The Palestine saga: Is Netanyahu dead set on taking a leap in the dark?
By Tiko Okoye
Recent polls indicate that Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu has become the least popular prime minister in Israeli history. Crowds of protesters holding him accountable for what they call the “mishandling” of the October 7 attacks by Hamas and continued internment of Israeli hostages, and calling on him to immediately resign, are growing by leaps and bounds. A drowning man has two major options available to him on the spur of the moment: either die alone or drag as many others with him to their watery grave. Both decisions, to all intents and purposes, are mutually exclusive.
It would appear that Netanyahu has chosen to stick with the second option. His war council has reportedly met twice within a period of 24 hours to consider what counter-retaliatory actions to take against the projectiles launched against Israel in the wee hours of April 13. As far as Netanyahu and his allies such as US President Joe Biden, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and French President Emmanuel Macron are concerned, it hardly matters that Netanyahu drew the first blood by launching an airstrike two weeks earlier that destroyed a large portion of the Iranian Embassy consulate annex building in Damascus, killing 16 people.
Those killed included a top Quds Force commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and seven other IRGC officers. According to the provision of casus belli – cause for war – enshrined in the Geneva Protocols, a provoked Iran is justified in taking whatever measures it deems fit to defend itself – but mum has been the word on this from the West. It hardly mattered to Netanyahu’s allies that condoning his gross violation of the convention that lays down the rules for how nations interact with each other in the pursuit of world peace and order would amount to commissioning an open season for attacks on diplomatic assets around the world.
I no longer harbour a scintilla of doubt in my mind that what’s at play is the naked display of power politics which is, according to American writer and world peace advocate Ely Culbertson, “the diplomatic name for the law of the jungle.” In this jungle aka Animal Kingdom, the lion – the West – arrogates to itself the power to play god in deciding who lives and who dies according to rules devised solely by its members, and disclosed to those they consider disagreeable strictly on a need-to-know basis.
But it can be said beyond a shadow of doubt that if a diplomatic asset of the US, the UK or France had been destroyed and top military attaches killed in a fashion similar to what happened in Damascus, they would’ve used their enormous global influence to designate the attacking nation as a terrorist state – along with the full ramifications of the label – and equally obliterate its vital infrastructures and military institutions in devastating air, sea and land attacks. The rules are apparently what the West calls them from time to time to fit into extenuating circumstances, not what’s written and signed off on ordinary pieces of paper.
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Such blatant double standards and double-speak are attributes and positioning that would hardly foster genuine diplomatic relationships, and Western countries ought to be very wary of losing the moral high ground in the public discourse when there’s so much at stake. We’ve already seen how many nations who perceive that they’ve been shoved off the power-play radar are angling for a new world order such as BRICS, whose membership I foresee increasing by leaps and bounds.
Biden hasn’t minced words in telling Netanyahu that the US will not take part in any Israeli counter-retaliatory action against Iran. In a presidential election year in which he’s running against a former president and gadfly like Donald Trump, Biden needs an escalating conflict in the Middle East like a hole in the head! In an earlier essay, I explained how anti-Vietnam War protests held in front of the venue of the 1968 Democratic Party National Nominating Convention (DPNNC) in Chicago screwed up the electoral fortunes of the Democrats, and why Biden won’t want lightning to strike in the same place twice since the 2024 DPNNC is scheduled to hold in the same Chicago!
I don’t know the nature of the offer Biden, with his Western friends in tow – were he the sagacious Don Corleone of the iconic Godfather movie – would make to Israel that cannot be refused, thereby restraining Netanyahu from retaliating, nor the offer ‘that can’t be refused’ to convince Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to cease and desist from retaliating against the Israeli retaliation in a revolving door of tit-for-tat reprisals. But something definitely has to give.
Netanyahu fully realises that Iran has scored a major point by demonstrating that it has the capacity to directly strike Israel at any time of its choosing – and this is a serious challenge to the Jewish nation’s presumed security that no Israeli PM can afford to sweep under the rug. Besides, without the help of its allies, Israel’s defence won’t have been so successful. But Netanyahu hasn’t earned the moniker of the Greatest Street-Smart Israeli Prime Minister Of All Time (GSSIPOAT) for nothing.
And while my gut feelings tell me that Iran is playing Russian roulette with Israel, Netanyahu is dead set on taking a leap in the dark by attacking Iran for two principal reasons. First is to refloat his sinking political fortunes with spectacular attacks against Iran’s most strategic assets such as drone-making factories and nuke development facilities. Second is that Netanyahu fully knows that calling Iran’s missile attack a “humiliating failure” is no more than a tale told by moonlight.
The only option left to someone with Netanyahu’s mindset is to attack Iran in a way that would make the cost of a repeat action too costly politically, socially and economically. He is also buoyed by the reality that when push becomes shove, Western allies screaming for restraint would still stand with Israel. It’s worth noting that neither the American CIA nor the Israeli Mossad can tell with absolute certainty if Iran doesn’t already clandestinely possess nukes, raising the spectre of a mutually assured destruction.
But come to think of it, the probability of Russia defeating Ukraine is much higher than the probability of Iran defeating Israel. Why then is the West not protecting Ukraine from barrages of Russian projectiles, especially when different members keep claiming that Ukraine’s collapse would expose them to greater dangers? Or is it that in keeping with the antics and tactics of bullies they’re opting to use a sledgehammer to kill a relatively weaker victim?
There are only three plausible ways the Middle East saga can end. First, the total takeover of Palestine by Israel and evacuation of Palestinians to willing host countries. Second, the extermination of Israel. Third, the implementation of a sustainable Two-State Solution.
Israelis and their government officials favour the first option. But the West and Israel would forever remain cocooned in a fool’s paradise if they continue to dissipate energy and resources addressing the symptoms as opposed to the disease. The sing-song of Western voices with respect to Hamas is simply a distraction. Obliterating the physical Hamas in the Gaza doesn’t exorcise the spirit of Hamas from the occupied territories, as long as the circumstances leading to the Gaza Strip being dubbed “the largest open prison in the world” still prevail.
Besides, a beleaguered Netanyahu cannot afford to allow what befell the Israeli economy under PM Menachem Begin in 1982/83 to repeat itself. The backbone of the IDF is the Army Reserve System. But large numbers of called-up reservists cannot remain at the front lines for too long else there would be a massive decline in productivity attended by hyperinflation and a recession.
The extermination of Israel is a no-brainer; which leaves only the third option. It’s often forgotten that Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser swore that Israel must never exist as a nation, only for his successor, Anwar el-Sadat, to subsequently sign a ground-breaking truce with ultra-Conservative Israeli PM Begin that has seen both nations enjoying nearly 50 years of unbroken peace despite periodic conflicts in the region. The former was assassinated by dissenting Islamic extremists, just as Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated 14 years later by an ultra-Orthodox extremist who opposed the terms of the Oslo Accords.
What all this means is that Israelis and Palestinians can similarly live side by side in peace and tranquillity. What is ultimately required is a master-chef who can mix all the ingredients together to produce a delicious cuisine. The cuisine is the much-needed peace in the Middle East. The master-chef is a bold and courageous and trustworthy American President who must first procure the buy-in of the very powerful and highly influential Jewish-Americans – even if it means having to drag them kicking and screaming – and convincing them that the moment has finally come to make the Two-State Solution a reality, especially in the light of a worrisome resurgence of anti-Semitism in America and around the world.
The ingredients are Israeli and Palestinian leaders ready to put the interests of their nations above their personal interests, and who are willing to courageously lay down their lives, if necessary, to procure a sustainable just and humanitarian peace for all.