What Benjamin Netanyahu is thinking – Mustafa Kamel Said

The only party standing in the way of reaching a ceasefire in Gaza, the return of prisoners held by the Palestinian resistance by Israel, and the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people in Gaza, as the cause Benjamin Netanyahu is the one who is pushing for progress on a two-state solution. US President Biden called on him to promote the negotiations on the situation in Gaza that resumed on Sunday in Cairo. Appeals similar to those said by the US President have also been made by the governments of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, as well as by the Secretary-General of the United Nations. However, without anticipating the outcome of yesterday’s events in Cairo, many observers do not believe that these negotiations will lead to the end of the war, due to the intransigence of the Israeli Prime Minister and the reduction of his negotiating powers. Mandate, and he then constantly returns to his favorite method of proposing new conditions that could be agreed.
What is the reason for Netanyahu’s stubbornness, given that Israel’s military and security leadership would like to reach a truce that would stop the fighting, allow the Israeli prisoners to return, and perhaps allow them to focus on confronting Hezbollah on Israel’s northern border? Is Netanyahu’s stubbornness really because he fears losing his position and then going on trial for the three corruption charges against him?
This article proposes another vision that does not contradict this view, but it adds other calculations that are peculiar to Netanyahu, according to which he believes that he will not lose the ongoing war, but can proceed from it to achieve broader goals, to enhance Israel’s security at the regional level, and that if things go well, this round of conflicts, even if it includes regional wars, will end with the confirmation of Israel’s control over the West Bank and Gaza, the end of the Oslo War, the defeat of Iran and its allies, and perhaps the acceleration of the full normalization of relations with Israel by some Arab governments, especially those of the Gulf countries led by Saudi Arabia. This great success will allow Israeli public opinion to forgive his corruption, and he will once again be crowned “King of Israel” in a political, but not constitutional, sense.

How to get into Netanyahu’s mind
Our task is made easier by Netanyahu himself and by his supporters who believe in his wisdom. This task is made easier by Netanyahu’s speech to the US Congress on July 25, in which he presented his views on the Middle East conflict. Most US experts on the Middle East writing in the US media agree that Netanyahu’s supporters published an article in the US diplomatic magazine Foreign Affairs accusing Netanyahu of stubbornly endangering Israel’s future. The article was titled “Israel is winning.” Based on these two sources, we can draw conclusions about Netanyahu’s views on what he is doing.
Let’s first look at Netanyahu’s speech to the U.S. Congress. From the first paragraph of his speech, Netanyahu puts what is happening in Gaza in a broader context that goes beyond the Middle East and even beyond the present moment. He believes that the world is going through a phase of explosion and is in the midst of an explosion. What he calls the “axis of terrorism” in the Middle East is facing the United States, Israel, and what he calls his Arab friends. He does not see this as a clash of civilizations, but a clash between civilizations. “Barbarism and civilization,” a clash between those who glorify death and those who sanctify life.
He concluded that in order to win, the United States and Israel must stand together, because when they stand together, they win and others lose. He then emphasized this meaning several times in his speech, that what happened in Israel on October 7 is similar to what happened on December 7, 1941, when the United States faced the Japanese air attack on Pearl Harbor, or what happened in September. On December 11, 2001, one of the towers of the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington were attacked, which in his opinion was also a conflict between the forces of good and the forces of evil. Israel standing in front of Iran is also defending the civilized values ​​​​upheld by the United States, and from this sentence it can be concluded that when Israel seeks to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, weapons that can destroy Israel and threaten everything in the United States, what Israel does is not only to protect the Israeli people, but also to protect the American nation.
Therefore, what is happening in Gaza is just an extension of Iran’s struggle against civilization. It is as if Israel did not occupy Palestinian territories, as if Israel did not besiege the Palestinian men and women in Gaza, and the Palestinians did not have demands for self-realization, which Israel tacitly agreed to by signing the peace framework in 1979, the conclusion of the Oslo Accords.
In his view, everything Israel faces is the work of Iran and the “terrorist alliance” it supports, and he even uses his imagination to claim that the protest movement sweeping universities in capitals around the world and many American universities is caused by Iran and funded by Iran.
He went on to confirm that Israel is winning its war against Hamas in Gaza, which is obvious, and that the defeat of Hamas at the hands of Israel would be the defeat of the entire terrorist axis led by Iran. When he spoke, Israel had rescued 135 prisoners, including 7 during military operations.
A commentator supporting Netanyahu in an article published in the American magazine Foreign Affairs gives details of Israel’s victory that contradict many other articles in the journal and even the comments of some senior writers of the New York Times In the article written by John Spencer, a former American military officer and expert in urban warfare, he chose for his title such a title: Israel wins, but a lasting victory over Hamas requires the establishment of new leadership in Gaza. The article adds that one of the signs of Israel’s victory is that it has complete control over the entire Gaza Strip, including its northern and southern borders with Egypt, and has established a buffer zone between Gaza and Israeli settlements to its north. In fact, residents of some of these areas have begun to return to their homes after the frequency of rocket fire from Palestinian factions dropped from thousands to no more than dozens. Hamas has also lost the ability to directly rule Gaza.
But as Netanyahu himself detailed in his speech to Congress, the next stage of Israel’s victory in Gaza is to find alternative leadership to Hamas to govern the Strip and to re-educate Palestinian men and women to have friendly feelings toward Israel, but in Spencer’s words, reconciliation between the Palestinians and Israelis.

What practical implications does the vision of Netanyahu and his supporters have?
Whatever we think of the statements of Netanyahu and his supporters, what they say and repeat reveals his real intentions, which are reflected in his stance towards the Palestinians and his Iranian and Lebanese supporters. Whatever the views of the US administration, Netanyahu does not intend to give up control of Gaza, nor does he intend to limit the conflict with Hamas in Gaza to the borders of Gaza, but wants to transfer this conflict to the entire Middle East. The Eastern theater ultimately by confronting the Iranian nuclear program, even if this program has not yet reached the capability to develop nuclear weapons. Thus, he will delay the ongoing negotiations with Hamas, with the mediation of the United States, the presence of Egypt and Qatar, and take the opportunity of the reaction of Hezbollah and Iran to escalate the situation with them and provoke Iran to go to war. The United States will be forced to engage with Israel under the pretext of defending Israel’s security.
Netanyahu relies on a confirmed majority in the Knesset and growing support for him from Israeli public opinion, which will accept nothing less than a complete defeat for Hamas and the inability of Israel’s military and security leaders to challenge what they call “Islamic State.” On the political level, the elected civilian leadership has the final say on war or peace, and the U.S. government in an election year can only go along with Israel’s decisions, as can the Arab governments, some of whom do not want a political victory for Hamas.

Netanyahu’s mistake was that, like the US administration, he failed to take into account the people’s capacity for resistance in his calculations.