The Impossible Position of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Netanyahu has put himself in an unenviably impossible position: He is managing three different negotiations with three different, oftentimes conflicting parties.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (right) meets with IDF Chief Herzi Halevi. (photo: Benjamin Netanyahu/X)

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If there is one person in Israel who I would not want to be, it is the country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Forget the fact that his political survival meant forming the most extreme governing coalition in Israeli history, at the end of 2022 after his Likud party won the legislative election.

And forget the fact that much of 2023, before October 7th, was filled with nationwide protests centered around highly controversial judicial reforms led by Netanyahu’s governing coalition, which strained the country’s social fabric, including among its vaunted security and military establishments.

Now, six months into the Israel-Hamas war (which Hamas of course started), Netanyahu is in an unenviably impossible position: He is managing three different negotiations with three different, oftentimes conflicting parties.

The first negotiating conundrum involves Egypt and Qatar, who are effectively representing Hamas at the table. Thus far, Israel has not been able to convince or persuade the Egyptians and Qataris to put enough pressure on Hamas such that the latter agrees to another partial hostage deal in exchange for a temporary ceasefire.

Both the Egyptians and Qataris have their own independent calculations for deciding to not put more pressure on Hamas, but from the Israeli side, Netanyahu’s calculus since October 7th has been simple: Israel must superimpose its military might on Hamas to win the war and get back the hostages.

At the outset, this strategy seemed incredibly logical and justified, and most Israelis (myself included) were too traumatized to be able to seriously contemplate any other type of response to the unprecedented October 7th massacres.

But in hindsight, this strategy has only partially worked, mainly because the war has not been won six months into it and there are still some 136 Israeli hostages in Palestinian captivity, many of whom are believed to be dead.

Hamas and its sister organization, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, have been able to last this long because they “built a highly effective war machine, much of which was relatively invulnerable, including the tunnels. Hamas also has the capacity to continue guerrilla-style fighting,” according to Giora Eiland, a former national security adviser and ex-IDF operations chief.¹

“And we gave up on two areas where Hamas was vulnerable,” added Eiland. “First, we gave up from the start on organizing or being open to alternative control of Gaza. That was a strategic mistake. The world asked what the post-Hamas plan was, and Netanyahu wouldn’t say.”

“What we should have said was: No Hamas on the one hand, and no Israeli occupation on the other. Anything else is negotiable, and we are ready to discuss this with all global and Arab potential players, including the Palestinian Authority. And to work with them on an interim administration.”

“Five months ago, we could also have discussed the idea of the Palestinian Authority, perhaps with Egyptian forces, overseeing food and humanitarian aid distribution in northern Gaza. All of that would have created real pressure on [Hamas’ Gaza leader Yahya] Sinwar.”

“The second mistake,” according to Eiland, “regards the narrative. The Israeli story was, Hamas is like ISIS, and ISIS is like Hamas” — which Eiland believes is not the actual case.

“ISIS was a bunch of crazies from Baghdad who, unopposed, gained control of western Iraq and those who lived there. But it didn’t represent the people, not in Mosul or elsewhere,” he said. “Gaza more resembles 1930s Germany, where an extremist party won elections, with the support of most of the people, and quickly unified the military and civil government into one entity. In Gaza, with the support of perhaps 80 percent of the residents, Hamas has done much the same thing. It’s a de facto state, with all the characteristics of a state.”

“What happened on October 7th is that the ‘State of Gaza’ went to war against the State of Israel. State against state. Now, the ‘State of Gaza’ does have vulnerabilities. It doesn’t have sufficient fuel, food, and water of its own. You can impose a legitimate boycott on that state until the state returns all of your hostages. Humanitarian for humanitarian.”

“Had we done those two things — allow an alternative leadership to take shape and impose an economic blockade — we’d be in a far better pace,” said Eiland. “The reliance on military pressure alone not only fails, but also has engendered huge international criticism. There’s vast devastation, large numbers of civilian deaths. And Israel is seen as solely responsible.”

As such, the second negotiation that Netanyahu has been trying to manage is with the international community, led by U.S. President Joe Biden and his administration.

It does not help that Biden’s Democrats are in an re-election year against a formidable foe in Donald Trump. He is formidable, at least in part, because Biden does not enjoy the incumbent edge that most incumbent presidents have when they are up for re-election, since Trump was already president for one term, like Biden.

It also does not help Israel that Biden’s Democratic Party effectively needs to win the state of Michigan, where the most Arab and Muslim Americans live. Thus, the Biden administration’s “doctrine” in the Israel-Hamas war has been sloppy, confusing, and disruptive.

And Biden’s administration should also be held accountable for either not being able or not being willing to put more pressure on Qatar and Egypt to put more pressure on Hamas to release the remaining hostages, which include a handful of American citizens.

Lastly, it does not help Israel that the Democratic Party is in the process of being hijacked by so-called “pro-Palestinian” progressives who see the Jewish state — and by extension, Jewish Americans — as part of an “oppressor class” that must be curtailed and ultimately punished regarding, for example, its “treatment” of the Palestinians (even though the reality is that, for decades, the Palestinians have been their own worst oppressors).

I spoke with a middle-aged Israeli a few weeks ago, and I asked him what he thinks of the job that Netanyahu has done throughout this war. He said: “Netanyahu had one job — to manage the Americans — and he failed.”

It is true that Netanyahu’s international political reputation has minimized his leverage and wiggle room among the international political community, and it is also true that there are many factors which have nothing to do with Netanyahu, such as domestic politics in the U.S. and the fact that the Democratic Party (which used to be of great support to Israel) is undergoing a progressive, anti-Israel takeover (regardless of who is the Jewish state’s prime minister).

Finally, the third negotiation that Netanyahu has been juggling is with his governing coalition, namely with far-Right politicians Bezalel Smotrich (the Finance Minister) and Itamar Ben-Gvir (the Minister of National Security). Both politicians have called for ongoing Israeli control over the Gaza Strip, warning that allowing local autonomy would lead to more terrorism.

“There are two million Nazis in Gaza who want to slaughter, rape, and murder every Jew. If a local population rules there, it will be a terrorist organization,” Smotrich recently told the IDF’s radio station. “We currently have to rule there operationally and militarily until we can develop moderate local forces to take over.”

Smotrich and Ben-Gvir have also threatened to withdraw from the coalition — a move that would likely prompt early elections, which will probably not bode well for Netanyahu and his Likud party — if Netanyahu does not continue the war on Gaza and carry out a major ground operation in Rafah, a southern Gaza city that is believed to be Hamas’ last major stronghold.

In a recent social media post, Ben-Gvir said that if Netanyahu ends the war without a large-scale offensive in Rafah, Netanyahu “will not have a mandate to continue serving as prime minister.”²

A new poll published in March found that the majority of Israelis agree with Ben-Gvir; they support an expansion of IDF operations in Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are reportedly sheltering amid the ongoing war with Hamas. However, much of the international community, the U.S. notwithstanding, has been increasingly opposed to a major Israeli operation in Rafah.

Last month, Biden reiterated that such an operation in Rafah is a “red line,” and his vice president, Kamala Harris, suggested that there could be “consequences” for Israel if it moves ahead with a major operation in Rafah.

Then, last Monday, the U.S. State Department’s Matthew Miller made clear that the Biden administration is ruling out an Israeli ground operation in Rafah under any circumstances, raising doubts about whether the U.S. still supports Hamas’ removal from power in the Strip.

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For years now, Netanyahu has been accurately and urgently warning the Western world about the jihadist Iranian threat, both against Israel and the greater Middle East.

Ironically, Iran’s unprecedented attack on Israel last weekend — which was purposefully telegraphed ahead of time so as not to draw a dire Israeli response — gave Netanyahu some much-needed leverage and wiggle room, primarily with the international community, and even within Israeli society (where he has been polling quite miserably).

Indeed, Egyptian officials yesterday told a Qatari outlet that the U.S. has accepted Israel’s plan for an operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, in return for not carrying out a large strike inside Iran as a response to Tehran’s attack.

Netanyahu could also decide to up the ante against the Islamic Republic of Iran at a later date, either directly or by going after its other proxies in the region, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Following Iran’s attack on Israel, a variety of photos surfaced on social media, showing seemingly pro-Israel graffiti in Iran. One showed an ace card, with adjoining text in Arabic that said: “War is the ace card for governments in crisis.”

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1. “A top ex-general’s radical strategy for tackling Iran, saving the hostages, calming the north.” The Times of Israel.

2. Itamar Ben-Gvir on X