In Vietnam America won all the battles, but lost the war. Israel today risks the same fate. Six months after 7 October and the Hamas massacres, the outcome of the war is so disastrous that not even the death count, used at the time by the US commands to attribute victories, mitigates the disaster. Compared to the 676 soldiers lost in these six months, Israel claims the killing of ten thousand Hamas militants, or a third of its fighting force, and seven members of its leadership. However, the three fundamental promises put on the table by Bibi Netanyahu, namely the cancellation of Hamas, the elimination of its leaders and the release of the hostages, remain unfulfilled.
The Israeli commands themselves admit the operation of at least six fundamentalist battalions active between Rafah and the rest of the Strip. While the bodies of Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif, the political and military leader of Hamas placed at the top of the target list by Netanyahu, are missing. And at least 129 hostages remain prisoners, around thirty of whom are probably already dead. But Bibi’s three failed promises – and the Israeli army’s subsequent failure to recover its deterrence capacity – are just the tip of the iceberg. Below it we can glimpse failures capable of impacting not only the future of Israel, but also that of the Western allies and moderate Arab countries.
The diktat with which America, Israel’s undisputed ally, imposed the withdrawal from the south of the Strip has, in fact, taken away the Netanyahu government’s last chance of victory. And it made clear the skepticism with which the Biden Administration views its ally’s war conduct. The same goes for a Europe where governments, including Italy, have to deal with fringes of public opinion inclined to sympathize not only with the Palestinians, but even with Hamas. A confusion aggravated by the inability of the Netanyahu government to propose an acceptable political solution for the management of the Strip at the end of hostilities. And from the even more serious refusal to accept that “two states for two peoples” solution on which no one from Washington to Brussels, via London, is more willing to compromise.
But if the US and Europe cry, Jerusalem doesn’t laugh. The 34 thousand deaths in Gaza, whether real or false, remain the best gift to an Iran that uses the Palestinian issue to conquer Sunni public opinions. While America and Israel find themselves negotiating the hostage issue with Qatar, the godfather of the Muslim Brotherhood which, by praising Hamas and agitating the Middle Eastern streets, puts the stability of moderate Arab countries at risk. First of all that of a Jordan where the population is 50% of Palestinian origin and an Egypt where the lost revenue from Suez – a consequence of the naval blockade imposed by the Houthi missiles – risks leading the country to bankruptcy.
Thanks to Bibi’s mistakes and the unscrupulous determination of his enemies, the Middle East seems, in short, to have regressed by half a century in six months.
While the archiving of the Abraham Accords, another icon of Netanyahu’s policies, once again relegates Israel to the role of untouchable in regional geopolitics.
