years—will continue to depart, to avoid living in the Israel that men such as Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich want to create. More than 500,000 Israelis (i.e., about 5 percent of the population) already live overseas; surveys suggest that 80 percent of them do not intend to return; and the number that are emigrating has risen dramatically in the past year. The Washington Post reports that Israel’s economy is “in serious danger,” which will only reinforce these tendencies. Israeli universities—one of the country’s crown jewels—are reporting a dramatic decline in foreign students, which is both a further sign of its eroding image and a blow to future scientific progress. In short, Netanyahu’s short-term achievements have reinforced trends that imperil the country’s long-term future.
Life is uncertain—especially in politics—and none of my observations are preordained. But as I wrote a few weeks ago, sometimes what seems at first glance to be a stunning military or political victory can contain the seeds of deeper troubles that sprout with the passage of time. The challenge for a successful leader is to use temporary advantages to secure long-term benefits. But to do so requires knowing when to stop and when to shift from fighting to resolving a conflict. Sadly, there is no sign that Netanyahu has those skills or has the slightest interest in acquiring them.
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