Netanyahu's Two Bets

Reflections on Israel's policy of right-by-conquest

The Israeli government is now implementing a policy of genocide and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip, according to its senior officials. In remarks over the past few weeks, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that after the defeat of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Israel will enact a “voluntary emigration plan,” for Palestinians that sees the territory emptied of its population. As part of this, Netanyahu reiterated this week that Israel is “destroying more and more homes” and that the “only inevitable outcome will be the wish of Gazans to emigrate outside of the Gaza Strip.” Senior Israeli cabinet members like Bezalel Smotrich have been only somewhat less tactful, stating that the war will leave Gaza “totally destroyed”, with the surviving population left “totally despairing” and forced to depart what remains of their homes.

Tel Aviv today has the upper hand in the conflict and thus has a good shot of achieving this plan. Their advantage is not just against the Palestinians, but against all of its neighbors, none of whom are able to intervene and halt this outcome, even as they oppose it. The liquidation of the Gaza Strip, whether through expulsion, or the gradual attrition of the population through violence, disease, and starvation, would be a historic event unlike any in the postwar period. It would put to an end to seven decades of attempts to find a political solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, while transforming it into a full-blown global sectarian conflict involving Israel and the entire Islamic world, with no remaining diplomatic bridges for either side to cross.

Many Israelis are opposed to the continued prosecution of the war for both moral and practical reasons. They may even be the majority. But, ultimately, Netanyahu is in power, and he now has the opportunity to take this historic step. Although the goal might still be prevented by outside parties, or simply deemed unfeasible, it is worth considering whether liquidating Gaza and implementing a final solution of genocide and expulsion there would be wise in the context of Israel’s long-term interests.

Mean Reversions

Since its establishment in 1948, Israel has existed in a “Goldilocks Zone” of uniquely favorable conditions. The foundation of the state coincided with a period of unprecedented weakness and dysfunction in Arab and Islamic countries emerging from colonial control, many of which had objected to its creation. The dysfunction of these states has been so great that despite enjoying an overwhelming demographic advantage over Israel, they have been incapable of compelling even a pragmatic political solution to the conflict along the lines of the 1967 borders. In addition to having weak enemies, Israel’s creation also coincided with a good wager made by 20th century Israeli leaders, who overcame significant internal opposition and sided with the winning party in the Cold War. This cemented decades of support from Washington, while the Arab states were left to contend with inferior Soviet assistance.

The Jewish population of Israel today numbers roughly 7 million people in total. The Arab world has about 300 million, while the wider Islamic world, stretching from Morocco to Indonesia, numbers closer to 2 billion. As much as people have tried to avoid this conclusion, over the past two years the conflict has now taken on connotations of generalized sectarian war between Israelis and the Muslim world. The liquidation of Gaza would cement this narrative indefinitely. I do not think this is a good thing for Israel, which is a small country geographically distant from the U.S., and reliant on various forms of external support to sustain itself in present form.

Mindful of this position, previous generations of Israeli officials had consistently urged caution to prevent the conflict from being framed in a purely sectarian manner. But its current leadership has discarded that old reticence, freely embracing the concept of the conflict as a zero-sum religious war.

Netanyahu appears to be betting that two conditions will hold indefinitely. The first is that the Islamic world is by nature backwards and incapable of modernity, such that its present relative weakness and ineptitude will be a permanent condition. The second is that Israel will enjoy indefinite indulgence and patronage from a distant superpower that will make its military, political, and economic wellbeing a permanent foreign policy priority. Notwithstanding Israel’s present advantage, neither of these strike me as good bets.

Over time, political conditions tend to revert to a mean rather than remaining at statistical extremes. Islamic states stumbled out of the gate after the colonial period, even as countries like China and India eventually hit their stride. But that situation is slowly remedying itself. The economic, diplomatic, and military development of states like Turkey, Indonesia, the Central Asian states, and even the Gulf Arabs, are heralding what I see as a gradual return to the influence that the Islamic world had historically enjoyed on average, albeit in a new configuration. (The return of Syria to independent statehood is another momentous step in the right direction.)

Even otherwise dysfunctional countries like Pakistan, Iran, and Egypt are enjoying an increase in their military capacity thanks to shifting a technological environment that permits the mass production of disruptive and low-cost weapons of reasonably high quality. Political conditions are also trending away from disunity which was advantageous to Tel Aviv. In addition to speeding the Iranian and Gulf Arab rapprochement, the present situation in Gaza has been so shocking that even mortal enemies like the Egyptian military regime and Turkish Islamists are now embracing security cooperation and technology transfer related to drones, aerospace, and naval production.

The successful battle-testing of advanced Chinese weaponry in the recent India-Pakistan conflict heralds a future where a flood of affordable and effective Chinese arms gradually erodes or eliminates Israel’s U.S-supplied qualitative military edge, which has prevailed since the end of the Cold War. The Egyptian-Chinese “Eagles of Civilization” military exercises held in April was another clear sign of developments in that direction.

As such, I think it would be a folly on par with that of late-European colonial attitudes to assume Israel’s present supremacy over its neighbors will persist forever. These countries don’t even need to get everything right: Given the tremendous size imbalance between themselves and Israel, even a return to mean levels of performance would result in a completely lopsided balance of forces.

No Detox Possible

American society likewise is returning to a mean of general distaste for involvement in distant foreign conflicts. The post-WWII generation was uniquely favorable and interested in the state of Israel. But younger Americans by contrast are indifferent or actively hostile. The change in technological conditions that has allowed every gruesome scene of the Gaza genocide to be witnessed by any person with a phone is hardly helping make Israel appear as a sympathetic party.

It is worth emphasizing what a unique relationship Israel now enjoys with Washington. The issue is not that the U.S. sells Israel arms. The U.S. simply gives billions of dollars of advanced weapons and munitions to Tel Aviv for free, both annually and on demand. Absent this incredible indulgence, the last two years of war alone would have been financially ruinous if Israel merely had to buy arms at market rates as normal. On top of that, Washington provides unlimited diplomatic, political, and intelligence support to Israel, up to and including directly fighting its enemies on its behalf, while asking for no comparable reciprocation.

Netanyahu recently said that Israel must “detox” from U.S. security assistance. But the fact is that even countries like Russia and India, who otherwise have good ties with Tel Aviv, would never recreate the incredible sweetheart deal that the country now enjoys from Washington.

Israeli leaders in the past knew that such an arrangement could never continue forever. This which is why they worked to prioritize local political integration as a means of reducing their dependencies, while achieving what they saw as the ultimate goals of Zionism. The liquidation of Gaza instead heralds a future of permanent war and hostility between Israel and its neighbors, meaning that the current U.S. blank check of security, political and military assistance will need to be permanent for the state to maintain itself into the future.

And Then What?

I’ve always supported a peaceful negotiated solution to this conflict, both for moral and pragmatic reasons. But at this point I have to confess that anyone still seriously entertaining thoughts of a peaceful final status resolution must be either disingenuous or catastrophically naive. These days I am hearing people say things I never imagined I would hear, particularly in the region, and well beyond that. I’m sure that a similar dynamic is taking place on all sides.

Israeli leaders are today of the view that after the liquidation of Gaza, the next steps will be the annexation of the West Bank, and a U.S.-backed war with Iran. Even if they manage to achieve all those outcomes, nothing has really changed in a strategic sense. The U.S. military of course famously won every battle in the Vietnam War. After all the blood has been spilled, Israelis will still be surrounded by a hostile region that is now rearming and reorienting itself around Tel Aviv as its primary threat. Notwithstanding the tactical victory of eradicating Gaza, Israelis are still 7 million people on a tiny strip of territory, locked in a now-insoluble conflict with another 2 billion people, who are gradually emerging out of a period of darkness, and are being confronted with this genocide as the defining moment of the young 21st century.

As I’ve written recently, the old utopian ideas of a liberal rules-based order have already been jettisoned, in part thanks to this war, and we are returning back to an era of power politics. Despite its diminutive size, Israel enjoys a miraculous upper hand in force today. But I wouldn’t bet on that condition holding for generations to come, as Netanyahu appears to expect. The Israeli government may celebrate when the last Palestinian in Gaza is expelled, or killed, as per their stated goals. But when the tide eventually shifts, as it must, those of us who opposed such things on universal principle will not have much of an argument left to make.