The main objective of the attack carried out by Hamas on October 7, 2023, by all evidence, was to regionalize the Palestinian question, largely absent from Israeli and international politics for at least a decade. This attack led to the massacre of hundreds of Israeli civilians, and the Israeli response escalated into a genocidal-style offensive that killed well over 70,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and transformed the entire Gaza Strip into a massive pile of ruins.
We now know that all the warning signs of an imminent Hamas attack were flashing. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ignored them.
The fiasco of October 7, 2023
He did so, on the one hand, because he was engaged in a deliberate attempt to transform the system of governance in Israel through so-called “judicial reform” – in reality a power grab aimed at weakening judicial control over the legislative and executive branches, a process still ongoing.
Secondly, and most importantly, Netanyahu refused to respond to these warnings because they contradicted his long-term policy of “managing” rather than resolving the 59-year-old occupation of the West Bank, in which millions of Palestinians live. On October 7, this policy blew up in his face.
Everything that followed was a result of Netanyahu’s refusal to admit that the October 7 fiasco was primarily his responsibility, both as head of government and as the architect of an increasingly oppressive occupation policy. This is based on the idea that the presence of Hamas in Gaza constituted a political “asset”, since it demonstrated that Israel had no Palestinian interlocutor with whom to negotiate.
Permanent war, as the only chance of survival
This refusal profoundly transformed his political posture. From a leader notoriously reluctant to engage in any major military confrontation, he has become a cornered leader who believes his only chance of survival lies in permanent war.
The first step was the attempted ethnic cleansing of Gaza. But if the territory has been ravaged, Hamas has not been destroyed and the population, unable to leave the area, remains there, although concentrated on less than half of the territory – Netanyahu recently declared that the IDF would take control of 70% of it.
Already one of the most densely populated areas in the world before October 7, this space is today the scene of disastrous humanitarian conditions.
Genocide in Gaza
Netanyahu’s second fiasco is therefore the genocide in Gaza, which made Israel a pariah state in much of the world, while his European and American allies not only assured him impunity, but were also complicit in providing him with military, economic and political aid.
It is unlikely that Israel’s image will recover from its crimes in Gaza without a radical change in the political paradigm on which it has been based since 1948 and an overhaul of its relations with the 7 million Palestinians subjected to unequal domination, or even an apartheid regime.
The illusion of the end of the Ayatollah regime in Iran
Hamas hoped that Hezbollah and Iran would join its fight against Israel. At first this did not happen. Hezbollah and Iran could not be separated, the former acting partly as a relay for the latter, while also representing the Shiite population of southern Lebanon.
Netanyahu therefore adopted a two-pronged strategy to prolong the conflict: convincing Trump that an Israeli-American operation in Iran would overthrow the ayatollahs’ regime, and launching an offensive in southern Lebanon with the declared objective of dismantling Hezbollah.
The results were, predictably, disastrous – which is why previous US presidents had resisted Netanyahu’s attempts to draw them into an attack on Iran.
Iran paradoxically strengthened
Today, the US administration recognizes that it cannot prevail in Iran and seeks to withdraw from a situation in which it has found itself mired because of Netanyahu.
The “compromise” reached implies that Iran has transformed free movement in the Strait of Hormuz – a vital artery for global energy – into an unprecedented negotiating lever. And that the Gulf States realize their vulnerability in the face of the United States’ inability to influence Iran and seek other alliances.
It also assumes that Iran could accelerate the development of nuclear weapons to prevent any future attacks. And that Tehran has established a direct relationship with Lebanon, threatening to attack Israel if major infrastructure is targeted – an unprecedented expansion of its regional influence.
In other words, the attack on Iran initiated by Israel paradoxically strengthened this country and showed the limits of American power, constituting a new major fiasco for Netanyahu. Currently, Israel is engaged in a senseless war in Lebanon, which has displaced more than a million people and destroyed dozens of villages in the South, replicating the methods used in Gaza.
Donald Trump distances himself from Netanyahu
However, Hezbollah has not been eliminated, nor has Hamas. Trump seems to have understood that Netanyahu has led him into a dead end and is distancing himself from his “old friend”.
Israel has lost the freedom of action it enjoyed thanks to American support, for which its opponents blame it, while some right-wing critics in the United States accuse Trump of letting Netanyahu direct American foreign policy.
We can hope that Netanyahu’s latest fiasco will be a decisive defeat in the upcoming elections in October. But knowing the man, the control he exercises – with his ministers – over the police, the media and the justice system, as well as the division and lack of vision of the opposition, he could still escape this failure.
What seems indisputable is that despite the human losses and massive destruction, Hamas has achieved its objective: regionalizing the Palestinian question.
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