Translated from GegenStandpunkt 4-2024

The reality of the “regional conflagration”

Israel is creating a new Middle East for itself and the world

So many have observed so many new things about the war that has been going on in the Middle East since last autumn: some emphasize that never before have so many Palestinians been killed in a single one of Israel’s numerous wars; others point out that never before have so many Israelis been killed by hostile Arabs in one or two days, and that the Israeli body count since then has reached unprecedented levels; experts on Israeli air defense capabilities stress that more rockets than ever before are being fired at Israel and actually hitting their targets, effectively preventing a return to civilian normalcy; anyone interested, from an even higher viewpoint, in the prospects of a ‘two-state solution’ after the war must note that never before has Israel so thoroughly destroyed all the material prerequisites and minimum conditions for statehood, or indeed any life at all, in the Gaza Strip, which has been designated for this solution, for decades to come. Anyone who declares the effective deterrence of Iran to be their concern can’t help but note that Israel is directly engaging in missile and other air strikes with Iran for the first time ever; anyone who clings to the idea of Israel as a ‘safe haven’ for all the world’s Jews must now state that Israel has become the most unsafe place for Jews in the world; etc.

None of these are wrong; however, the quantitative superlatives for violence, sometimes met with shock, sometimes glee, and sometimes detached interest, are not an accurate judgement on what has been going on in the Middle East for some time now. What remains to be clarified is the new quality of the violent events that Israel has been expediting in its conflict with its enemies for the past year. The information provided by Israel’s leaders on this matter is only partially helpful. These gentlemen are themselves deeply divided about what they are doing, and even at odds with each other to the point of hostility over consequences and prospects; and this is not despite the situation into which they are plunging their nation and the surrounding region, which “actually!” demands national unity, but rather precisely for this reason: the escalating national conflict between Israel’s political and military leadership and their respective supporters among the people testifies to, and is in fact part of, the fact that this nation is making a new and unique kind of imperialist progress with its regional war.

1. Israel’s Gaza war

a)

In recent decades, Israel has practiced a kind of coexistence with Hamas, which it ostracized as a terrorist organization. On the basis of its undoubtedly total military superiority, and under the premise that the program of establishing a Palestinian state has no prospect of being realized, it withdrew its military and its settlers from the Strip and set up an almost perfect fortified barrier. Taking advantage of a political split brought about by the Palestinians themselves, it excluded the territory, including its population and ruling establishment, from the occupation diplomacy it maintains with regard to the West Bank and the autonomous authority it tolerates there; it has secured de facto control over the borders of the Gaza Strip and all legal border crossings and permits or prevents lawful contact between the Strip and the outside world based solely on its own calculations. Israel has, not in law but in fact, allowed Hamas to look after the Palestinians, whom it wants nothing to do with programmatically, and to ensure an order among them that is also beneficial to Israel under the given circumstances; otherwise it has denied Hamas any status as a counterpart worthy of political negotiation or even administrative agreement under any preconditions whatsoever. The only forms of official diplomacy with this organization were limited to indirect negotiations via third parties when it was necessary to end phases of direct armed conflict. These were regularly required as an integral part of the solution to Israel’s Hamas problem as permanent events: on various occasions, Israel has shelled the Gaza Strip with its air force and land- and sea-based artillery, destroyed military and civilian infrastructure in the Gaza Strip, and caused the deaths of a few thousand Gazan Palestinians in each case, in order to make it clear to everyone that Hamas’s political program, which Israel has thus territorially contained and suppressed, and Hamas itself are absolutely illegal, and that its existence depends entirely on Israel’s calculations of expediency.

What was for Israel mostly a functional if not ideal arrangement for its Gaza-Palestinian problem – and for the population an unimaginable suffering – was used by Hamas for its own political purposes. With its de facto regime over this small piece of land and its two million inhabitants, it created a kind of state in the making and built up an underground quasi-military force. It used this to attack in October 2023: it crossed Israel’s meticulously secured border, carried out a demonstrative massacre, fired rockets into the Israeli heartland, and took over 200 people hostage. Its unmistakable intention was to declare war on Israel: a war to found a state from a position of almost total military inferiority, literally from underground.

In fact, Israel initially responded as it would to an attack by an enemy state, by wiping out the invaders and waging an air war against military positions and other worthwhile targets on Hamas’s territory. From the outset, however, the aim was not really to force an enemy military power to surrender unconditionally by delivering devastating blows to its human and material resources. Israel never granted Hamas the status of a regime to be deposed, and certainly not after its major attack. It did not wage war against an enemy army, but rather, according to its stated intention, launched a campaign of annihilation against a gang of terrorists. The label ‘terrorism’ was never meant merely as a moral justification for its own military terror, but quite practically as a guideline for the mission to eliminate mortal enemies of state sovereignty, and thus of Israel’s very existence; as unconditionally and uncompromisingly as a state – any state – acts against internal enemies of its monopoly on violence: they must be eliminated along with their subversive political views and punished for their rebellion in order to legally restore the violated sovereignty of the supreme authority. The only difference, however, is that Hamas is not an internal Israeli terrorist group, but an external power. But from Israel’s point of view, it is certainly not a state with its own right to military force and war; rather, it is something like an NGO of illegal fighters, defined as such by Israel’s decision that the Palestinian will to statehood, militantly represented by Hamas, is absolutely incompatible with the existence of the state of Israel; a bunch of outlaws with a stateless people as their mass base.

What can be observed in the Gaza Strip – and for some time now in Lebanon as well – in terms of the IDF’s (Israel Defense Forces) willingness to destroy and its utter ruthlessness are the consequences of the hybrid, warlike terror campaign commissioned by the Netanyahu government in order to definitively, finally, and truly implement the long-standing resolution of incompatibility. Logically, this campaign has no war aim of the kind seen in earlier Israeli state-founding wars, such as conquering land and expelling the population in order to take permanent possession of it. With the total condemnation of all identifiable commanders of the Hamas military as terrorists absolutely unworthy of being negotiated with, ending the war through the surrender of a commanding authority is completely out of the question. And not only in principle and according to Israel’s intention: the targeted killing of all those responsible and held accountable on the side of the Gazan Palestinians deliberately makes such an end to the war impossible. Israel’s acts of annihilation are therefore permanent, their duration entirely at the discretion of the Israeli leadership; it is only logical that they ignore every well-meaning – and especially any critical – request to specify a feasible war aim or conditions for an end to the war. The goal of eradicating terror through war remains unfulfilled as long as any kind of organized will to establish a state stirs within the devastated strip of land, which Israel at its free discretion classifies as an attack on its very existence.

Given this war aim, any distinctions, even only ideally, between armed enemy forces and the civilian population are rendered invalid, or rather, never implemented in the first place. Where, from an Israeli perspective, there is no recognized governing authority, there is also no nation upon which war and possibly post-war calculations could be directed, nor could martial law, with its regulations designed to protect a non-militarily active population be applied; there is only a crowd of people in which the terrorist group to be annihilated is shamefully hiding. Therefore, there can be no consideration, only collateral damage for which the targeted political criminals are responsible. Israel is also not establishing an occupation regime over these inhabitants which would entail considerations for the occupier in terms of providing some kind of minimum support for the people to whom it would be committed in the form of an occupation law: the army is not out to conquer or disempower, but rather its sole mission is to ‘hunt down, capture, and eliminate terrorists’. It does not function as a replacement for a disempowered government because one never existed there; a de facto competent authority such as the Hamas administration, which was tolerated in this role for decades, no longer exists, nor should it, and it must not exist, because this tolerance was precisely the mistake that Israel has not forgiven itself for since October 2023. The supply functions that the Hamas apparatus, if need be, still took care of is thus also dispensed with: all Hamas activities, including those, fall under the label of ‘terrorism’. And when foreign aid workers interfere with the Gazan food supply, they face the difficult-to-dispel concern that, ultimately, they would only be hindering Israel’s just fight against terrorism.

A people without legal status, under no accountable regime, relentlessly bombed wherever Israel’s efficient intelligence service claims to have located an illegal combatant, and eliminated wherever they are causing trouble: how this can survive is, from a human perspective, the experimental setup that Israel has created and made permanent by aggressively ending its hostile co-existence with Hamas as the de facto administrator of the Gaza Strip.

Israel is having an appropriate domestic political dispute about this.

b)

Israel has been embroiled in a dispute about the hostage issue since the beginning of the war, although the nature of the dispute has changed as the war has progressed. In the beginning, the dispute, fueled mainly by the families of the hostages, centered on what kind of concessions Israel should make to Hamas in order to get as many hostages back as quickly as possible. That is now history. However the families may see it, the dispute now represents something else: every false pretense about what the Israeli reason of state and protective force in relation to its own citizens means and does not mean has been refuted in practice by Israel’s progress in combating Hamas and its political progress in relations with the Palestinians in general, which is now being carried out and for which Netanyahu is responsible. What makes releasing the hostages through negotiation impossible – much to the incomprehension and outrage of parts of the Israeli public – is the new uncompromising stance that rules out any kind of effective arrangement – even if only on questions intrinsic to the war itself – with Hamas and its followers who have been slated for extermination. The remaining hostages are condemned to their very predictable fate by the new line of the Israeli leadership who, in their self-criticism, have now abandoned in practice – and on occasion explicitly in public – negotiation strategies that in the past might have brought many of their citizens back home, but would also give the enemy the breathing room and a political recognition that is now out of the question. The return of the hostages will either result from or contribute to the annihilation of any Palestinian political will, or it won’t happen at all; this is the tough demand that the new dimension of the anti-Palestinian war is making on the people, or parts of them, who have been accustomed to something different up to now; in other words, this is the lesson that the Israeli people now have to learn about the essential nature of their citizenship.

In a completely different way, military and/or alternative political leaders are taking issue with the progress that Netanyahu has decreed for his country. From a narrow-minded military perspective, the political war aim is impossible to achieve, and attempting to do so is a waste of valuable military resources. This was also the position of, among others, the now-dismissed Defense Minister Gallant: From the political military standpoint, a clear operational or operationizable war aim is needed, expressed as a demand for definable and verifiable conditions for ending the war. This is precisely what can’t be achieved with the objective progress that Israel’s definition of its enemy and itself has made in the course of the war, and this is what bothers the proponents of the viewpoint prominently personified by Gallant. Sometimes they see military ignorance, sometimes political selfishness on the part of the Prime Minister, who is using his political sovereignty over the Israeli military apparatus to turn the Gaza Strip into a field of rubble on which Palestinians are to live in the future not only without any prospects, but also without any ambitions for a Palestinian state, no matter how powerless. The professional criticism of the new general line is that this is militarily unattainable, as if it were a military miscalculation.[1] Those who find it difficult to follow the transition that Netanyahu is spearheading, who orient themselves by past wars, and who take as the their benchmark Israel’s superiority as demonstrated by its low level of casualties in those wars, are also and especially using – as has now become part of the good manners of this segment of the opposition – the rising number of dead and wounded IDF soldiers as an argument. The political dispute is thus transformed into the appropriately dishonest question of whether Israel’s own deaths prove the necessity of the war, ennoble the nation and its leader, or whether they are a consequence and thus evidence of a war that will become senseless if it does not find a befitting end.

Israel’s factions are also arguing about the new status that Israel has gained in relation to the Palestinians through a year of war, along with the hotly debated question of how to deal with the Gaza Strip after the war. Netanyahu rejects this question as such – by refusing to give any definite answers to it. These answers are obviously given anyway, and they too attest to the fact that the Israeli nation is bombing and shooting its way to a new phase of its statehood. First, by those who have never understood why Israel withdrew its occupying troops from the Strip in the first place, and in the process even abandoned the settlements it had already built there. They see military developments as confirming their view that, without a permanent military presence, the Gaza Strip can only be, or will soon become again, nothing but a hotbed of anti-Israeli militancy. They effortlessly connect this with the logic by which their fine country was founded in the first place: conquest and surveillance for the settlements, settlements for the surveillance and security of everything conquered.[2] And logically, with or without reference to the Old Testament, parts of the government are also in favor of re-settling the Gaza Strip. Opponents from within the government, democratic opposition parties, and the military are also speaking out, saying that such a scenario would hamper military, economic, and political power, which was so nicely overcome by withdrawing twenty years ago. They fear that Israel will ultimately become a state ruled by religious fanatics, concentrating its magnificent violent power on such archaic things as blood and soil. None of them envisage a state of Palestine, and so they only argue, but all the more fiercely, about how to teach the Palestinians to de-nationalize the nationally defined collective that Israel makes them into – or whether this is even possible or, given the nature of the Arab national soul, is not an attempt that has evidently already failed in the past because it was bound to fail.[3]

*

The question of whether Israel is right and doing everything correctly in its war on terror is hotly debated not only in Israel. It is also often asked by interested foreign countries, in order to answer with resolute partisanship or, from a distance of purely moral concern, with a well-balanced “partly yes, partly no.” The question does not allow for any other answer – apart from expert contributions on the success problem: It aims at good reasons for the orgy of violence, whether they are to be granted or not.

The question remains: why is Israel reacting to the Hamas attack in the way it has been doing for more than a year? The fact that the attacked state is reacting cannot be the answer. It is more likely that, as a national monopolist of violence which has promised its people invulnerability in the midst of an unfriendly, even hostile, environment, it suffered a humiliation from the Hama’s terrorist eruption out of its totally fenced-in strip, which must be virtually undone by an absolutely disproportionate annihilating strike and, from a moral point of view, avenged. But it is not the case that this state, with its vastly superior military power, is being forced by Hamas’s long since handled act of violence to repeatedly devastate the small strip of land on the Mediterranean with tens of thousands of dead Gazans, in what has become an open-ended event.

In justifying his relentlessness, the head of government is giving a further answer to the question of why. That is Iran. And that’s meant to be taken seriously: Israel’s mortal hostility towards this state is not a consequence of Iran’s sponsorship of Hamas’s attempted war effort, but rather Israel’s ongoing war against this ostracized and fenced-off disruptive factor is part of an offensive against the main opponent of an Israeli-dictated peace order in and for the region. This is the logic by which the Netanyahu government operates, expanding the Gaza war ever further into surrounding areas – pretexts are found, and if not, they are provoked – and thus discrediting all warnings of a “conflagration” that must be avoided at all costs: it is creating it.

That is what the security of its people is owed.

2. Israel’s Lebanon War and its expansion to Syria, Iraq, and Yemen

a)

Militarily, this offensive is taking place primarily on Israel’s northern front, and its scale is first and foremost evident in the fact that at least half of Lebanon now falls under the category of the “northern front.” The Israeli approach is justified by the protracted solidarity rockets and drone war that the Lebanese Hezbollah is waging against the IDF and the multi-level air defense umbrella that Israel has erected over itself. The declared aim of the war is the return of the 70,000 Israelis officially evacuated from the north of the country to their towns and settlements; the Israeli leadership defines the decisive condition for this as the decimation of Hezbollah, namely its withdrawal northwards to at least the Litani River and the destruction of its capabilities, so that at no point in the future will this anti-Israeli organization pose a threat to Israel again. This war demand is being gradually put into practice, and any possible similarities to the war in Gaza are certainly no coincidence.[4]

Politically, this is remarkable because this opponent is something different, as is the ‘environment’ in which and from which it operates. For while Lebanon is indeed a ‘failed state’, it is nonetheless a state whose right to exist is not denied by Israel as such. Israel does not assert its exclusive claim to statehood for the Jewish people, which it extends to the whole of Palestine, against Lebanon; in fact, it even concluded a maritime border agreement with the Lebanese government some time ago in the context of refining territorial claims regarding a gas field in the Mediterranean, though this did not lead to a wonderful friendship between states or even official diplomatic relations. Israel applies its policy of total non-recognition, which it has developed into a plan of annihilation against Hamas, only to Hezbollah. But what does ‘only’ mean here? Hezbollah has become an integral part of the state government, which is formally organized into offices and periodically elected, and is at the same time the strongest force in the ongoing power struggle to control the few remaining regular and not-so-regular positions. It also represents the largest Lebanese ethnic group – the Shiites – to whom Hezbollah also provides social support as its special power base. It has been so successful in this endeavor that it is also the most important military force in Lebanon, one that is constantly attacked by its intra-Lebanese rivals yet virtually impossible to defeat, let alone eliminate. On this basis, it has gained allies within the political elite, whose clientele consists of other ethnic groups, as well as a popularity among the Lebanese population that extends beyond the Shiite community. With its own and Iranian funds, Hezbollah has built up an anti-Israel military force that closely resembles that of a veritable state; its anti-Israel backbone consists of a considerable arsenal of missiles of various designs and ranges, as well as drones. Israel is now taking on this enemy as if it were merely a terrorist gang that has grown a little too big and whose timely and thorough liquidation has been neglected for a little too long by the authorities actually responsible for this in Lebanon.

In doing so, Israel is taking its renewed determination to no longer come to terms with any practically active enemies out of the sphere of its territorially insulated relationship with the Palestinians, who are being held captive in a state of statelessness, into its neighboring states; and in this respect, the same line is somewhat different with regard to Hezbollah and has an exemplary nature in its own way: through its relation to Hezbollah, Israel is terminating its regional policy of recent decades. Israel’s superior military power has put all the Arab states in the region in a state of deterrence, which they have dealt with in different ways: some have come to terms with the foreign state that Israel represents in the region they claim as Arab, in official peace and recognition agreements; others have not brought themselves to recognize it, but have practically given up on any opposition to Israel. Others have shifted to more or less overt, more or less relevant support of non-state Palestinian groups, but have become increasingly reluctant to risk a direct confrontation with Israel; and still others have lost their anti-Israeli fervor because they have been forced to tear themselves apart in internal conflicts. Israel itself now considers this situation of successful deterrence of all Arab state opponents and rivals insufficient. On the occasion of the Gaza war, which has now been extended to Lebanon, it treats the imbalance of terror that has until now been produced, maintained, and renewed by occasional armed conflicts, as in retrospect a practice of strategic self-restraint that can no longer be sustained.

For Hezbollah, which Netanyahu explicitly cites as an example of the new line,[5] this means that it must now prepare itself for a fight and, in the long term, for a fate largely similar to that which Israel has planned for Hamas and its other opponents. By eliminating its leadership and all personnel who have moved up from the bottom, Israel is not only damaging Hezbollah’s anti-Israeli warfare potential, but also, by eliminating any political leaders, any potential interlocutors for any kind of war or ceasefire diplomacy; its fighters are hunted down wherever they venture out from cover or wherever Israel tracks them down in their hideouts, their weapons and ammunition arsenals are located and destroyed, and their other infrastructure is also being destroyed piece by piece.

In doing so, Israel is giving the rest of Lebanon the role of a deliberately and exemplarily provoked state collateral damage of multidimensional proportions: Lebanon's statehood is still not being contested, it is ‘only’ made conditional on its institutions effectively fighting Hezbollah, which is part of this state, or, after successfully defeating it, keeping it in check to such an extent that Israel is satisfied. Consequently, the impression that Israel is dependent on the Lebanese state’s willingness to cooperate does not even arise, and Israel also makes it clear to all international mediators that their task is to deliver its ultimatums in Beirut, which only allow the alternatives of compliance or further destruction. Geographically, this means, for the time being, that Israel intends to gain and maintain full military control and freedom of movement in southern Lebanon, for which it neither needs nor wants proxies or henchmen there, which amounts to a demand for a territorial division of Lebanon. With regard to the rest of Lebanon, Israel exercises its total air sovereignty and proclaims this as a right, thus insisting on unhindered freedom to strike anywhere in Lebanon. Otherwise, the protagonists of Lebanese statehood operating in the northern half of the country are left to finally assert their Christian-Catholic or Orthodox, Sunni or Druze hostility toward Hezbollah by militarily disarming this ‘state within a state’ in their own interests, but according to Israeli criteria, and politically marginalizing it.

If they flunk this test before cramming away at it; if the Israeli conditions for limiting the destruction prove impossible to fulfill already in their formulation; then that is certainly a shame for Lebanon, its Shiite majority and all the other population groups, but that is just the nature of Israel’s new security fundamentalism: it simply does not take any of that into account. And that is precisely the exemplary significance of the IDF’s military destruction in Lebanon, which is accompanied by caring appeals from Netanyahu himself, who encourages the Lebanese people in a televised address to free themselves from Hezbollah so that in the future Israeli and Lebanese children can live in peace, etc.: Israel is using Lebanon to show all other more or less powerful or functioning states in the region what will happen to them if the Jewish state, which only wants to live in peace, comes to the conclusion that there are enemies of Israel lurking on its territory, in its economy, in its state structures, and that Israel is no longer willing to tolerate their existence. And even before that, they will be shown how powerless their interest in Lebanon itself is, their efforts to influence one of the rival and even hostile Lebanese factions: As soon as, and to the extent, that Israel declares the political, economic, and popular life of Lebanon to be a swamp in which the terror of Hezbollah thrives, all they can do is watch as this object of their rival attempts at influence, and thus any potential usefulness of Lebanon or parts of Lebanon, is destroyed for them. They must capitulate to that.

In November, under pressure from the USA,[6] a ceasefire was agreed upon, which Israel defined as a capitulation of its adversary and treated as such:

– While Hezbollah was ordered to withdraw immediately behind the agreed-upon lines, Israeli troops remained in southern Lebanon until further notice and had two months to complete their withdrawal. After the ceasefire takes effect, Israel explicitly declares a ban on the return of residents to many towns in southern Lebanon or a curfew for those who remain.

– Officially, Israel announces that it will respond to any violation of the ceasefire with its own force, while its own remaining troops continue shelling targets in towns and villages in southern Lebanon that are apparently on an unfinished target list.

– Israel also officially announces that it defines a violation of the agreement not only as the actual use of weapons by Hezbollah, but as anything its intelligence services and military deem to be a preparation for it. In return, it insists on “complete freedom of movement” throughout southern Lebanon, a claim not stipulated in the treaty and promptly denied by the Lebanese side.

– Israel is not relying on the guarantees of the international community, specifically its UN troops department, but has successfully brought the USA on board as the true, practically active guarantor of the de-Hezbollahization of southern Lebanon. And not just southern Lebanon: Israel and the USA have announced that their key task is to continue to consistently combat Hezbollah’s military and financial presence and power north of the withdrawal line – in parallel with Israeli announcements that they will strike there again if necessary.

– With France, Israel has brought on board the European power with the greatest interest in Lebanon and in practice the most relevant power, as a second guarantor of its unilateral transformation of Lebanon into a front line for its regional power. And Macron, whose increasingly bitter complaints in recent months about Israel’s obstruction of any French ambitions to intervene in Gaza and Lebanon have fallen on Israel’s deaf ears before the world public, declares, surely by pure coincidence, almost simultaneously with the announcement of the ceasefire, for which his great France is now finally countenanced by Israel as a co-patron, that in his opinion Netanyahu enjoys immunity from all prosecution by the ICC.

And for all those humorously inclined diplomats and commentators who, in light of what they hail as a “ceasefire” on Israel’s northern front, speak of a “glimmer of hope for Gaza,” Netanyahu emphasizes several times a day that the main achievement of the agreement is that Israel can now concentrate on intensifying its fight against Hamas and escalating tensions with Iran. That much peace for the residents of northern Israel is essential.

b)

In the rump state of Syria, whose leader Assad has only recently begun to overcome its extensive regional isolation, Israel is also demonstrating that state rule in this region is either successfully committed to combating anti-Israeli activities, or it will be treated as an enemy by Israel in the course of its own fight against terrorism and, if necessary, destroyed. The fact that Assad needs and uses the help of Hezbollah and other Shiite, primarily Iranian, militias to defend himself against opponents who are financed and equipped by Arab and Western countries is now having such an impact on the Syria he officially rules that Israel is turning it into an extended theater of its Lebanon war. The fact that Assad and his troops refrain from any anti-Israeli action because he is busy enough trying to keep internal Syrian affairs under control doesn’t help him: it is, after all, his allies who are using his territory for their militancy against Israel. And if he can’t stop them from this, for the same reason that he ultimately allows their presence in his country in the first place and continues to need them – his armed forces are simply too weak to defend themselves from their opponents – then Israel will strike back itself: in principle, in any part of Syria where it detects a Shiite movement, which it preemptively prevents or ends. The fact that, by bombing the Iranian embassy in Damascus, it also violates the sacred rights under international law of the host state, demonstrating to the whole world what his air defenses are incapable of and what his army doesn’t dare retaliate against, fits seamlessly into the Israeli line, which, in any case, only sees Syria as the backdrop for its Lebanon war. Israel therefore rightly takes the liberty of linking the two countries as parts of its war, or of isolating them from one another as it sees fit: As a safe haven for a large part of those who are to flee as a result of the war in southern and eastern Lebanon – encouraged and guided by the calls of the Israeli military PR already known from the Gaza War – Syria is quite useful; as a supply reservoir for Hezbollah weapons and money, it is necessary to separate the two states, whose sovereignty Israel is practically destroying, from each other as effectively as possible. It is a good thing that Hezbollah has now withdrawn some of its fighters from southern Lebanon, but that it is relocating them to Syria is something that Israel must respond to with ever more violent attacks against its neighbor country. This contributes significantly to the conflicts which are currently raging in Syria. The fact that the precarious post-war situation in Syria is now being ended and turned into open war again by the foreign sponsors of the Islamist anti-Assad position and its representatives within Syria – fueled by the flow of refugees from Lebanon and continued economic collapse – is a clear mandate from the point of view of Israel’s security fundamentalism: offensive action is required, with the option, already occasionally employed, of using Israel’s ground troops from the already occupied Golan Heights to ensure that the war situation on this front remains completely under Israeli control.[7] From this strategic view of Syria, another positive aspect of the situation in Syria then emerges almost automatically: Assad is dealing, among other things, with religious and ethnic minorities whose situation can potentially be exploited by Israel. With unprecedented frankness, Israeli strategists are now debating whether and how Druze and Kurds can position themselves as fifth columns against Iran’s, and perhaps even used as accomplices in a ground invasion of southern Syria. This too testifies to Israel’s growing demands on itself and is exemplary in nature: the violent conflicts in its region are not to be feared as drivers of instability that undermine its superior control of deterrence relationships with the surrounding states, but rather as levers to be wielded with all superior means to stamp out any anti-Israeli ambition. The fact that it is conjuring up another “humanitarian catastrophe” in Lebanon at the same time as the one unfolding in Gaza is of even less concern to Israel than the situation in the Gaza Strip; and the fact that its actions and accompanying statements are making the entire rump of Syria ruled by Assad even more uncontrollable is no reason for Israel to pause. All of this must happen, even simultaneously if necessary.

In this sense, Israel strides onward and almost automatically gets new fronts for itself on which it is compelled to be a dominant presence because, and as soon as, they exist. From Syria, Iraq is the next to open up – or vice versa: Iraq is the closest neighbor and sphere of influence of Iran, which is identified as the primary threat to be dealt with, and is therefore necessarily an important target of Israeli violence in the region. And that’s why the fact that Iraq is a state that, although it is indeed half broken, hosts on its territory a concentration of violent forces on a far greater scale than in Lebanon or Syria, speaks in favor of only one thing: precisely because Iraq plays a special strategic role for both Iran and the USA, everyone must be prepared for the fact that Israel will not tolerate any further attacks from Iraqi territory, but will respond with the next round of regional escalation. As always, Israel keeps what might be in store in a somewhat dauntingly vague way, but at least gives a diplomatic hint of the scale of the threat: in an official petition to the UN Security Council, which it otherwise dismissed as a somewhat anti-Semitic talk shop, Israel, invoking international law which it does not accept as applicable to its war in the Gaza Strip, warns the Iraqi government about Israeli air strikes if it does not immediately comply with its obligation to effectively suppress any terror emanating from its territory.[8] This ultimatum has its intended effect: conflict in Iraq, an official government ban on further attacks on Israel by the anti-Israeli militia coalition, practical attempts by government troops to prevent such attacks, diplomatic efforts within the American-Iraqi-Iranian triangle to avert an Israeli attack feared by all three. Israel watches these effects closely and, in order to encourage the desired efforts at unilateral de-escalation, it then strikes in an exemplary manner: in eastern Syria, Israel carries out the largest single military strike in a year against its Shiite enemies, bombing a meeting of representatives of Lebanese, Iraqi, Iranian forces, and Syrian tribal leaders, killing almost 80 people in the process, and waits again for all enemies and friends who are concerned and able to act in its interest. The fact that this is the only option available for the Iraqi government to protect itself from the expansion of the Israeli regional war onto its territory is something that has been ensured not least by itself: Israeli emissaries abroad have apparently been successful in recently preventing the Iraqi government from acquiring a modern air defense system from other countries. The fact that a state in its neighborhood hosts anti-Israel forces that can effectively defend themselves against attacks from the air is no longer compatible with Israel’s new security claim on the region, so it is using its levers, which apparently extend far beyond the region, to ensure that the serious threat posed by an Iraq capable of self-defense does not arise in the first place.[9]

Even the Yemeni supporters of the Palestinian struggle against Israel, who are geographically even further away, are learning that distance is no protection against asymmetric counterattacks. The repeated bombing of a port controlled by the Yemeni Houthi faction not only serves to deliver a decisive blow to the Houthis’ infrastructure, but also provides Israel with an opportunity to demonstrate to everyone else that when it says it will no longer tolerate any form of opposition in the entire region it really means it.

c)

There are bound to be concerns within Israel about whether the multi-front war, the necessity of which is not doubted by any relevant public voice in Israel, is being waged with sufficient intelligence and, above all, with the necessary force. This discussion does at least show that even this strongest of all Middle Eastern powers is straining itself to a degree that it has not had to do since the October War of 1973. But it is not driven by anything like caution or even doubts about its own freedom to wage war: what is meant to be done must be done and can be done. It all comes down to waging war correctly and not prematurely agreeing to a ceasefire brokered by third-party powers, which in the worst case scenario merely prevents the defeated enemy from being liquidated the way they deserve. The beginning of the veritable air and ground war against Lebanon therefore also sharpens the critical oppositional view of the Gaza war, which continues without any mercy for the Palestinians, and further fuels the debate, characterized above, which revolves around its new claims and the contradictions that come with them.

With regard to the confrontation and escalation in Lebanon itself, in stark contrast to the debate within Israel about the Gaza war, no significant political voice can be heard warning against an unnecessarily harsh, unnecessarily long, possibly pointless ongoing confrontation with Hezbollah, which is much better equipped than Hamas ever was. Here, the government’s line is not confronted with conflicting fundamental political considerations about the people and the country, but with the critical examination of whether Israel’s undeniably established right is being duly upheld, meaning whether terror is being fought and eradicated at its source with all possible force. The current head of government has set the bar for this himself: the return of the Israelis evacuated from northern Israel must happen, and this can only happen if Hezbollah is driven out of southern Lebanon and never allowed to return. The fact that Israel is home to a civilian life that is effectively shielded from all its conflicts, which has become an Israeli habit, thus becomes a demand on the government itself: that it should finally clean up everything on the other side of the border that stands in the way of a return to the pre-war idyll. This standpoint of total assertiveness, translated into popular sentiment, shapes the criticism of Israel’s air and ground war, which is devastating its northern neighbor and forcing large parts of the population to flee, and it predictably leads to the conclusion that the IDF is acting far too timidly and half-heartedly.[10] The spirit of this criticism was already set by the Israeli leadership itself years ago when it announced that Israel would not allow anyone to enjoy themselves on the beach in Beirut while Israeli citizens had to go to air raid shelters: there must be no vestige of civilian normality in Lebanon if the Israeli general population is being disrupted from there. And that is why this spirit more than ever determines the criticism of the ceasefire that Netanyahu has been persuaded to agree to by the USA: the fact that the terms of the agreement still show a formal difference from the spirit that Israel’s leadership attributes to them and about which it leaves no room for doubt is sufficient reason to condemn the agreement as a betrayal of the only possible war aim. This is how the representatives of the northern settlement communities are behaving, and in principle the same is true of the “left” and “centrist” opposition parties, who are seen here as representatives of the bourgeois-liberal Israel which supposedly only wants to play if only it would be allowed to. And the representatives of the religious Zionists in coalition with Netanyahu are proposing what they always propose: the elimination of all relevant resistance and the settlement of Lebanon, which is somehow Northern Galilee, and according to the Old Testament...

This is the sort of thing that, for example, Bezalel Smotrich, co-ruling leader of the radical settlers, is proficient at with regard to Syria, about which he knows so much that it, along with large parts of Jordan and a sliver of present day Saudi Arabia, is also part of the gift that God has given or promised to the Jews. He and others invoke the ideal of a Greater Israel that transcends all current borders, that belongs to a chosen people and therefore does not need to, or is not permitted to, take instructions from any authority below God. The imperialist progress that Israel is currently making through war thus also gives a decisive boost to this nation’s distinctive self-image as a divinely willed and commissioned affair, even though the Israel that its true ruler and leader stands for is certainly not concerned with fulfilling promises written in Hebrew. And, incidentally, this excess of fantasies of conquest, purification, and domination, which can never be satisfied by practical violence but is always only stirred up, serves to make the real great deeds of the re-defined regional power Israel look like restraint.

3. Israel’s war-backed treatment of the other state powers of the Middle East

The brutality with which Israel has been pulling out all the stops of its conventional superiority for the past year is aimed not least at those state powers against which this violence is not directly aimed. They should be so impressed by the sight of Israel’s destruction in the Palestinian territories and surrounding areas that they let Israel do whatever it deems essential for the ‘security of the Jewish people’. The successes achieved so far by this deterrence have confirmed the Israeli leadership's belief that it is fully justified in acting this way and can keep going further and further, as if all other powers had no choice but to put up with Israel’s actions. This means different things for the different targets of this offensive deterrence policy.

a)

Egypt and Jordan are being shown that their peace treaties with Israel, which are more than forty and almost thirty years old respectively, guarantee no consideration for their sovereign interests; Israel is now reducing to absurdity any calculation that a peace treaty would establish a relationship with Israel that is somehow predictable and exploitable for their own interests. The Camp David and Wadi Araba peace agreements have to offer predictability only for Israel: the renunciation of any practical objection to Israel’s war, which affects these two neighboring states in different but in each case severe ways. Jordan’s monarchy is under pressure because the practical cooperation it feels it is being blackmailed into by Israel’s superior power is causing it more and more internal stability problems with its largely pro-Palestine population. This is further compounded by the fact that its king is making his territory available as a forward base for Israeli air defenses.[11] Moreover, in the person of the right wing ministers in Netanyahu’s government, the royal family must also repeatedly show in public that even the core of its sovereignty depends on Israel’s grace, i.e. on the outcome of the internal Israeli dispute over what price progress is worth.[12] In addition to this practical appropriation of the opportunistic rulers in the face of Israeli demands, which can only be withstood by the Hashemite monarchy due to American aid, there are also deliberate diplomatic humiliations: where the monarch and his government try to dispel the impression that they are making Jordan a henchman in the Israeli regional war for the sake of self-preservation, they are officially thanked for this very achievement by the Israeli side with relish. This too is not just an act of malice, but marks the new level of Israeli demands with regard to Jordan, which no longer includes even this little bit of consideration, this quid pro quo in the form of a little help in suppressing the opposition within Jordan.

Even Egypt, with its huge population and imposing army, is not seen by Israel as an obstacle to the implementation of its new, demanding standpoint. Israel does not even comment on the threats of an official termination of the peace treaty that are becoming louder in Cairo. Israel also coolly ignores Egypt’s complaints that Israel is violating the existing bilaterally agreed legal framework by occupying the border strip to the Sinai. It does not take the temporary buildup of Egyptian troops on the border with the Gaza Strip as a serious threat, but rather as utterly inadequate help in isolating Hamas completely, including to the south, in order to finally eradicate it. What Israel has to offer its large neighbor as a condition for a permanent ceasefire is a high-tech border surveillance system which is to be tailored entirely to Israeli security requirements and, above all, is to be built and permanently remain under Israel’s technical and administrative sovereignty – in other words, nothing. Egypt’s mediation services on the hostages and a ceasefire were welcome as long as Israel itself was at least interested in getting as many of the hostages back as possible through a temporary ceasefire. The fact that Egypt continues to offer these service, although Israel openly obstructs any possible success of this diplomacy, is simply ignored by Israeli diplomacy – at least as long as Egypt’s diplomats accept that there is nothing for them to mediate.

b)

The wealthy oil monarchies of the Arabian peninsula are also targeted by Israel’s multi-front war. Not in the sense that it is preparing to attack them next with the Israeli air force and rocket artillery; nor in the sense that this war is intended to deter and permanently prevent them from becoming enemies of Israel by means of threats of annihilation. They are the addressees of Israel’s military deterrent power on a higher imperialist level.

They long ago dissuaded themselves from effectively supporting Palestinian resistance against Israeli land seizures and the destruction of any prospect of a Palestinian state, having allowed Israel’s superiority and American influence to convince them that their ambition to create national greatness out of their petrodollar wealth has no leverage with the Palestinians. In 2020, two of them – the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain – together with Morocco and Sudan, even agreed to open formal diplomatic relations with Israel through an official agreement brokered by the greatest dealmaker of all time. The offer to Saudi Arabia to conclude an Israeli-Saudi normalization and peace treaty along these lines remains on the table and is periodically invoked by Netanyahu as the centerpiece of the beautiful prospect of finally turning the perpetually conflict-ridden Middle East into a haven of international understanding and mutual prosperity. For Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states, the unbridled deployment of Israeli military power in the region serves to clarify the nature of the peace that Israel is offering the region. This is also explicitly conveyed to them, for example by Netanyahu, who is proposing his own peace formula for the region with an alternative to the slogan “land for peace” once chosen by the Arab powers[13] – not land for peace, but: “I emphasize peace for peace, peace out of strength with important countries in the Middle East.” (Times of Israel, November 4, 2023) Peace with Israel for the sake of peace, in other words, unconditional integration into a peace order whose only fixed characteristic is that Israel dictates it to everyone else.[14] Netanyahu is certain that the ambitious powers of Arabia will agree to such a peace – at least he believes that the Arab leaders in question have enough regional imperialist erudition to do so: “These countries and other countries see very well the blows we inflict on those who attack us, the Iranian axis of evil.” (Ibid.) In this way, the second crucial element of the regional peace order that is being invoked is named with sufficient precision, and it represents the only point of agreement that Israel can strategically find with these powers: its enmity toward Iran, which it imposes on the Arab powers as the common one they are called on to defer to, is – as is always the case with such commonalities – all the more credible the less Israel makes anything in practice dependent on whether the rulers invited to the anti-Iran front see it that way too.

What Israel is doing with regard to these still intact, in some cases remarkably prosperous states is, on the one hand, something like a radicalized continuation of its half-century-old policy of separating them from each other by exploiting their sometimes very different situations, sometimes their conflicting claims, and then asserting its own superiority over each of them all the more strongly. On the other hand, it is doing this today from the perspective of a military power that has increaed in comparison to earlier times and with reference to a new type of regional war: because it is superior to all of them together, each one of these powers is supposed to look after its place in the Middle East, which Israel envisions as a ring of lower ranking sovereigns invited to show solidarity against Iran. “Peace out of strength,” the right of the stronger military power – Israel will no longer accept any other peace or any other law for itself, so all the others must yield to it. The fact that this creates reasons for these powers, who are by no means giving up their political ambitions for the region, to pursue their ambitions even against Israel’s peace concept is part of the price of its warmongering new order for the region. There is no other way to achieve this than by first shaking up the established power structures and balance of forces that, in their own way, have previously worked out for Israel. From the point of view of Israel’s new neginning, the fact that the ambitious imperialist military power risks gaining a few new enemies just shows that its previous friendships, or at least tacit tolerance, were worthless – and are now certainly worthless if their continuation comes at the cost of making compromises on Israel’s new beginning.

A somewhat special case is the dollar-rich gas sheikdom of Qatar, and its treatment by Israel is also useful for clarifications far beyond the bilateral relationship. Since the beginning of the Gaza war, Qatar has distinguished itself as the second relevant Arab mediator state alongside Egypt, and Israel has accused it with increasing shrillness of precisely that which necessarily belongs to the status of a mediator: a state qualifies as such by maintaining good relations, or any relations at all, with both sides between which it mediates, by bringing its weight into play in the respective bilateral relationship in order to persuade the other party to make compromises that are considered impossible in direct relations with the opponent. Israel has accepted this relationship between Qatar and Hamas for years and used it in numerous rounds of negotiations following previous military actions; it not only knew about the financial commitments of the ambitious upstart in global politics, but wanted, understood, and assessed it as a predictable and controllable alternative to Iran’s solidarity with Hamas. Since Israel has now made the transition from controlled containment and oppression to total annihilation of Hamas, Qatar’s involvement, from its point of view, is also obsolete and must therefore cease. This state can now be blamed for not understanding this on its own and not voluntarily withdrawing all aid, which by now has been reduced to co-financing the care of war victims and allowing a few Hamas leaders to live within its borders. This, and everything else, is now considered useless at best and at worst support for terrorism. Regarding its role as a mediator, it must note that if Israel agrees to negotiations, it does so with the explicit condition that Hamas must release the hostages without any concessions. And if Qatar fails to persuade its cronies to give up this leverage, which Israel will no longer allow to relativize its war aims in any way, then cronyism is clearly at play.[15] So all other states should also ask themselves how they intend to deal with such a state.

Speaking of “everyone else”:

4. Israel’s handling of the rest of the world of states with interests in its war

Since its inception, Israel’s war has been an international matter.[16] It deals with this aggressively.

a)

Israel is using the supranational institutions of the world order, insofar as they are suitable, as a platform to constantly repeat its position that any violence it uses is absolutely justified because it is self-defense against the destruction of the sole power guaranteeing Jewish life on the planet. However, it is not these pronouncements that are actually important at this level, but rather Israel’s now completely blatant position that it is taking on the fact that these institutions permit any other statements, even those of Israel’s opponents, at all. In Israel’s view, the UN, in the form of the General Assembly in particular, disqualifies itself as an extension of those who want to destroy Israel when speeches are allowed to be made there that, while not calling for the destruction of Israel, call for an end to violence on all sides which also explicitly condemn Israel for the violence it is using against the Palestinians. The Israeli UN envoy Danon aptly gives his understanding of his job in New York: “‘I am telling my colleagues in Israel, keep going,’ Danon said. ‘Do whatever you have to do against Hezbollah, against Hamas. I know how to handle those guys here,’ he added.” (jns.org, 9/24/24) His demand of the international community, diplomatically assembled in New York, is that it should stay out of it: “‘You have to be neutral. You have to try to bring the sides to a point that they can agree. But what we see with most of the countries here, they just want to come blame Israel and move on.’” (Ibid.) Danon also leaves no doubt about what he means by “neutral”: “If someone wants to avoid a war today between Israel and Lebanon, he should speak up today against Hezbollah and put pressure on the Lebanese government.” (Ibid.) And the good man lets all those who fail to be unilaterally neutral towards Hezbollah preemptively know what their further role will be in what his country understands as preventing war: “All those who are playing the game attacking Israel, they shouldn’t expect that we’re going to allow them to come and be part of the process.” (Ibid.)

The whole world must agree with Israel’s definition of its threats and enemies, thus unequivocally applaud their execution. Israel – a country with just under 10 million inhabitants – does not pose its dire fate as the alternative, but rather the isolation of all deniers, and, furthermore, the prospective irrelevance of the supranational institution of the UN. Ostracism is on the table – not of Israel by the others, but of the whole diplomatic superstructure that exists for the struggle of nations for power and importance by Israel itself, insofar as it perceives a relativization of its absolute right; it owes this to itself, and evidently dares to do it. Netanyahu, in the form of its highest representative, openly pronounces this ostracism to the world community, so perfectly organized in the UN: He declares UN Secretary General Guterres persona non grata because Guterres upholds the idealism of a law that stands above states, whose authorities and addressees are all supposedly equally against Israel’s violent attacks.

Even and especially when the United Nations is not just a predictably annoying talk shop – “‘We expected that to happen,’ Danon said of condemnations of Israel” (ibid.) – but when it actually intervenes in the war, Israel takes on anything that somehow gets in its way as a ‘community of nations’. UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East), which provides social support to Palestinians within the framework of its mandate and with the funds of willing donor states, is the key actor in the ongoing Gaza war that supplies Gazans with the essentials of life. Israel has been engaged in a dispute over the official mandate and political significance of this UN group for a long time, and after classifying it as an extended arm of Hamas, has only met with approval from a few relevant states – and even then only to a limited extent[17] – and it is now taking a hard line here too: it simply prohibits this UN sub-organization from operating in the territories it occupies. Here too Israel is consistently maintaining its position that it will no longer accept any political-legal claim that the Palestinians can raise and that is guaranteed by the collective of states. If it allows famine relief for Palestinians, then it is certainly not kowtowing to the political link between their physical existence on the ground and their internationally guaranteed claim to statehood, which is also embodied by UNRWA, but is only a pure humanism, without any further political perspective, that should not hinder its war. With this practical repurposing of UNRWA, Israel is challenging the international community, i.e. its members with the financially capacity to do so, to calculate what this care for war victims is worth to them – given that Israel allows no one to participate in shaping this new phase, and all subsequent ones, of its solution to its Palestinian problem, as well as all its other existential security problems.

Israel makes this even clearer in its war in southern Lebanon, which from the outset is a completely different kind of international affair because it is extending its violence over the territory of a recognized UN member state and because third powers have long been involved in this conflict in the form of a UN force, UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon). The highest form of respect that Israel can show for this force – that is, for the supervisory authority that the powers that brought it into being through a Security Council resolution associate with their presence there – is to order it to evacuate. The relevant IDF authorities already treat the residents in southern Lebanon in such a way that their only alternative to fleeing is to become collateral damage in the Israeli war against Hezbollah. UNIFIL is ultimately to blame for this, because it failed to keep southern Lebanon free of Hezbollah in Israel’s interests – and is now being punished for this by Israel quite effectively ending its mandate. That this leads to a bit of confrontation between Israeli tanks and the blue helmets may be regrettable, but it could have been prevented – exclusively – by their timely voluntary withdrawal.

As for the future of Lebanon, where the relevant world powers are rediscovering their interest because it is being militarily disputed, Israel already has a plan for these powers too – following exactly the logic that Danny Danon put forward in New York. They must allow Israel to spell out for them that it no longer attaches any importance to the implementation of their Security Resolution 1701 unless it undergoes a few crucial changes that completely contradict the intention with which it was originally adopted: Israel demands that southern Lebanon be cleared into a kind of no man’s land, combined with the right to complete freedom of movement for its air force over the whole of Lebanon at all times and the freedom to advance ground troops in the south of the country at any time: Israel makes it clear to the international community involved in its war that it completely rejects the resolutions, regulations, and their implementation that have applied to Lebanon before now, that it has allowed the guarantee of its security to be taken out of its hands by friendly or supposedly friendly, but in any case completely unreliable powers – something that will definitely not happen again. This is now taking the form of a ceasefire agreement which the UN will not be involved in drafting or mediating. Israel accepts that this will offend even its Western allies: in addition to Norway, Spain, Ireland, and other European states that have recognized Palestine as a state and promptly found themselves embroiled in diplomatic disputes with Israel, France, which insists on its ‘long-standing ties to the region’, is now also being criticized by Israel because Paris has voiced objections to Israel’s right to use whatever violence it deems necessary. It dismisses these and all other allies who have been providing material support for Israel’s actions for a year and who insist to the rest of the world that their trivializing language is the only acceptable way of looking at Israel’s violent acts as soon as they make any hints or attempts to no longer consider Israel’s war legitimate per se and to set limits on it: it demands that everyone assist in its use of violence without any right to have any say in the matter.

b)

There is also a cautious debate about this in Israel. The fact that Israel, under the leadership of its Minister of National Swcurity, behaves towards all powers, large and small, allied and non-allied, as if they had no choice but to submit to Israeli instructions, and that it has largely gotten away with this so far, albeit not without some friction, does not really mean that this is a guaranteed thing in the future. It’s no wonder that doubters are speaking out, suggesting that perhaps a slightly less open confrontation with key allies would be quite useful, as long as care is taken to ensure that Israel does not make any compromises on the issue. Defense Minister Gallant was seen by the protagonists of this position as a guarantor that Israel won’t completely lose its Western allies and that ‘mutual trust’ will be preserved, despite all Israel’s intransigence, by making it clear to them that Israel doesn’t want to generally reject their presumption that they have a decisive influence on all the world’s violent affairs, but unfortunately can’t accommodate it with regard to its own violent affairs.

Otherwise, however, there is a national consensus that Israel may and must judge every foreign country, especially friendly ones, on whether they recognize every need for violence that Israel asserts by practicing it. And Israel is confident enough to extend this claim to the internal affairs of nations which then have to prove whether they are friends or alleged friends. The occasion for this is the anti-Israel and/or pro-Palestinian protests in the Western world in which the states in question must allow Israel to examine whether they are using their repressive apparatuses harshly enough against any criticism of Israel; if they fail to do so to Israel’s liking, they must also put up with critical interference. Netanyahu is ashamed of his American alma mater, and Israeli ambassadors in Western countries generally see the Jewish communities there as being under threat, which they themselves, without question, make the key witness for every act of violence committed by the IDF in the Middle East. In the spirit of the equation between Israeli terror campaigns of annihilation and the security of the Jewish diaspora, they are lobbying for a tightening of national legislation and its police and legal enforcement – precisely because this equation proves to be a blatant inequality. This is a ridiculous sideshow compared to the real violence raging in the Middle East, but even here Israel makes it clear that it is forcing the entire world to accept its need for anti-terrorist violence – with Israel alone deciding when it considers this a given and when it is merely feigned, making it the yardstick by which it measures all states and classifies them on the not very broad scale from friendly to irrelevant to hostile.

*

Conclusion:

The expansion of violent doings, which began as an Israeli war of annihilation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, to the entire region is not the result of something spiraling out of control, of something unexpectedly and unfortunately spilling over a border that was actually drawn under the guise of ‘self-defense’ or the ‘war on terror’ or something like that; it has its own logic. It does not consist of the Palestinians finding allies from Lebanon to Yemen who come to their aid with attacks on Israel in solidarity with them, thereby forcing Israel to constantly expand the radius of its self-defense. It is the other way around.

The fact that Israel is fighting the regional support for the Palestinians, as it has been doing for more than a year in ever new rounds of escalation, proves that it has long held, and is exercising, a claim to the entire region, which it is now pursuing militarily: What Hezbollah, Iraqi, and other pro-Palestinian opponents are violating is the Israeli imperative that it is solely up to Israel to initiate and carry out hostilities. In fact, Israel has long since fought its way from being a state planted in the region with the necessary violence, one which forces its opponents to accept its existence as a power in the region, including all its conquests, to becoming a regional power. As such, it no longer simply withstands hostilities, but anticipates them: it prevents them from coming into effect by confronting every real and every potential opponent, that is, the region as a whole, with its military deterrent power, which surpasses anything that Israel’s opponents and their attempts at alliances can muster. Equipped with its nuclear arsenal and superior conventional weapons at every level, Israel has a freedom, unique in the region, to define its security against all others by keeping them all in a permanent state of deterrence, and to determine and decide entirely on its own when this security has been violated to such an extent that it needs to be restored through war. In doing so, it constantly demonstrates how sensitive, namely how far-reaching, the claim to superior deterrence is: often the mere attempt by a power deemed hostile to acquire the means of a sovereignty that Israel does not want to grant it has been enough to make it clear through military strikes that Israel will tolerate opponents if they are and remain powerless against it. In principle, Israel’s wars have therefore been wars of regional control for decades. And over the course of these decades, both during and between its periodic wars, the content of the order that Israel is seeking to impose on the region has become increasingly clear: it subsumes this entire part of the world under its hostility to Iran.

5. Israel’s military confrontation with Iran and its irresolvable contradiction

a)

The attribution of all the individual theaters of its sprawling regional military engagements to the main front with Iran, including the intensification of the danger posed by Iran, which must be combated, to the issue of Iran’s nuclear weapons capability, is a consequence of this and proof that Israel, in the course of its rise as a power in the Middle East, has worked toward a barrier that it is now no longer willing to accept. Iran is the only power that could still pose a threat to it, and therefore a danger that must be eliminated at all costs, because it is the only country in the region that has the potential for destruction that still limits Israel’s freedom to act. Israel cannot tolerate this. The escalation of its multi-front war into direct confrontation with Iran marks, on the one hand, the status Israel has already achieved and, on the other, the new status it wants to conquer in the process.

Iran is in fact a special case in the region: this power has managed to assert itself despite its hostility to America and Israel. With its vast landmass, its large and apparently patriotically resilient people, and its inherited means and sources of wealth, Iran is capable of a great deal of self-reliant resistance; and on this basis, the country is attractive enough to other, even larger powers to effectively assist its self-assertion against Israel and America. Iran has not only survived all of America’s attempts to constrict and strangle it with various means and accomplices, and all of Israel’s practical sabotage, but it has also, firstly, adopted a policy of regional forward defense, within the framework of which it is, not least, enabling Israel’s sworn enemies in the Palestinian territories to engage in militancy. Secondly, it has acquired an arsenal of long range means of destruction with which it can threaten neighboring states and thus impress them and all the other powers with interests in the region. And thirdly, it has technologically developed into a nuclear power that has all the means and thus the autonomous freedom to decide on a transition to nuclear weapons. According to its claim, the Islamic Republic contests Israel’s role as a regional hegemonic power, but in practice it disrupts and violates this claim wherever and whenever it can; and it has the power to decisively relativize Israel’s reassurance of its claim to sole sovereignty over the balance of power in the region – its nuclear force – by thwarting Israel’s regional monopoly on this weapon.

So Israel, under Netanyahu’s leadership, is setting out to remove this last obstacle to its regional hegemony. The fact that Israel is thereby taking on a type of risk that is new compared to all previous confrontations with its neighbors is certainly being taken into account. First of all, simply because the ongoing handling of all secondary fronts has already served the crucial strategic purpose of gradually removing the levers of Iran’s regional forward defense from its hands. In this respect, Israel has also achieved decisive successes in its multi-front war, which has now lasted for more than a year: its superior deterrent power has apparently made such an impression that Iran has watched for a very long time as Israel has gradually dismantled its allied movements and militias.

The Iranian leadership, however, does not want to let the bombing of the internationally sanctified holy site of its diplomatic mission in Syria’s capital go unanswered. It decides to take the military conflict to a new level. This, too, at least on the one hand, confirms Israel’s strategy of confidently calculated escalation: the first salvo of ballistic missiles that Iran fires at Israel is almost completely neutralized by Israeli air defenses and the comprehensive support of its Western allies – the USA, Great Britain, and France. Israel can also note that Iran’s leadership has declared the air attack on its embassy compound to be sufficiently punished with this attempted attack, which was virtually ineffective against Israel, and is thus voluntarily returning to the indirect conflict of recent years and months. On the other hand, this first direct Iranian attack, even if it is dismissed by the Israeli leadership and large parts of the Israeli public as ridiculous and an embarrassment for the cocky mullahs, is a strategic and political first in Israel’s history of war which makes it clear how much adventurism goes hand in hand with Israel’s determination to turn the region upside down in accordance with its security claims, i.e. its anti-Iranian supremacy. The Iranian leadership was not deterred from launching this first-of-its-kind attack on Israel – this mixture of self-confidence and fundamentalism is evidently also present in Tehran – and thereby challenged Israel’s highly advanced air defenses. It was apparently only able to meet this challenge with a relatively mild result for Israel because other powers provided military support: a decidedly unwelcome fact for Israel since, for the first time, an enemy has tested Israel’s highly advanced air defense system to the limits of its capabilities.

In this last respect, the second Iranian missile attack, launched in retaliation for Israel’s escalation – the killing of Hamas leader Haniyeh, who had been officially invited to the inauguration of the new president, in the middle of the Iranian capital – is even more decisive and has a much clearer impact. After initial denials, as is customary with Israeli military censors, Israel ultimately has to admit the impact of this second direct attack by Iran. Combined with the ongoing missile and drone warfare that Hezbollah is forcing on it, the Iranian attack in October is capable of at least partially overstretching Israel’s almost perfect air defense system. This is an embarrassment that Israel will by no mean accept. The one decisive factor in the credibility of its strategic show of strength in the region – the ability to keep any major destruction at bay and to always define the battlefield away from itself – is not working perfectly. This doesn’t mean that Israel’s superiority is broken, especially since it has its nuclear arsenal in the background as the basis for all deterrence and the offensives based on it. What is damaged, however, is this element of total freedom to attack and escalate, which has long enabled Israel not to have to treat peace and war as strategic alternatives, but rather to carry any war it deems necessary into its immediate or wider neighborhood.

So it is clear to Israel that it must ‘respond’, and indeed this time on this level, in a way that represents a new phase in the history of its violence-laden conflict with Iran: it “must” be an open attack with its own air force on Iranian territory; anything else, according to the logic of Israel’s regional war – namely, according to the logic of the imperialist status that it claims and practices with this war – would be an admission of defeat. After a few weeks, Israel’s leadership orders the bombing of facilities crucial for the production of rocket fuel and thus for the operational capability of Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal, as well as several key Iranian air defense facilities; the IAF carries out the order with its usual impressive precision, without the Israeli attackers suffering any losses. And Iran’s leadership very quickly makes it clear that it will not respond to this blow by continuing the logic of escalatory counterattacks it has been practicing up to this point, but will accept this proof of Israeli air superiority extending into its territory.

Nevertheless, Israel is not for a moment satisfied that Iran has been effectively deterred and put in its place for the time being. Apparently, Israel itself has now surpassed such a standard of success.

b)

This is evidenced not least by the internal Israeli debate that began in the lead-up to the airstrike on Iran and has not been resolved by its successful and loss-free execution.

The dissatisfaction expressed begins with the fact that it took so long for Israel to retaliate; it is further fueled by the fact that the airstrike that was then carried out was not very disastrous, which is illustrated by those who hold this viewpoint by what should have been destroyed instead: large-scale facilities for the extraction, processing, and shipping of oil and gas, because Iran’s economic existence depends on them; key Iranian command facilities, especially in the capital, because the effective rule of the mullahs over their nation depends on them; but above all: Iran’s nuclear facilities, because they give the enemy state a degree of strategic autonomy that it is not entitled to. Overall, the criticisms boil down to the fact that Israel is still allowing for the possibility of Tehran’s strategists dealing with Israel’s superior military power in a calculating manner, instead of depriving them once and for all of the means that their calculations could be based on, without them being able to defend themselves against it.

These statements are not documents of a war morality that exceeds the real reasons for Israel’s war. Rather, they make known the position that Israel has actually worked its way towards with regard to the Iranian enemy power and which it has made the guiding principle of its entire regional war: It has progressed so far in its imperialist trajectory that it no longer defines Iran as just its greatest enemy, which ultimately stands behind all the lesser enemies that still pose a significant threat to Israel, but as the existential threat with which coexistence is no longer possible, even under the condition of a superior deterrence. This decision regarding the incompatibility between Israel’s existence as a state, which it equates with its existence as a regional power, and the existence of Iran as an autonomously acting power in the region is the true reason and strategic content of Israel’s never-ending campaign of annihilation in the Gaza Strip, the reason for its expansion to the entire surrounding area; and that is why it has logically led to a direct military confrontation between these two powers.

Its practice follows – how could it be otherwise? – the logic of escalating deterrence inherent in war: Israel attacks Iranian allies, then military and political representatives of Iran itself in the region, with ever greater force, provoking retaliation with these strikes and at the same time making it clear that Iran would be wise to avoid such retaliation. This drives Israel to the point where Iran can no longer be deterred and strikes back at Israel for the first time with its own missile arsenal. Israel, for its part, responds by restoring the deterrence that no longer works with the next round of escalation at a higher level.

For critics within Israel, this is too little, and this is where they get to the heart of the matter: it is not – any longer – about superior deterrence of the Iranian enemy power, but rather its elimination. Even those who defend Israel’s air war against Iran as a success acknowledge that their two main arguments are that the destruction of the missile fuel production facilities has deprived Iran of a crucial means of counter-deterrence, which was already weak, and that the targeted destruction of key air defense systems has made it even more vulnerable than before. Both of these points assume and testify to the widely held view in Israel that this airstrike was not intended to temporarily end the escalation with a successfully restored deterrence, but rather the prelude to a return to the starting point and finally a decisive step forward with its execution: it is about the destruction of Iran as a power on a regional level. The political commander-in-chief and representative of the Israeli new beginning makes no secret of this. Sometimes in the form of the doctrine that 95% of Israel’s security problems are caused by Iran, sometimes in the form of a graphically illustrated countdown to the catastrophe of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon: he always makes it clear that there is no place for an Iranian power in Israel’s Middle East.

c)

But this is precisely what Israel cannot have. In this respect, the debate within Israel testifies not only to Israel’s right to disempower Iran, but also to the contradiction included in it: Israel is too big to want to continue coexisting alongside the power Iran has become – autonomously capable of waging war in both offensive and defensive respects. But Iran is too big to be dealt with and eliminated in the way that Israel deals with all its other opponents. Israel is not capable of eliminating Iran as an existential threat, namely as a challenge to Israel’s right to sole rule over the states of the region, with the unquestionable and autonomous superiority that it demands of itself. What it believes is absolutely necessary – the destruction of Iran as a strategic power – cannot be achieved autonomously for the same reason.

No one in Israel who matters is fooling themselves about this. They see this objective contradiction between their imperialist status and the program that has been created from it as a provocation to resolve it. And there is no dispute in Israel about where the solution is to be sought and found: in the alliance with the world power USA.[18]

Israel is already making extensive and successful use of this in its regional war. The freedom that Israel takes on all secondary fronts to annihilate its designated enemies, despite any objection from third parties, depends crucially on America supplying the overwhelming demand for reinforcements generated on the Israeli side by the hybrid war against the Palestinians – and on America shielding Israel’s deployment of violence with its existing military presence, which was massively reinforced at the start of the war: Biden’s threatening “Don’t. Don’t. Don’t.” of October 2023 was formally directed at anyone who would even consider interfering in Israel’s campaign of annihilation against Hamas; in fact, it was aimed at Iran. This American deterrent backdrop was and remains undoubtedly rock solid and has not been seriously challenged by anyone, so that the American guarantee of Israel’s freedom from war has taken a back seat to Israel’s autonomous perception of this freedom on all secondary fronts: The USA supports and protects the autonomy of Israel’s warfare. Israeli strategists see it this way: they have succeeded in compelling the USA to this course of action. They are correct insofar as the alliance between their regional power and the American world power has actually functioned for decades in such a way that America, on the basis of largely identical enmities in the region, has repeatedly allowed Israel to dictate to it precisely who these enemies are and how they should be handled. As a result, every difference that has arisen on these issues has always been practically resolved by Israel intensifying its enmities and thereby repeatedly putting itself in new situations which leave America no alternative but to come to the aid of its smaller ally with material support and strategic protection in order to counteract the fact that it is constantly using violence beyond its means.

For Israel’s leadership, one thing is clear: the alliance that has worked so well for Israel in this way, which has enabled it to successfully reach the point where it is now, must and can also be used to achieve the all-important transition to regional superpower status, i.e. to eliminate the systemic annoyance posed by Iran. Israel is therefore escalating the confrontation with Iran following the same pattern as in all previous cases. It is demanding and receiving comprehensive and unconditional support from the USA, even in the transition to direct, reciprocal attacks. The USA is making itself useful in defending against Iranian missile attacks and, in order to further deter Iran, also increasing its forces deployed around Iran for a comprehensive offensive strike.

But therein lies the crucial difference in relation to the role that America plays on Israel’s other fronts: the world power, with its unique military capabilities, is no longer called on here as a guarantor of Israeli military autonomy, but rather as a substitute for it, because Israel lacks this autonomy vis-à-vis Iran. Iran is too big and Israel’s strategic military requirements vis-à-vis Iran are too demanding for it to be able to wage the final battle for regional supremacy – which it claims is necessary – as autonomously, and to win as unequivocally from the outset, as the supremacy to be accomplished demands.[19] For Israel’s imperialistically mature leadership, this is tantamount to forcing the USA to extend its hitherto reliable promise of protection to this area as well, and to make the war against Iran, which Israel has put on the agenda, its own cause. Accordingly, parallel to the war situation, Israel is escalating its anti-Iran war diplomacy toward America in the tried and tested dialectic of dependence and impossibility: it is provoking the second major power in the region to raise the conflict to a new level, which makes the war more dangerous for Israel than all its previous or parallel military conflicts; and it is increasingly openly bringing its own nuclear military power into play as the ultimate escalation option.[20] This is now supposed to be the lever for escaping the dilemma of the necessity and impossibility of autonomously carrying out a military elimination of Iran. Israel is doing its very best to have its dilemma resolved by the USA, namely by realizing what Israel would definitely have to overstretch its own military power for, thus jeopardizing. America is supposed to make the disempowerment of Iran a reality with its superior conventional means in order to prevent Israel from using its nuclear weapons, which is certainly included in the Israeli war calculation as an absolute emergency measure; and above all to spare itself such an act of violence by its protégé, which would mean a military use of this ultimate weapon of destruction completely incompatible with America’s global supervisory power. This risk of a deliberate escalation of Israel’s actions against its arch-enemy is intended to force the USA to help Israel achieve the victory it needs to ensure that its regional power is undeniable.

d)

However, America cannot be instrumentalized; not even by Israel and its self-defined existential question. America is not a lever for solving Israel’s anti-Iranian regional power dilemma; and this is for precisely the reason that Israel is counting on America: the USA is a world power precisely because it decides entirely on its own on friendships and enmities and how to deal with them; it does not allow its world policy to be dictated by any other power, and certainly does not allow others to embroil it in wars – or in peace settlements. America’s superior military power, which Israel wants to use for its own purposes, proves to be a world power precisely because it is capable of deploying it worldwide at any time, but reserves for itself the right to decide where and how it is due, without making concessions to others.

For Israel, this has two consequences.

An unauthorized use of the Israeli nuclear bomb is definitely out of the question for America. This would – as is foreseeable – shake up the regional balance of power to an extent that could no longer be controlled; and it would – just as foreseeably – result in the world power’s protégé being irreversibly ostracized and politically isolated by the world of states, the consequences of which even the USA would be unable to undo; but above all, it would set a precedent for the transition to nuclear war in the world which would destroy what ultimately defines America’s world power, namely its monopoly on nuclear war secured through unilateral deterrence. It follows that the USA cannot under any circumstances allow itself to be blackmailed by the threat of such a transition, nor can it be coerced into launching a disarmament strike against Iran. Such coercion, through the threatened, unauthorized action of another power, no matter how allied, would be an unacceptable violation of the monopoly on nuclear war that the world power insists on. If Israel is pushing the USA to do this, it is based on an American calculation that, if only because of the relationship between protecting and protected power, follows entirely different geopolitical objectives than Israel’s push to establish itself as a minor world power “on the ground” under the protective umbrella of the real world power. Leaving the entire region to Israel’s unauthorized control is out of the question for the USA – and it would not be true and would not be the last word, even if it were to implement the ever-present option of a devastating blow against the power of the “mullah regime.”

The third consequence is the one actually being pursued by the Israeli fighters for an Iran-free Middle East under their supremacy: Without the transition to the final anti-Iranian battle, which is not at their disposal, they are continuing to use Israeli military power to prepare the region as a practically united front against Iran, which of course includes a degree of further devastation that is not yet foreseeable. This is not least intended to provide the American power, whose decision-making sovereignty over war and peace is not available to Israel, with constructive input to internal American decision-making. As a result, America is prepared to accept, out of strategic insight, that the completion of Israel’s supremacy over the Middle East is ultimately the only option for America’s supremacy over the rest of the world.

So there will be no senseless death, killing, or destruction in the Middle East until further notice.

---

[1] On their side, professional critics believe that the Israeli army is not prepared in terms of equipment and personnel – which cannot be dismissed out of hand, because, as is obvious, this army has been trained for wars that arise as military ‘scenarios’ from the politically motivated claims of the nation and its enemies: The policy of land conquest in the first decades of Israel’s existence as a state has given way to extensive security through deterrence by means of an offensive force that is effective at all times; to this end, Israel has acquired one of the largest and most modern air forces in the world, flanked by missile defense capabilities that impress all experts. Regular standing ground forces, especially armored troops, have become less and less important in comparison, and where they are now involved in inner-city combat, they are suffering losses that are indeed difficult for the Israeli army and the national public to get used to. At the same time, precisely because of its focus on high-tech air power with highly qualified personnel, the Israeli army relies to a much greater extent than other armies on a huge pool of trained reservists, which is also less suited to the short, lightning-speed wars of recent decades, but less and less to a protracted war against an ineradicable guerrilla force.

[2] For example, Smotrich: “Where there is no civilian presence, there is no long-term military presence, there is no security and there is an existential threat to the State of Israel and its citizens, and we must not allow this.” (Middle East Monitor, October 28, 2024)

[3] One of the co-governing leaders of the religious Zionists, for the time being, remains in the middle: “Moreover, he [Smotrich] added that Palestinians should only retain limited local self-rule ‘devoid of national characteristics,’ and stated that those who insisted on a Palestinian state would be forced to leave. ‘Those who do not want or are unable to put aside their national ambitions will receive assistance from us to emigrate to one of the many Arab countries where the Arabs can realise their national ambitions, or to any other destination in the world,’ he said.” (ibid.)

[4] From the technical infiltration of Hezbollah, which became prominent with the targeted destruction of several thousand mobile communication devices belonging to Hezbollah officials and fighters, to the bombing of residential areas in Beirut – not without prior warning, of course, as befits the humanism of the most humanistic army in the world – to the eradication of entire villages on the grounds of “terrorist infrastructure,” the images we know from the Gaza Strip are repeating themselves.

[5] “The elimination of Nasrallah is a necessary condition in achieving the objectives we have set: Returning the residents of the north safely to their homes, and changing the balance of power in the region for years.” (Statement by Prime Minister Netanyahu, gov.il, September 28, 2024)

[6] Israel owes it to its claim to undivided autonomy over war and peace with its neighbors not to comment on the widely reported claim that the US threatened to restrict arms deliveries in order to pressure Israel into concluding a ceasefire deal.

[7] Israel is preparing, particularly in southern Syria, to render Syrian territory not only unusable as a rear base for Hezbollah, but also suitable as a staging area for its own offensives: It has begun clearing its own minefields on the occupied Golan Heights on the border with the demilitarized zone on the eastern edge of the Golan; roads are being built and fortifications erected to enable its own ground forces to advance quickly into Syrian territory when the opportunity arises to open a front in the eastern rear of Hezbollah, which is operating in southern Lebanon. In order to protect these activities from possible attacks from Syrian territory, Israeli tanks and other military vehicles have already advanced onto Syrian soil beyond the demilitarized zone, which Israel no longer recognizes anyway.

[8] “‘This evening I sent a letter to the president of the UN Security Council in which I called for immediate action regarding the activity of the pro-Iranian militias in Iraq, whose territory is being used to attack Israel’, Saar said in a post on X that featured a copy of the letter. Warning that Israel has the right to defend itself under the UN charter, Saar said that Iraq ‘is responsible under international law to prevent the use of its territory as a base for attacks against other nations.’ ‘Israel calls on the Iraqi government to fulfill this obligation and to take immediate action to halt and prevent these attacks,’ Saar added. Saar said Israel would take ‘all necessary measures to protect itself and its citizens’ from Iran-backed militias.” (iraqinews.com, 11/19/24)

[9] Modern Russian air defense systems were out of the question for Iraqi arms dealers because they would have put Iraq in the crosshairs of Western sanctions; Israel effectively thwarted the negotiations that Iraq had been conducting since the beginning of the year with potential suppliers from France, Germany, and Italy. Iraq is now left with the option of purchasing a system from South Korea that is, firstly, outdated and, secondly, not due to be delivered until sometime next year.

[10] Critics who take Netanyahu’s official threat to turn Lebanon into a larger-scale version of the Gaza Strip seriously find their evidence in the escalation of strikes and counterstrikes inherent in war: Because it even gives the appearance of an Israeli response that takes some measure of Hezbollah’s previous actions, it is castigated as one big inconsistency. In air strikes on Beirut, the targeted destruction of pagers and radio equipment, the invasion of southern Lebanon, and the incineration of entire villages, critics are always determined to discover what has not been done.

[11] The debris from Iranian missiles shot down by Jordanian air defenses or foreign forces on Jordanian soil has already caused some damage in Jordan and serves as evidence for the Jordanian opposition to the King’s line that Jordan’s sovereign equidistance from the Israeli-Iranian conflict, as evoked by royal propaganda, is in reality a totally unconditional capitulation to Israeli threats and American blackmail.

[12] The religious Zionist Minister of Security Ben-Gvir repeatedly provokes controversy by personally showing up on the Temple Mount with a large armed entourage, even though, according to current Jordanian-Israeli law, a Jordanian foundation exercises administrative and security authority over the site. And his religious Zionist cabinet colleague Smotrich occasionally raises the option of deporting unwelcome Palestinians to Jordan, which also reminds the Jordanian authorities how little control they have over the situation.

[13] At the time, “land” stood for the condition that had to be met in order for the Arab powers to agree to recognize Israel and establish civil relations with it, namely the return of the territories occupied by Israel in 1967. For some time now, “land” has no longer really stood for this condition, but rather for the Arab states’ claim to the status that Israel must recognize in order to be able to set conditions for a formal peace with Israel at all. And that is precisely what Israel is now expressly no longer willing to accept, not even as some kind of false prospect.

[14] Here, too, Israel demonstrates this claim by publicly interfering in the usual practices of the countries concerned, spreading a little demonstrative anti-Israel rhetoric in order to allay anti-Israel reservations among the population and denying the degree of practical cooperation: After the large-scale air raid on the Yemeni port city of Al-Hudaida, Israeli politicians officially thanked Saudi Arabia for allowing the IAF to use Saudi airspace for a large part of the flight route. Promptly, Saudi foreign policy felt compelled to issue a denial. And again, it doesn’t matter which of the two sides is lying: what matters is the moment of diplomatic humiliation with which Israel makes clear its claim to assistance in its acts of violence.

[15] Back in January, Netanyahu stated that “Qatar has a powerful influence over Hamas and that Doha's role in mediating negotiations for the hostages' release has so far been fruitless...” “I think appropriate demands must be made of Qatar; it hosts Hamas, it finances Hamas... The world as a whole must closely examine Qatar's role.” (Asharq Al-Awsat, January 29, 2024)

His son, Yair Netanyahu, is allowed to be somewhat more explicit: “There is another patron of terrorism, and that is Qatar. This very rich state is, for some reason, given the red carpet treatment in Washington and New York, but in my opinion, it is the second biggest terrorist in the world after Iran.” (amad.com.ps, July 15, 2024)

[16] See the article “Accompanied by humanitarianism, judged from a legal point of view, disputed on moral grounds: Israel’s Gaza war – a challenge to the powers and moralists of the imperialist world” in issue 2-24 of this journal.

[17] For the role of UNRWA before the war and the intensified dispute since the beginning of the Gaza war, see the above-mentioned article in GegenStandpunkt 2-24.

[18] This reads, for example, like this:

“After the second Iranian attack, it is possible to ask whether a response only for the sake of responding is a correct move from the strategic perspective. Is there a need for an attack after two rounds?

These are questions that must be asked if it is decided that Israel's next step must be strategic and not tactical. In my view, a response attack is liable to remain in the tactical realm, and in fact would damage Israel's deterrence more than it would reinforce it.

If the Israeli army strikes in a measured and limited way, in order to prevent escalation, we will waste the defensive achievement. And if Israel attacks military and civilian infrastructure in an extensive way, Iran will be obligated to respond and Israel will find itself in another kind of long, damaging and dangerous war of attrition of attacks and counterattacks. This is a trap best not entered, and it is liable to erode the Israeli achievement of reinforcing its deterrence.

Therefore, the only issue that needs to be on the table is strategic: the Iranian nuclear program, the potential for the only existential threat to the state of Israel. The government and the Israel Defense Forces must focus only on that. In a comprehensive strategic way, not in a tactical way, and it must certainly not subjugate the struggle against that threat to a tactical response only.

It is agreed among most of those who are engaged in this work that for the purpose of causing significant damage to Iran's nuclear capability, there is a need for close cooperation with the United States. Such cooperation on the eve of the elections in the United States is apparently not possible, but it might become possible after November.

It is not clear whether, after the elections, the United States will want to participate in an attack on nuclear installations in Iran, but it is incumbent upon Israel to try that. Until then, any other offensive move on our part against Iran will be only a tactical response to its failed attack.” (Omer Bar-Lev, former commander of a special unit of the Israeli military intelligence service and later Minister of Public Security, in Haaretz, 10.10.24)

[19] This lack of autonomous Israeli military capability against Iran is further exacerbated by the issue of destroying Iran's nuclear potential, which for Israel represents the quintessence of what is so intolerable about Iran: The crucial components of Iran's nuclear program are installed in bunker facilities that cannot be destroyed even with the most powerful bunker-busting bombs at Israel's disposal. Only American GBU-57 bombs – which, as we learn, were developed with Iran's underground nuclear facilities in mind – are capable of doing so, and these are exclusively in American possession; moreover, Israel has no aircraft capable of carrying these bombs.

[20] Several decades ago, Israel was pressured by the US not to officially admit to possessing nuclear weapons, which everyone knew it had, and thus not to use them openly as a diplomatic threat. Israeli strategists long ago turned this necessity into a virtue, creating their own doctrine, which they dubbed “deliberate ambiguity,” which at least served to reinforce the unpredictability that its opponents should fear. For the transition Israel is currently working on, it seems increasingly appropriate to strategists who think along the same lines that Israel should establish itself as a “proper” nuclear power, where possession of the ultimate weapon of destruction coincides with the publicly celebrated right to use it, which should ultimately ensure superiority, making any use of force legitimate.