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The Guardian
7 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Faced with a choice between saving his own skin and the lives of others, Netanyahu always chooses himself
Will the war in Gaza last for ever? It's not a wholly rhetorical question. There are days when I fear that the death and devastation that has gone on for 650 days will never stop, that it will eventually settle into a constant, low-level attritional war inside the wider Israeli-Palestinian conflict – a war within a war – that becomes a background hum to world affairs, the way the Troubles in Northern Ireland endured for 30 years. In this same nightmare, incidentally, I see Benjamin Netanyahu, who has already sat in Israel's prime ministerial chair for nearly 18 years, on and off, staying put for another 18 years or more, ruling the country until he is 100. Israelis don't want either of those things to happen. Polls show that only a minority trust Netanyahu, while an overwhelming majority – about 74% – want this terrible war to end. As the leader of one of the ultra-orthodox, or Haredi, parties that this week quit Netanyahu's ruling coalition – over the government's failure to pass a bill permanently exempting Haredi youth from military service – recently put it: 'I don't understand what we are fighting for there … I don't understand what the need is.' If the supposed benefit of the war eludes even Netanyahu's erstwhile partners in government, its cost is apparent to the entire watching world. Every day brings news of another 10 or 20 or 30 Palestinians killed in Gaza, often while queueing up for urgently needed food or water. The UN estimates that over six short weeks about 800 people have been killed in or around food distribution points, most of those deaths in the vicinity of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), the US-Israeli joint venture established after Israel decided that the UN could not be trusted to keep aid out of the hands of Hamas and whose brief record has been one of chaos and bloodshed. Even the most unwavering of Israel's defenders do not pretend that those killed in these incidents were Hamas fighters or posed any kind of military threat. It's just the utterly needless death of blameless civilians, day after day after day. Inside Israel, a war without end means the deaths of Israeli soldiers – and, recall, almost every (non-Haredi) Jewish, Druze and Circassian 18-year-old is a conscript – and another day chained in darkness for the 20 living Israelis still believed to be held hostage by Hamas and its allies in Gaza. Which is why three in four Israelis want this war over, immediately. So why doesn't it end? Some believe there may be movement towards a ceasefire and hostage-release deal in the coming days, with one US official saying it's 'closer than it's ever been'. If that's true, one contributory factor is worth explaining – because it is damning. Next week will see the end of the current session of the Israeli parliament, with the Knesset then in recess until October. During those three months, it is procedurally harder to bring down an Israeli government. So Netanyahu will soon be less vulnerable to the ultranationalists Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, who have long threatened to leave his coalition should he do a deal that ends the war. Hence the speculation of an imminent move. Underpinning it is the assumption that until now Netanyahu has preferred the hostages to remain in their dungeons, and Palestinian civilians to keep dying, than to risk his hold on power. In other words, if a deal is done soon, it will be a deal that could have been done sooner – but which was delayed to keep Netanyahu in the prime minister's seat. Confidence in ascribing such self-serving and amoral motives to Netanyahu is boosted by a comprehensive New York Times investigation into the past 21 months, which methodically confirms with hard evidence what has long been assumed by most analysts: that 'Netanyahu prolonged the war in Gaza to stay in power'. The paper focuses on several key moments when a ceasefire was within reach, when Israel's own military commanders were urging it, but when Netanyahu chose to walk away, fearing that if he did not, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich would pull the plug on his government. Stripped of power, Netanyahu would lose much of the armour that protects him as he stands trial on corruption charges. Like his fellow nationalist would-be autocrat, Donald Trump, Netanyahu has a mortal fear of going to jail. So in April 2024, Netanyahu was poised to present a proposal for a six-week pause in the war to his cabinet. It would have brought the release of more than 30 hostages and negotiations for a permanent truce. The plan was written and ready to go. But cabinet minutes obtained by the paper show that, at the last minute, Smotrich, who, like Ben-Gvir, wants Israel to occupy Gaza and to rebuild Jewish settlements there, warned that if Netanyahu were to sign the rumoured 'surrender', his government would be finished. The proposal was quietly shelved and the war went on. At that point, the death toll in Gaza stood at 35,000. Today it is estimated at 58,000. Of course, it's possible a deal would have fallen away in April 2024, that Hamas would have said no, or that it would not have lasted. But there was a chance – and it is at least possible that 23,000 lives might have been saved. That was not the last such opportunity. In July last year, international mediators gathered in Rome believing the stars were at last aligned for a ceasefire. But, according to the New York Times, Netanyahu suddenly introduced six new demands that scuppered any prospect of an agreement. Earlier, Ben-Gvir had barged into the PM's office, warning him not to make 'a reckless deal'. Once again, Netanyahu put his own political survival ahead of the lives of Israeli hostages and Palestinian civilians. You would think that record would be enough to see Netanyahu repudiated by the Israeli electorate: the evidence against him is so devastating. But he will present himself at the next election, which could be just six months away, as the man who vanquished Israel's mightiest enemies. Hezbollah no longer threatens Israel from the north; Bashar al-Assad is gone; and Iran has been humiliated, its air defences gutted, its nuclear ambitions dented. Hamas still exists, but Israel is no longer encircled by a 'ring of fire' shaped by Tehran. Netanyahu says that success is all down to him, while the failures that led to the Hamas massacres of 7 October 2023 are the fault of everyone else. As an electoral pitch, it may even work. This week I spoke to the revered Israel journalist Ilana Dayan for the Unholy podcast. She described how Israelis were stuck for so long in 7 October, but now 'October 8th at least has dawned on us. We finally can ask, and have to ask, the tough questions with regard to our leadership, with regard to the tragedy in Gaza, with regard to this endless war. History will judge the leadership, but it will judge us too.' Israelis will indeed have to face a great reckoning for the destruction they have wreaked in Gaza. But the first to be judged should be Benjamin Netanyahu, who had the power of life and death in his hands and chose the death of others, so that his political career might live. He should bear the shame of it until his final breath. Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
Mail & Guardian
18-07-2025
- Politics
- Mail & Guardian
Netanyahu's doctrine: Divide, delay, deny
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.
Free Malaysia Today
18-07-2025
- Politics
- Free Malaysia Today
Mediators present updated Gaza ceasefire proposal to Israel and Hamas
The last two-month ceasefire ended on March 18 after Israeli attacks killed more than 400 Palestinians. (EPA Images pic) WASHINGTON : Qatar, Egypt and the US presented Israel and Palestinian group Hamas with an updated Gaza ceasefire proposal on Wednesday, Axios reported on Thursday, citing two sources. The two main updates in the latest proposal had to do with the scope of the Israeli military's withdrawal from Gaza during a ceasefire and the ratio of Palestinian prisoners to be released for each Israeli hostage, Axios reported. The Qatari prime minister is expected to meet with Hamas leaders in Doha on Saturday in an effort to get their agreement to the updated proposal, the report added. Israel previously insisted on maintaining a presence in a zone stretching 5km north of the Philadelphi Corridor along the Gaza–Egypt border and has now reduced that demand to 1.5km, closer to Hamas' demand that Israel withdraw to the same position as under the last ceasefire, Axios reported. US President Donald Trump met with Qatar's Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani on Wednesday. Israeli and Hamas negotiators have been taking part in the latest round of ceasefire talks in Doha since July 6, discussing a US-backed proposal for a 60-day ceasefire. A previous two-month ceasefire ended when Israeli strikes killed more than 400 Palestinians on March 18. The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered in Oct 2023 when Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages, Israeli tallies show. Gaza's health ministry says Israel's subsequent military assault has killed over 58,000 Palestinians. It has also caused a hunger crisis, internally displaced Gaza's entire population and prompted accusations of genocide at the International Court of Justice and of war crimes at the International Criminal Court. Israel denies the accusations.
Reuters
17-07-2025
- Politics
- Reuters
Mediators present updated Gaza ceasefire proposal to Israel and Hamas, Axios reports
WASHINGTON, July 17 (Reuters) - Qatar, Egypt and the U.S. presented Israel and Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas with an updated Gaza ceasefire proposal on Wednesday, Axios reported on Thursday, citing two sources. The two main updates in the latest proposal had to do with the scope of the Israeli military's withdrawal from Gaza during a ceasefire and the ratio of Palestinian prisoners to be released for each Israeli hostage, Axios reported. The Qatari prime minister is expected to meet with Hamas leaders in Doha on Saturday in an effort to get their agreement to the updated proposal, the report added. Israel previously insisted on maintaining a presence in a zone stretching 5 km north of the Philadelphi Corridor along the Gaza–Egypt border and has now reduced that demand to 1.5 km, closer to Hamas' demand that Israel withdraw to the same position as under the last ceasefire, Axios reported. U.S. President Donald Trump met with Qatar's Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani on Wednesday. Israeli and Hamas negotiators have been taking part in the latest round of ceasefire talks in Doha since July 6, discussing a U.S.-backed proposal for a 60-day ceasefire. A previous two-month ceasefire ended when Israeli strikes killed more than 400 Palestinians on March 18. The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered in October 2023 when Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages, Israeli tallies show. Gaza's health ministry says Israel's subsequent military assault has killed over 58,000 Palestinians. It has also caused a hunger crisis, internally displaced Gaza's entire population and prompted accusations of genocide at the International Court of Justice and of war crimes at the International Criminal Court. Israel denies the accusations.
The National
17-07-2025
- Politics
- The National
Lebanese militant Georges Abdallah to be released from French prison after four decades
The Paris Court of Appeal on Thursday ruled in favour of the release from prison of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, a Lebanese citizen who has spent almost 40 years in prison in France over his part in the murder of an Israeli and a US diplomat. "It's both a judicial victory and a political scandal," said his lawyer Jean-Louis Chalanset, who maintains that his client has spent the longest time in prison for acts related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. French government officials have described him as a terrorist. Abdallah, 73, was sentenced to life in 1987 for complicity in the 1982 murders in Paris of US military attache Charles Ray and Israeli diplomat Yacov Barsimantov, and the attempted murder of US Consul General Robert Homme in Strasbourg in 1984. His lawyer said he is scheduled to fly to Beirut on July 25, escorted by French officers. The former head of the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Brigade, which was an offshoot of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Abdallah has been eligible for release since 1999. However he remained incarcerated despite filing 11 requests. But in November, a Paris court granted his release on condition that he leaves France and does not return. It said that Abdallah had been irreproachable in prison and posed "no serious risk to renew terrorism acts". The office of France's anti-terrorism prosecutor appealed against the decision, automatically keeping him in prison. The appeals hearing took place on December 19 and judges were due to give their ruling in February but the decision was postponed to July. Mr Chalanset said that Abdallah wants to return to his home village of Qoubaiyat in north Lebanon to end his life there peacefully. Abdallah, a self-proclaimed Marxist, has always described himself as a 'fighter' who battled for the rights of Palestinians and not a 'criminal'. Lebanese authorities describe him as a "political prisoner". The United States is reported to have pressured France to block Abdallah's release. In January 2013, his eighth request to be freed was successful, but the Interior Ministry then refused to validate his expulsion from France. It has been reported that Hillary Clinton, then US secretary of state, had called prime minister Laurent Fabius to ask for him to not be released. Again, in November 2024, the US Department of Justice wrote to French judges to oppose his upcoming hearing, saying that his return to Lebanon would represent a threat to public order and highlighting that Abdallah had refused to repudiate the killings. His lawyer has criticised US arguments, pointing out that the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Brigade no longer exists and no acts have been carried out by it in Europe or the US since 1984.
