For the 3 reasons, Netanyahu is walking his own path despite ignoring the pressure
Last Updated on October 14, 2024 2:26 am
The second week of Israel’s ground offensive in Lebanon is nearing its end, and Israel’s war has also entered its second year. Calls for a cease-fire are intensifying after Thursday’s airstrikes in Beirut. The Israeli military has attacked UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon for the second day.
Despite calls for an end to the conflict, renewed attacks have begun in Jabalia. Israel’s allies have also urged the country to exercise restraint in retaliating against Iran in response to last week’s missile attack.
However, despite all the pressure, Israel is going its own way and there are three reasons for this – October 7, Benjamin Netanyahu and the United States.
Iranian General Qasem Soleimani arrived in Baghdad on a night flight from Damascus in January 2020. He was the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force. It is essentially a secret unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
The group’s name means Jerusalem and their main rival is Israel. They arm, train, finance and directly act as shadow forces in Iraq, Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories and elsewhere. At that time, Soleimani was the second most powerful man in Iran after Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Soleimani’s convoy was killed by a missile fired from a drone just before it left the airport.
Although Israel provided intelligence to pinpoint the location of its adversary, the drone belonged to the United States. The assassination was authorized by then US President Donald Trump, not Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In a later speech, referring to the killing of Soleimani, former President Trump said he would never forget that Netanyahu had let him down. In another interview, he said he expected a more active role for Israel in the incident and alleged that Netanyahu wanted ‘America to use every last soldier against Iran. let them fight’.
Netanyahu praised the killing. But it was thought at the time that his concern was that if Israel got involved directly, it could lead to a major attack on Israel directly from Iran or Lebanon and Palestine.
Israel was engaged in a shadow war against Iran but both sides were careful to keep their fight within certain limits. It was out of fear that it might provoke a major conflict.
Four years later in April this year, the same Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the bombing of Iran’s diplomatic compound in Damascus, where two Iranian generals were among the dead.
He then authorized the killing of Hezbollah’s top commander, Fouad Shukar, in an airstrike in Beirut in July. But the current US president was shocked by it, claims a new book by Bob Woodward. The reason for the shock here is that Israel’s prime minister was preparing to escalate the conflict that the White House was trying to minimize.
The global perception of Israel is ‘you are a rogue state, a rogue player’. The same prime minister was characterized by a US president as extremely cautious and his successor as aggressive.
October 7, 2023 was the bloodiest day in Israel’s history and a catastrophic day of political, military and intelligence failure. Both of these factors help Israel to engage in ongoing wars.
The scale and scope of Hamas’ attacks on Israel has affected Israeli society and its sense of security, making this war different from any recent conflict.
The US administration is giving billions of dollars worth of weapons to Israel. Again, the deaths of Palestinian civilians and the suffering in Gaza are unsettling and politically damaging.
US aircraft were also active in preventing Iranian attacks on Israel in April. This is a clear proof of the role of its biggest ally in Israel’s security.
This summer, Israel decided to engage in conflict with Hezbollah without prior US approval.
Netanyahu, Israel’s longtime prime minister, has learned from more than two decades of experience how to handle, if not ignore, U.S. pressure.
Netanyahu knows that the United States will not push him out of his way, especially in their current election year, and he believes he is also fighting America’s enemy.
It would not be right to think that Netanyahu is acting outside the Israeli political mainstream. That is why the pressure on Hezbollah to strike hard, even against Iran, may increase.
As the United States and France moved forward with a cease-fire plan last month, the Israeli conflict and the proposed twenty-one-day ceasefire came from the mainstream left and right.
Israel is committed to continuing the war. This is not only because it is able to withstand international pressure, but because after October 7 the policy of tolerance towards its own threats has changed.
Hezbollah has long sought to invade Israel’s northern Galilee region. Now the people of Israel have experienced a gunman’s attack in their homes. That’s why they think this threat should be eradicated.
Israel’s perception of risk has also changed. Long-standing military boundaries in the region have been lost. A lot has happened in the last few years leading to an all-out conflict. These include bombings and missile attacks that rained down on Tehran, Beirut, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Israel killed Hamas chief while he was a guest of Iran in Tehran. They destroyed the entire leadership, including Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrullah. Two Iranian officials killed in diplomatic building in Syria
Hezbollah has fired more than 9,000 missiles, rockets and drones at Israeli cities. Ballistic missiles fired at Tel Aviv. Iran-backed Houthis have also carried out large-scale attacks in Yemen.
Iran has also launched two strikes in the past six months that have used more than 500 drones and missiles. Israel invaded Lebanon.
And any of these may have led the region to war, and indeed the Israeli prime minister will take his next decision without risking any of these issues.
Source: BBC