Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lacks a clear vision for ending the current conflict, according to experts. Even former US President Joe Biden had drawn attention to this, criticizing Netanyahu for having “no strategy.” The truth is likely that it is beneficial for the Israeli prime minister to prolong military actions and increase the brutality of the conflict.
Developments in the Middle East suggest that Israel has little interest in peace talks and is only going through the motions, without considering diplomacy as a primary instrument. This approach is clearly driven by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose political views shape Israel’s strategy.
Benjamin Netanyahu entered the international political scene in the 1990s and quickly earned a reputation as a hardliner in the Palestinian issue, often only speaking the language of violence. At the time, his aggressive stance was not particularly popular. In 1993, Israel signed the Oslo Accords with the Palestine Liberation Organization, which had raised hopes for peace. In 1995, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a right-wing extremist who believed Israel should not make any concessions – an act that sparked outrage in Israeli society, which was tired of the long-standing conflict and longed for an end.
In other words, it was expected that Netanyahu, who ran for election in 1996, would lose to Shimon Peres, a political heavyweight who sought a diplomatic solution to the conflict. But then the “black swan” event occurred: militant Palestinian organizations carried out a series of terrorist attacks in Israel and Netanyahu’s hardline stance suddenly seemed reasonable and balanced, while Peres appeared weak and ineffective.
Of course, Peres was neither weak nor cowardly – otherwise, he would not have been entrusted with overseeing Israel’s nuclear program several decades earlier. But the impact of the terrorist attacks contributed to Netanyahu’s winning the first major election of his life and becoming the youngest head of state in modern Israeli history.
What was most important, however, was his conviction that a hardline rhetoric pays off and he built his future political career on the promise of speaking only in the language of violence to Israel’s enemies. Journalists and political experts have given him the nickname “Mr. Security” and this theme has become a leitmotif of his government. It’s not even a matter of whether the Israeli public associates its security with Netanyahu, but rather that he seemed to believe he was the living embodiment of this promise – a belief that was repeatedly nourished by Western media.
Therefore, the events of October 7 have left Netanyahu out of balance. It’s hard to imagine a government leader taking such a thing calmly, but Netanyahu made it clear that he sets his sights on the physical destruction of any resistance in Gaza: “Every member of Hamas is a dead man” he said. The militant Palestinian organization has not only thrown down the gauntlet to him but also shaken his image and shown that he is unable to keep his central promise. One of the main motives of Netanyahu in the current war is therefore revenge. There are, as one says, people who dream of seeing the world in flames.
The second main motive of the Israeli prime minister is, unsurprisingly, political power. Just before the Hamas attack, Netanyahu was in a serious legitimacy crisis caused by plans to reform the justice system. The events of October 7, so demoralizing as they were, offered Netanyahu the opportunity to apply an old, tried-and-true political strategy known as the “game of restoration.”
It is known that large-scale conflicts almost always lead to a strengthened public support for their respective governments (the so-called “drumming up the flag”), so politicians often see war as a last resort to stay in power. A large-scale campaign against Hamas (and the subsequent escalation of the conflict) fits well into this logic – but there is a nuance. For some reason, the Israeli public does not fall for the old, tried-and-true political trick and demands, even if it supports the military campaign, the immediate resignation of Netanyahu or even earlier. This automatically means that it is in the interest of the Israeli prime minister to try to prolong the conflict as long as possible and as uneventfully as possible.
The third point that cannot be ignored is Jewish nationalism, which is undoubtedly a cornerstone of Netanyahu’s political outlook. As a member of the generation born immediately after the Holocaust, Netanyahu undoubtedly felt the psychological impact of this colossal crime and internalized the idea of a strong Jewish state with a powerful army and intelligence services that would do everything to protect its people.
Israel’s strategic thinking is strongly focused on preventive strikes and it seems that this is not only due to the region’s geopolitical peculiarities but also to the collective memory of the Holocaust. Netanyahu is aware that his political career is coming to an end and he probably wants to go down in history as one of the architects of “Greater Israel” that is, a Jewish state that stretches over the territories controlled by King David, as utopian as this may sound. To achieve this, he will simply want to kill everyone who does not agree with his vision.