Netanyahu has failed Israel

Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza is rapidly evolving into a war with all of Iran’s proxies on its borders, including Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah. Its outcome will determine the country’s future for a generation, perhaps longer. The conflict is not even in its third week, and as I write these words the inevitable ground invasion of Gaza has still not begun, and yet this is already proving to be an epochal episode in the country’s history. 

The Hamas terror attack on 7 October not only revealed a conceptual flaw in Israel’s regional strategy, exposed glaring problems within its celebrated intelligence services and caused the terrible deaths of some 1,400 Israelis. It also shook the self-confidence of Israelis to their core. No more illusions of being a secure and prosperous outpost of the West which could afford short and sharp rounds of warfare with Gaza and then pretend nothing had happened. 

Hamas is not an existential enemy of Israel, that is true. Not even Hamas and Islamic Jihad combined with Hezbollah from the north could outlast Israel’s military might and economic resources. But to win both this war and the aftermath, Israel needs to rediscover the resourcefulness and determination that have ebbed somewhat in recent years under the stagnation and corruption of Benjamin Netanyahu’s long rule.

In ancient Jewish history, the independent kingdoms of the House of David and then of the Hasmoneans failed to survive their eighth decade as they went into terminal decline. Modern Israel is now in the middle of that fateful decade and is being tested. There are positive signs of renewal in recent days. Israelis of all political views, religious inclinations and ways of life, are casting aside the deep differences that almost tore their society apart in recent months and are joining together in reserve units preparing in staging-grounds for the bloody battles of Gaza.