Hamas’ leaders hold Netanyahu’s political future in their hands. The outcome will remake Israel
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been squaring the circle for years — can he continue to do so in the wake of President Joe Biden’s proposed ceasefire deal? Photo by Oren Ben Hakoon / AFP / Getty Images
Columnist Dan Perry June 4, 2024
Israel has reached a pivot point that could potentially change the course of the Gaza war — already the longest Israel has fought since 1949 — and either ruin or resuscitate Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political career.
If Hamas accepts the plan, Netanyahu’s government may collapse. Some of the extremist parties on whose support it depends have warned that they will bolt, although others, like the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, have signaled support for the plan. Concluding the war with Hamas still in power would be an excruciating comedown for a government that promised “total victory.” But the end of a frustrating war, potentially accompanied by a new peace with Saudi Arabia, might leave Netanyahu once more competitive in new elections.
So all eyes are on Hamas.
If Hamas rejects Biden’s plan, preferring to fight on and hold on to the hostages for longer, Netanyahu will keep his extremist allies. The centrist party of Benny Gantz, which joined the government right after the Oct. 7 massacre, will probably still bolt; they are frustrated with the overall strategy of a prolonged war with no diplomatic goals. But even without them, Netanyahu would keep his core coalition of 64 out of 120, which has proven resilient during its tumultuous year and a half in power.
Such a move by Hamas would be a gift to Netanyahu, who would likely then to present himself internationally — particularly in his planned, although still unscheduled, speech to a joint session of Congress — as a peacemaker whose generous offers were rejected by Hamas.
Things will get more difficult for the prime minister if Hamas accepts the plan — as its every interest suggests it should. For Hamas to survive in power after having staged the largest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust would enable a major jihadi victory narrative. Many Palestinians would likely buy into that narrative, even though Hamas’ actions have brought ruin to Gaza and caused tens of thousands of deaths among its people.
In a third, and murkier option, Netanyahu may try to wriggle out of implementing the plan — something of an expertise with him.
He has spent decades squaring the circle and trying to please disparate elements of his coalition, always delaying key decisions, whether they have to do with the Palestinian peace process, dealing with terrorist groups or drafting the ultra-Orthodox. Already, Netanyahu is accusing Biden of having somehow misrepresented the plan — and is publicly speaking about its flaws — also a move from his standard playbook, in which he focuses on the negatives of any proposal, usually involving the Palestinians, in order to delay difficult action. Biden, perhaps in anticipation of such a move, has already ramped up pressure on Netanyahu; in an interview with Time published Tuesday, he said “there is every reason” for people to believe Netanyahu is prolonging the war out of self-interest.
Down this path, in the long term, lie likely arrest warrants for Netanyahu and others from the International Criminal Court, more talk of arms embargoes, more countries recognizing the state of Palestine, and other such punishments. If Netanyahu endlessly stalls, and continues to prolong the war, the current outrageous situation in Israel will continue. A war of attrition with Hezbollah in the north has displaced an estimated 80,000 Israelis; a similar number have been displaced from communities around Gaza; Israel’s economy has suffered tremendous damage, given its reliance on a reserves-based military; ever more hostages are understood to have died in captivity; and tensions with the U.S., without whose support Israel would run out of key munitions and face likely interference from the United Nations Security Council, are escalating.
If Netanyahu instead agrees to proceed with the plan, his immediate problem is that the extremist party leaders Betzalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir will almost certainly move to leave his governing coalition. Netanyahu needs them to maintain his majority; he would probably try to buy them off, particularly with more Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
This would have devastating consequences. The settlements already in the West Bank already make any future break from the territory all but impossible. If Netanyahu were to agree to deepen the settlement enterprise, he’d be miring Israel even more thoroughly in a problem with no obvious solution. And it’s uncertain such a move would work; the far-right leaders he’d be trying to court are purists not given to deals. The mercurial Ben-Gvir, in particular, is said to believe that a spell in opposition and an election loss by Netanyahu might help him position himself as the next leader of the overall right.
If Netanyahu loses his majority, Israel would face one of the most fateful elections in its history. If Netanyahu and his religious allies somehow win again, the despair among the country’s liberals — who account for much of its economic success — will reach unprecedented levels. Many people will talk about leaving the country. On the other hand, an opposition victory would probably usher in an era of attempting to save the country, with dramatic action both on the Palestinian front and in the state’s desperately difficult relationship with the fast-expanding Haredi minority — which refuses to serve in the army, yet which due to its epic birthrates could be a majority within three or four decades.
These dramatic outcomes are not fantastical. There is a clear line from the events of Oct. 7 to scenarios that could utterly refashion Israel. And at least for the moment, Hamas is one of the most important players in determining which way things might go.
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