by Dario Salvi

The consequences on Israeli domestic politics of the Hamas massacre and the war in Gaza. For the analyst and founder of Ipcri, the Prime Minister, the only one not to apologise among the highest offices, is the "one ultimately responsible" for what happened and is plummeting in the polls. But the whole country will have to face 'the foundations' on which it has built consensus and power. Intelligence and the army, transformed into a police force in the West Bank, caught unprepared.

Jerusalem (AsiaNews) - The day of "reckoning" will come for what happened and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "will be held responsible for the complete collapse of our defense systems".

However, even more than political and military responsibilities, "I strongly believe" that the country will have to address "the conceptual foundations and philosophy" on which Bibi "built his years in power"; starting from the central issue of "the occupation of villages and towns in the West Bank" under the pretext of "meeting alleged security needs," observes Gershon Baskin, Israeli political activist, founder of Ipcri (Israel Palestine Creative Regional Initiative) and columnist for the Jerusalem Post.

A leading expert on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he believes that in this phase it is war that dictates the agenda. The high death count of the latest conflict and the emotional shock resulting from the Hamas attack which penetrated Israeli territory, sowing death and the desire for retaliation and revenge weighs heavily. But there will come a time not too far away, in which the events of these weeks will also determine Israel's future leadership, he tells AsiaNews.

Weakening Hamas in Gaza, denying Fatah a role as an interlocutor to justify the paralysis of diplomacy and the freezing of the peace process and the now forgotten two-state solution were functional to the political project.

In reality, explains the Israeli intellectual, Netanyahu was interested "in controlling the territory" by endorsing, if not favoring the expansion of the colonies without any interest in mediating for a shared result, with the birth "of a Palestinian state" alongside the Israeli.

“But it is also the people” of the Jewish state, he warns, who “must understand that they cannot continue to occupy another people” for over 50 years and “expect to achieve peace” after having “subjugated and segregated” them for so long.

However, something seems to have changed after the attack on 7 October: a very large majority of Israelis, equal to 94%, consider the government and the prime minister responsible for the collapse of the defense systems, which allowed Hamas militiamen from the Strip to penetrate the border and strike at the heart of the country, massacring civilians.

Furthermore, 67% of those questioned are convinced that the failure of the entire intelligence and executive structure is "far greater" than what happened in October 1973 at the origin of the Yom Kippur War.

The rejection of the highest political and institutional positions emerges from a survey carried out last week by the Walla website, which confirms a climate of distrust towards the executive even at a time in which public opinion appears united towards the outside world.

As for the prime minister, 56% of Israelis say he should resign at the end of the war, including 28% of right-wing voters, while 52% want Defense Minister Yoav Galant to be ousted.

The collapse in consensus does not only concern the head of government, but the entire coalition starting from the main party, the Likud, which would see its seats in the Knesset (the Israeli Parliament) almost halved.

The gainer is the "National Unity" formation led by Benny Gantz - who entered the emergency government - which would go from the current 12 seats to 41, with its leader - and former Defense Minister and Chief of Staff - indicated by 48% as the figure more suitable for managing the conflict with Hamas.

A much better figure than the 29% collected by Netanyahu; he is also under scrutiny for the management of the formation of the unity executive, because it took him too long - five days to accept Gantz's proposal, while opposition leader Yair Lapid was excluded - from forming the war cabinet.

What remains in the country is the memory of the massacre in the south at the hands of militiamen (or terrorists), who crossed borders and also hit unarmed civilians, as well as soldiers. And again, the war that has engulfed the Palestinians and concentrated on the Strip, where equally serious violence has occurred, such as the missile attack on the Christian hospital in Gaza, the matrix of which remains uncertain and around which the blame-shifting between Israel, Hamas and Islamic Jihad continues.

"There is no room for dialogue between Israel and Hamas", comments Baskin, because "the most important terrorist attack in the history of the country" originated from the "border breach", also unique, and "all this has created an enormous trauma in the population". This will have to be 'reckoned with' and 'we will pay the consequences'.

However, for the Palestinians themselves, the worst trauma of the last 75 years has taken place with Hamas "taking them back to square one, wiping out progress and everything has been wiped out" on a diplomatic and institutional level.

"Then there is the humanitarian disaster in Gaza, the result of Hamas' actions on the Palestinian people," he warns. We are living the consequences of the actions of governments and leadership, little has changed from 1967 to today'.

In recent days, Yedioth Ahronoth, one of Israel's most followed newspapers, headlined the 'October 2023 Debacle', comparing the Hamas breakthrough to the Egyptian and Syrian offensive of 1973, which ended after weeks of conflict with the resignation of then PM Golda Meir. An ouster that ended her political career and the hegemony of the centre-left Labour Party.

Today, the same could happen to the right-wing Likud, which has dominated the national political landscape for years. "Netanyahu," the founder of Ipcri explains, "is directly responsible for the collapse of the system: we spent over a billion dollars to build a defence wall with Gaza and the most sophisticated electronic control and surveillance systems," but Hamas was able to "bring them down with a few drones and some grenades.

Along with the head of the government, the heads of the army, Defence and intelligence agencies (Shin Bet) have also ended up in the dock, who "must also pay the price", but the only one who has not yet publicly apologised is the prime minister, who is moreover "ultimately responsible" and will have to "account for it". 

 

Over the past decade, dozens of army posts (at least 26) have sprung up in the West Bank and the Israel Defence Forces are the de facto police force in the occupied territories, while Gaza has remained 'uncovered', Baskin notes.

As for the Strip, "there was no adequate preparation and control, no trained and equipped men" to face an invasion.

"The crisis breached the borders" while the forces that were supposed to secure the borders "were trained to do something else, to act as police" in the West Bank and "to protect the settlers" accuses the expert.

"Here, this is what the army has become in the past year with soldiers and officers sitting behind videos and screens doing intelligence work. At least 8200 units, but where were they," he wonders in conclusion, "instead of guarding and protecting the nation."

• Gaza
• war
• Israel