After Ismail Haniyeh’s assassination this week, many in Israel are expecting the last living senior leader of Hamas Yahya Sinwar to delay the talks, in retaliation for the assassination, and in preparation for a regional flare-up, when his need for a hostages’ human shield would increase.
However, some at the helm of Israel’s security establishment, whose generals spend more time leaking to reporters than minding the war, following the assassinations, believe Hamas is at its lowest point, as Sinwar is seeing most of his colleagues (as well as life-long rivals) being exterminated like roaches in a sewer. Reaching a deal with Israel now, argue those security officials, would give Sinwar a new lease on life – good enough a reason for him to gradually return the hostages to Israel while the IDF withdraws from all of Gaza, or at least from critical strategic areas such as the Philadelphi and Netzarim corridors, Rafah, and Khan Younes.
As for a deal with Sinwar, it is becoming increasingly clear that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is sticking to the one priority he has been announcing for 301 days since October 7, 2023: he wants total victory over Hamas in Gaza, with images that would prove to Israelis who have been in a state of national PTSD that the enemy is no more. Similar to the Israelites seeing the Egyptians wash up on the shores of Red Sea after the Israelites safely crossed it.
In more recent Jewish history, on the early morning of June 1, 1962, a Yemenite Rabbi named Shalom Nagar who was working as a guard in the IPS, pulled the lever to hang Adolf Eichmann. The news of the demise of the man responsible for the industrial extermination of six million Jews brought an immediate sense of relief to thousands of Holocaust survivors who until then were living with the expectation of the Nazis’ return.
Hangings are very important to the mental health of traumatized nations, and Netanyahu is keenly aware of his duty as the leader of Israel to provide this therapeutic spectacle.
He will never say it out loud, but having served in an elite IDF unit, as Israel’s UN envoy, and as a minister and prime minister for more than 40 years, Netanyahu knows he can’t win both the affirmative elimination of all of Hamas alongside the release of the hostages, only about 70 of whom are presumed alive.
The conflict with Hezbollah in the north is also a secondary priority for Netanyahu. He does not wish to get involved in a regional war, and therefore he keeps the ongoing clashes with Hezbollah to the bare minimum.
He had to avenge the murder of 12 Druze children in Majdal Shams, but otherwise, things along the northern border can remain static for a long time – we hit them, they hit us, and as long as there aren’t enormous casualties, Netanyahu prefers this war of attrition. His focus remains on Hamas and the Gaza Strip.
And so, Israel continues to fight in Gaza, with reports on the city of Rafah having become mostly the former city of Rafah.
Just last week, during Netanyahu’s visit to the US, the presumed Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, issued a deadly criticism of Israel’s moves in Gaza. The pressure on him to end the war there is increasing, expressed in closed rooms and the media, by American and Israeli security officials alike – and yet, Netanyahu skillfully maintains enough wiggle room for Israel to realize its vital interest in continuing the fighting in Gaza until it destroys Sinwar and Hamas – in that order.
President Biden and Vice President Harris spoke on the phone with Netanyahu on Thursday.
According to the White House, the President reaffirmed his commitment to Israel’s security against all threats from Iran, including its proxy terrorist groups Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. He discussed efforts to support Israel’s defense against these threats, including against ballistic missiles and drones, to include new defensive US military deployments.
“Together with this commitment to Israel’s defense, the President stressed the importance of ongoing efforts to de-escalate broader tensions in the region,” the White House said. With all due respect, Bibi could find enough wiggle room in that statement to push ten battalions through.
It’s important to recall the aggressive manner in which the US restrained Israel’s response to the Iranian attack of 330 surface-to-air missiles and cruise missiles last April. The US engaged in coordinating with Tehran the borders of the sector for the Iranian attack. It was a theatrical production directed by and with American participation.
This is how the US wants to direct the next act in the play we should dub “Iran, Hezbollah and Israel, Provocations and Retaliations.”
As long as Israel does not bomb Lebanon back to the stone age, and as long as Hezbollah does not ignite Israel’s fuel depots, the US administration believes it can prevent a regional war through inauguration day, January 20, 2025.
The price Netanyahu is exacting from the US is their hands-off policy on Gaza and what Israel must do to exterminate Hamas.
