Why Netanyahu needs Israel's forever wars

FUELLED by ideology and self-interest, Netanyahu sees Israel’s forever war as protection against corruption charges and a potential key to re-election.

Despite the risk of plunging the Middle East into all-out war, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has two compelling reasons for continuing Israel's devastating assaults on Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The first is Netanyahu's Zionist ideology. The second is his political opportunism.

Zionism's ‘iron wall'

The level of shock and fear among Israelis created by Hamas's October 7 attacks should not be underestimated.

Hamas's attack resulted in the largest loss of Jewish life in one day since the Holocaust.

This strikes at the very heart of the Zionist dream for Israel as the only place where Jews can feel safe and secure from attack and persecution.

The ferocity and scale of Israeli vengeance on Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem is driven by the fierce determination from Israel's hyper-Zionist government that this shock and fear should never be repeated.

The only way for Israel to achieve this is to destroy any threats or resistance to this dream.

The response draws its inspiration from Ze'ev Jabotinsky's "iron wall" solution when he argued in 1923 that if a Jewish state in Palestine is to succeed, then Jews need to crush any form of Arab resistance to Zionist colonisation.

Only when this wall had wiped out any notion of resistance from Palestinians to a Jewish state could the Jews negotiate on what happens next.

Because Hamas is a manifestation of Palestinian resistance to Israel and its 57-year occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, the Israeli government has adopted the position that this resistance, and those who support it, must be dealt with permanently.

Hence Israel's devastating offensives in Gaza have made the Strip unliveable and killed more than 43,000 Palestinians in the process.

The Israeli government now appears to have extended this notion of an "Iron Wall" to include Hezbollah and Iran.

Israel can justify this because Hezbollah and Iran, along with Hamas and Syria, make up the so-called Axis of Resistance. This loose collection of regional actors was formed, in part, to resist the pervasive influence of Israel and the US over geopolitics in the Middle East.

In the Israeli government's characterisation, this group forms the heart of regional antisemitism because they oppose Israel. Escalating the war to include Hezbollah will, in the words of Netanyahu, "change the balance of power in the region for years to come."

Therefore, in the minds of Netanyahu and other hyper-Zionists in his government, removing the threats posed to Israel by Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran can only serve to increase Israel's power in the Middle East, thus presenting to the region an "iron wall" of invincibility alongside the warning that any future resistance to Israeli power will be similarly dealt with.

Playing politics

Since Netanyahu first became Prime Minister in 1996, he has positioned himself as the only Israeli politician capable of ensuring the safety of Israel and, by extension, the Jewish people.

This mantra has served him well and he has been a fixture of Israeli politics for nearly 30 years. The October 7 attacks struck at the heart of this narrative and left his prime ministership vulnerable.

Netanyahu's persistence in exacting revenge on Hamas in Gaza is not just driven by ideological zeal, but by the political calculations of needing to remain in power.

This is especially important to Netanyahu because of his longstanding legal problems.

In November 2019, he and three other defendants were charged with breach of trust, accepting bribes, and fraud and marks the first time that a sitting Prime Minister has stood trial. If Netanyahu is found guilty, he could face up to ten years in gaol. The trial began in May 2020 and has heard from over 300 witnesses.

Since 2020, Netanyahu has tried various methods to stymie the legal process by seeking immunity from prosecution. Most recently this has involved him seeking to legislate sweeping judicial reforms that would give the government oversight of Israel's Supreme Court .

Netanyahu's political opponents fear that these reforms would allow him to appoint sympathetic judges to the Court. If he is found guilty of any charges, he will almost certainly appeal to the Supreme Court. If Netanyahu's government can appoint supportive judges, it may give him a better chance of having any convictions quashed.

The prosecution case concluded in July 2024, and after a two-month delay because of the October 7 attacks, Netanyahu is finally due to give evidence in his defence in December 2024.

These legal issues add another dimension to Israel's decision to escalate its attacks on Hezbollah and its continuing desolation of Gaza. For much of the previous year, the Israeli government had been under intense pressure from large demonstrations about its handling of the war and its failure to secure the release of the hostages.

At the same time, diplomatic pressure was being exerted on Netanyahu to rein in Israel's excessive use of force against Palestinians and sign a ceasefire with Hamas.

This has placed pressure on Netanyahu and his position as Prime Minister from inside his government, with members threatening to withdraw their support if Netanyahu signs any ceasefire deal with Hamas.

If he was to lose the position, then he would lose the institutional protection the office provides and the means to exert pressure on the court.

Since Israel attacked Hezbollah and killed its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, demonstrations against Netanyahu's government have all but disappeared.

Indeed, Netanyahu's popularity has increased despite the accompanying risk of expanding the war against a perceivably more dangerous opponent.

With the leaderships of Hamas and Hezbollah decapitated and Iran restricted in its response, their collective ability to resist Israel is now severely degraded.

Netanyahu can now argue convincingly that he has successfully changed the balance of power in the Middle East in Israel's favour, perhaps for decades to come.

There are also sound geopolitical advantages for the US as Israel systematically dismantles the Axis of Resistance, as it removes an obstacle to its regional dominance.

This partially explains US acceptance, even encouragement, for Israel to continue demolishing Hezbollah's offensive capabilities and for the strong position it has taken in defence of Israel as Iran struggles to undertake any form of meaningful response.

The upshot of these ideological and political considerations is that Netanyahu has created the justification for Israel to not only re-occupy the Gaza Strip and Southern Lebanon but to continue its attacks on Palestinians and Hezbollah, all under the pretext of protecting the Zionist dream for Israel.

This means that any ceasefire deal will be perpetually on shaky ground, with Israel foreseeably retaining the right to attack anyone at any time should the political need arise.

While there are political dangers in creating this perpetual state of conflict, there are also political advantages because it allows Netanyahu to present a powerful and cogent re-election statement to the Israeli people that again centres on him as the security Prime Minister for the next vote, due in October 2026.

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Dr Martin Kear is a lecturer in terrorism and international security at The University of Sydney. His research interests include Middle East politics, the political/electoral participation of Islamist movements, and the role of political violence in the organisational narratives of militant movements.

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