Focus in the Middle East is likely to be on the suffering of Palestinians caught up in the Israeli strikes on Gaza
Binyamin Netanyahu: he underestimated Hamas's capacity. For a furious Israeli public, the prime minister is the natural person to blame for what has happened. Photograph: Abir Sultan/EPAWars unite nations. The shock and horror of the Hamas attacks on Israel have brought a deeply divided country together. It is possible that Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, may now form a national unity government.
Israel has long taken pride in its intelligence services. It was generally assumed that nothing much could happen in Gaza without Israel knowing about it.‘Palestinians believed no one is caring,’ says ambassador to Ireland after Hamas attacks The prime minister’s working assumption that the threat from Hamas was contained now looks delusional and complacent. As he struggles to avoid conviction in a corruption case, Netanyahu has also formed a government reliant on parties from the far-right. Those parties have supported increasing aggression by Israeli settlers in the West Bank. Army forces were diverted to the West Bank to contain the resulting violence — which weakened the country’s defences on the border with Gaza.
When the head of Shin Bet, the Israeli domestic intelligence service, warned Netanyahu earlier this year that deadly attacks by settlers on Palestinians would increase the security threat to Israel, he was roundly denounced by members of Netanyahu’s Likud party. One Likud member of parliament complained: “The ideology of the left has reached the top echelons of the Shin Bet. The deep state has infiltrated the leadership of the Shin Bet and the IDF.
The Israeli leader rejected the argument that Israel would never be accepted in the Middle East until it made peace with the Palestinians. He argued instead that establishing normal relations with Israel’s Arab neighbours would help to bring internal peace – by cutting off external support for the Palestinians.
However, while Netanyahu’s Palestine strategy has fallen apart, it is far from clear what can replace it. In the current climate of grief and fury inside Israel, it is inevitable that the government will embrace a ferocious military response. But the Israeli government does not yet have any vision that goes beyond killing Hamas leaders.
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