Netanyahu and an Israel Without Restraint

Before the war in Gaza began almost two years ago, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, was not known as a risk taker. His rhetoric was bold, his deeds less so. Now, however, by sending the Israeli military into Gaza City, he appears to have dispensed with constraints.

The operation, which he says is necessary to defeat Hamas but is certain to increase Israel’s isolation as international anger mounts, has already killed many Palestinians and sent hundreds of thousands into flight southward. It risks the lives of the estimated 20 living Israeli hostages. It renders any cease-fire unimaginable for the moment. It has been questioned even by the military’s chief of staff.

To all this, Mr. Netanyahu’s response seems to be: Bring it on.

This week, he suggested that Israel should become a “super Sparta,” apparently meaning that the ancient Greek city-state that rose through discipline to become a great military power should inspire the country. Speaking at an economic conference hosted by the Finance Ministry, he said Israel might have to confront “isolation” through “autarky,” or economic self-sufficiency.

“He’s lost it,” Itamar Rabinovich, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States, said. “There are no more red lines.”

This month he vowed that “there will be no Palestinian state.” Even if preventing one has been the primary focus of his political life, he has become much more explicit of late. The remark amounted to a rebuke to states including France, Britain, Canada and Australia that have said they will recognize a state of Palestine at the United Nations General Assembly beginning next week.

It would be foolhardy, however, to equate Mr. Netanyahu’s increasingly headstrong braggadocio with imminent downfall.

He has not amassed a total of almost 18 years as prime minister and become the nation’s longest-serving leader without proving himself a shrewd, adaptable and ruthless leader. “Only Bibi!” goes the chant of his hard-core supporters, using his nickname.

To them he is the irreplaceable “King,” the one man with the mettle to face down Israel’s enemies on seven fronts. His decapitation of Hezbollah in Lebanon and undermining of Iran’s nuclear ambitions through a brief war have led to talk in the region of an imperial Israel.

Perhaps his weakest enemy has proved his toughest. He appears to believe that he can force Hamas to surrender or disappear through military might alone, but has been obliged to redefine his approach again and again.

To his opponents, who chant “Anything but Bibi,” Mr. Netanyahu is simply the face of the desecration of Israeli democracy.

At this tense juncture in Israel’s history, Mr. Netanyahu has one clear advantage: the largely uncritical support of President Trump. A world drifting under Mr. Trump’s impulsion in an authoritarian direction had helped birth a Bibi unbound. He is emboldened because, as never before, he is confident that, no matter what, this America will have his back.

It is unclear, however, whether Mr. Trump would ever confront Mr. Netanyahu in this way.

“Netanyahu is a real leader, there are not many leaders of his stature in history,” said Daniella Weiss, a prominent leader of the settler movement that has drawn strength and limitless license to expand its West Bank settlements from the devastating Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, which killed some 1,200 people.

For all his nationalist and religious support, Mr. Netanyahu is widely loathed. He is suspected by many of putting his own survival before the interests of the nation by prolonging a Gaza war that his critics say should have ended long ago.

Liberal Israel, unbowed despite a rightist tide, perceives him as shredding the fundamental values of the state and the core of Jewish ethics through the prosecution of a relentless military campaign that continues to kill Palestinian civilians in large numbers without setting an attainable objective. Israeli hostages have languished in tunnels for more than 700 days.

“What Netanyahu is doing now in Gaza is outrageously brutal,” Mr. Olmert said. “How can ministers at the highest level say all Gazans are Hamas and then herd them into camps? We are in a fight for the soul of Israel.”

A Channel 12 poll this month showed Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party leading in any election with 24 seats, but indicated that the parties in his far-right government would fall well short of enough seats in the 120-member Knesset to renew the coalition. Still, with elections more than a year away, Mr. Netanyahu’s political options are far from exhausted.

During a two-day visit this week by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, there was not a hint of American criticism, even after Israel’s recent attempted assassination of Hamas leaders in Qatar, an important American ally. Mr. Rubio said the United States was not counting on a deal with Hamas, “a terrorist group, a barbaric group, whose stated mission is the destruction of the Jewish state.”

Mr. Trump appears to want the war in Gaza ended at once, with all the hostages, living or dead, released and Hamas defeated, whatever precisely that means. Whether Mr. Trump seeks a two-state peace, the position of most past American governments over decades, is unclear, but most of his pronouncements suggest not.

Because the president’s statements on the war are unpredictable and marked by impatience, but always rooted in unswerving support for Israel, Mr. Netanyahu is left with much room for maneuver.

Two months ago, Mr. Netanyahu seemed to be seriously contemplating a possible deal with Hamas that would have seen 10 living Israeli hostages released in exchange for a large number of Palestinian prisoners and a 60-day cease-fire during which an end to the war would have been negotiated.

Then he went to Washington, met Mr. Trump, changed his mind, and began planning the assault on Gaza City with its accompanying prolongation of the war and intensification of Palestinian agony in Gaza.

It looked like a choice driven by his survival instincts. The end of the war holds many dangers for Mr. Netanyahu. They include the breakup of his coalition as rightist ministers object; a commission of inquiry into the Oct. 7 debacle; a full accounting of Israel’s actions during the war; and an end to protection from his own legal travails.

An Israel at war, an Israel in what he presents as manifest existential danger, suits Mr. Netanyahu better. It plays to his tactical strengths. In the end, at least in the view of the hostages’ families and their many outraged supporters, his own survival trumps that of the hostages.

“My Matan is being sacrificed on Netanyahu’s altar,” Einav Zangauker, the mother of Matan Zangauker, a hostage, said on Tuesday.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right minister of national security, made clear on social media this week that he strongly approved of Mr. Netanyahu’s decision to move into Gaza City. “The decisive moment has come,” he wrote, adding two emojis, one of fire and one a red X apparently signifying the obliteration of Hamas or Gaza, or both.

As for Mr. Netanyahu, he insisted this week that, “Life is more important than the law.”

He has clearly staked his all on forging a triumphant legacy that will outweigh his responsibility, on Oct. 7, 2023, for the greatest defeat in Israel’s history. His chosen course has proved to be long and divisive, punctuated by Israeli military ascendancy in the region, but devastating to the Palestinian people and lacerating to his own country.