Netanyahu's doctrine: Divide, delay, deny

Mail & Guardian

3 days ago

Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump talk ceasefire, but it asks Palestinians to stop resisting without asking Israel to stop its occupation. (File image)
There are few phrases as overused — and as tragically misused — as 'a window for peace' in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is trotted out with a ritualistic cadence every time the bombs fall silent and the diplomats descend. This time it emerges from a Washington dinner attended by Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump — two men long adept at political spectacle, but rarely known for moral substance.
The talk of a new ceasefire in Gaza offers, on its face, a glimmer of hope. The Strip is a place where the air is thick with the dust of collapsed homes, and where the miracle isn't peace, but survival. And yet, even before the ink dries on any truce, the scepticism hangs heavy, particularly among Palestinians. They've seen this film before. It doesn't end with peace.
To understand why this moment feels so hollow, one must consider not only the ruins of Gaza, but the policies of Netanyahu, a man whose political longevity is tethered to perpetuating conflict while feigning its resolution. For decades, Netanyahu has oscillated between the language of diplomacy and the logic of domination. He knows how to say 'ceasefire' in English, but he governs in the syntax of siege.
The ceasefire proposed by Trump, with his transactional mindset offers no fundamental change to the dynamics on the ground. It does not address the blockade that has strangled Gaza for more than a decade. It does not halt settlement expansion. It does not reverse the creeping annexation of the West Bank or dismantle the machinery of occupation.
It is a ceasefire that asks the Palestinians to stop resisting without ever asking Israel to stop its occupation. It is a ceasefire designed to serve political, not humanitarian, ends.
Netanyahu is a man under siege himself — politically, legally, historically. He faces corruption trials, mass protests and the erosion of his international credibility. A diplomatic breakthrough — even an illusory one — offers a momentary reprieve.
Trump, meanwhile, grasps at the mirage of foreign policy gravitas to bolster his own narrative of indispensability.
But Palestinians are not interested in the optics. They are interested in survival. And dignity.
For Netanyahu, however, dignity is a negotiable concept. His government, backed by some of the most extreme figures in Israeli political history, has launched not only a military offensive against Gaza, but a political offensive against Palestinian identity itself.
The latest manifestation of this is a grotesquely surreal proposal to divide the West Bank into clan-based 'emirates', beginning with Hebron. As though Palestine were a medieval patchwork waiting for feudal patrons.
It is a return to the colonial playbook — divide and rule, rebranded. The Netanyahu doctrine, if it can be called that, seeks not only to weaken the Palestinian leadership, but to erase Palestinian nationhood. If you cannot kill the cause,then atomise it. Replace national aspirations with tribal loyalties. Swop the Palestine Liberation Organisation for compliant clan leaders. Redraw the map not with borders, but with fractures.
The absurdity of it all lies in its transparency. Sheikh Wadee Al-Jaabari's supposed appeal to create a Hebron emirate is so out of sync with the prevailing mood among Palestinians — whose national consciousness has been hardened, not diluted, by years of occupation — that it reads like parody. It's a fiction, dressed up as a plan, broadcast in hopes that desperation might breed compliance.
In Gaza, the same script plays out in darker hues. Unable to defeat Hamas, Israel is reportedly supporting a criminal gang led by Yasser Abu Shabab — accused of hoarding humanitarian aid and sowing chaos. The goal appears to be less about restoring order than manufacturing a vacuum that Israel alone can fill.
And even when cooperation is offered — from the Palestinian Authority itself — it is rejected. Why? Because the PA, for all its flaws, insists on Palestinian statehood. And for Netanyahu's government, that is the original sin.
This refusal to engage with legitimate Palestinian leadership is not new. It has roots that run deep into Israel's post-1967 strategy. From undermining the Arab Higher Committee during the British Mandate to the 'village leagues' of the 1970s and 80s, Israel has long sought to create alternative leaderships that fragment the Palestinian people. The outcome has always been the same: failure.
And yet Netanyahu persists. Because in failure lies convenience. So long as Palestinian leadership is divided or delegitimised, there is no partner for peace — and therefore no peace to be made. The status quo, brutal though it may be, becomes self-justifying.
But the status quo is cracking. International support for Palestinian self-determination is quietly growing. France and Saudi Arabia are preparing to co-host a United Nations summit on the two-state solution. And in the wake of devastation, a younger Palestinian generation is coalescing around a renewed sense of identity, one that is unbending in its demand for rights, not favours.
What Netanyahu fails to understand — or refuses to admit — is that nationhood is not dismantled by manipulating maps or manufacturing surrogates. It is affirmed by suffering, resistance, memory.
This is why the latest ceasefire proposal cannot be treated in isolation. It is not a gesture of peace; it is a manoeuvre of delay. It is a temporary sedation of symptoms, not a cure. For Palestinians, a truce without political transformation is merely a countdown to the next round of airstrikes.
If Netanyahu were serious about peace, he would begin not with a tribal emirate, but with equal rights. He would recognise the Palestinian Authority not as a rival but as a partner. He would lift the blockade on Gaza, stop the settlements and halt the desecration of the two-state framework. But none of these actions would serve his political survival. And so, none are taken.
How many more temporary ceasefires must be signed, only to be broken, before the world admits what Palestinians already know?
That peace, like trust, cannot be imposed. It must be built. And Netanyahu is not building anything — least of all peace.
Dr Imran Khalid is a freelance columnist on international affairs based in Karachi, Pakistan.