LFI director Michael Rubin has written the below article for Progressive Britain. Click here to read the original.
The Netanyahu government has been a disaster – for Israel and its security, for the Palestinians, and for the prospects of a wider regional peace.
It is time for it to go and for Israel to have the new leadership its people want and deserve.
The 7 October atrocities – in which nearly 1,200 people, ranging in age from babies to Holocaust survivors, were murdered, with a further 251 taken hostage – are the sole responsibility of Hamas and its paymasters in Tehran.
Nothing can and should detract from the brutality of that event and the tragic conflict in Gaza which has ensued as a result.
Nor should Iran’s other proxies, Hezbollah and the Houthis, escape responsibility for the conflicts in Lebanon and Yemen which were caused by their unprovoked attacks on Israel after 7 October.
But the immediate challenge facing Israel – how to free the remaining hostages, end Hamas’ rule of Gaza and provide lasting security for its people – is one to which this government has no answer.
Instead, it continues to pursue a course which risks the lives of the hostages, will entail more suffering for the people of Gaza, and flies in the face of the wishes of the overwhelming majority of the Israeli people, nearly 70 percent of whom want to see a deal to end the war and free the hostages. The government’s plan has “no security purpose and does not bring the release of the hostages any closer,” Yair Golan, leader of Labour’s sister party, the Democrats, argued recently. “Quite the opposite”.
Instead, the government’s strategy is driven by Netanyahu’s appeasement of his far-right coalition partners, on whom he depends for political survival. These parties – which attracted the support of only 1 in 10 Israelis at the 2022 general election – are attempting to pursue their own extremist agenda at the expense of Israel’s national interest.
Netanyahu’s weakness in the face of the far-right is most evident in the manner in which he is seemingly passing up an historic opportunity to normalise relations with Saudi Arabia. Building on the success of the Abraham Accords, this package would open up the possibility of establishing diplomatic ties with the Middle East’s largest economy, a path to Palestinian statehood and a regional security alliance against Iran.
It would also help enable a new start for Gaza. “Israel can lead an international process of rebuilding Gaza and forming a moderate government there,” Golan has argued. He has also rightly recognised that “unless we bring into Gaza an improved Palestinian Authority with the moderate Muslim Sunni countries, we won’t build a civil alternative to Hamas. It is not enough to fight them.”
Habouring its own desire to re-establish settlements in Gaza (a policy backed by less than a fifth of Israelis) and reverse Israel’s withdrawal from the Strip two decades ago, the far-right is adamantly opposed to any such plan.
But Israeli voters aren’t: polling published by Hebrew University earlier this year found that given the choice to “promote a regional political-security arrangement that includes normalisation with Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, and agreeing to establish a Palestinian state” or to “promote full annexation of the West Bank,” 60 percent of Israelis prefer the former while 31 percent prefer the latter.
More recent polls have suggested similar – and even potentially higher – levels of support. Quite rightly, Israelis recognise that occupying Gaza would harm the chances of reaching an agreement with Saudi Arabia and cooperating with moderate countries in the region, while over two-thirds believe that a deal with the Saudis would strengthen Israel’s security, economy and regional standing, and weaken Iran.
Unfortunately, the voices of the small minority of Israelis who do not recognise these realities are loudly represented by Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners and they now appear to have an effective veto over policy.
The prime minister and his government may well cling on until elections are due next autumn. But, amid the damage it may well cause, we should not forget that Israeli voters are as desperate to see the back of it as we all are – and that different leaders, such as Golan and Lapid, who are not in hoc to a militant minority, are ready to help take the helm.
