Netanyahu Does Not Want Peace

Ten months into the Gaza genocide, and another round of ceasefire talks have failed. The war, then, shall continue. More homes, hospitals and schools will be bombed. More children will be murdered. Their injured little arms and legs will be amputated without anesthetics. Famine will spread. Disease will decimate the population. Political prisoners will be raped and tortured by Israeli soldiers.

This is not the first round of ceasefire talks to break down, nor are they likely to be the last. As the bodies of Palestinians have piled up since October, negotiations have sporadically been held and they have repeatedly collapsed, without a lasting peace ever being achieved. The reason why is fairly simple: Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, does not want peace.

Time and again, Israeli negotiators have blocked progress under the direction of Netanyahu. Hamas wants a final end to the war, but Netanyahu, having committed to the impossible objective of destroying the militant group in its entirety, refuses to agree to anything other than a temporary pause in the fighting. He will not commit to a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, nor will he allow for the free movement of Palestinians returning home when the fighting finally does stop. These positions are quite obviously unacceptable to Hamas.

All the while, it’s been observed that, whenever ceasefire talks take place, Israel escalates its attacks on Gaza, seemingly as a means of applying additional pressure to the other side during negotiations. It is a dirty tactic, but not an uncommon one for Israel to deploy.

To treat Israel and Netanyahu as good-faith actors entering into ceasefire talks, as much of the press seems intent on doing, is plainly absurd: even Joe Biden has admitted that the Israeli prime minister wants to prolong the war to serve his own narrow political interests. Netanyahu has endured a great deal of domestic political pressure in recent years, but this war shields him from those seeking his downfall. He needs it to continue.

On trial for corruption and facing waves of protests against his government’s attempts to reform the judiciary, Netanyahu’s public image was badly sullied in Israel even before October 7, 2023. But after Hamas launched its attacks against hundreds of civilians, the legitimacy of his rule came into question as never before. The man who had styled himself as the defender of Israel had overseen the worst massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust, and Israelis blamed him for it.

But while Israelis turned on the prime minister himself after the Hamas attacks, they overwhelmingly supported the war he launched in response. This has played right into Netanyahu’s hands; with conflict raging, criticisms against him have been drowned out. Not only does he consequently find it easier to bat away calls for early elections that might topple him, his legal team can use the war as justification for delaying progress in his corruption trial. It’s also possible that, the longer the war drags on, the more his popularity at home might recover, as people rally ’round the flag. Recent polling suggests that’s already happening.

If he is to salvage his political career Netanyahu must hold together his ruling coalition, famously the most far-right in Israel’s history. He has pandered to the most extreme elements of Israeli society, represented in his government by finance minister Bezalel Smotrich and national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, a man who has literally been convicted for supporting terrorism. Netanyahu has allowed these figures, themselves illegal settlers, to pursue their radical agendas unencumbered. Further land grabs in the West Bank are taking place, Israeli prisons have become torture camps, and the genocide in Gaza relentlessly grinds on.

So long as the US continues to materially support Israel’s campaign of annihilation, Netanyahu has very little incentive to stop. To the contrary, he seems set on expanding his war into Lebanon. Tit-for-tat cross-border exchanges between Israel and Hezbollah have already been going on for months, killing and displacing civilians, but an escalation could ensure things get much worse. Should a full-blown war break out, the US and Iran could be sucked into the fighting and a direct confrontation between the two would be a terrifyingly real possibility.

Hezbollah has stated that it will stop firing rockets into Israel if a ceasefire in Gaza is achieved. As if the urgency to end the slaughter there wasn’t already pressing enough, it may also serve to deescalate one of the most dangerous scenarios the world presently faces. But Netanyahu, armed to the teeth by the US and shielded from political pressure at home, is unlikely to allow for it.

So, further ceasefire talks will eventually be scheduled. Biden will probably declare that negotiations are progressing “positively.” The press will probably report that an end to the war seems in sight. Issues will inevitably emerge, with reports suggesting that Hamas appears to be hampering progress, and the fighting, regrettably, will resume. Bombs will be launched, children’s bodies will be shredded, and Netanyahu will remain in power for a little while longer.