Israel and the impasse of permanent war

Few Israeli prime ministers have had as many strategic assets at their disposal as Benjamin Netanyahu at the end of 2024. After 15 months of particularly devastating strikes on civilians in Gaza, the Israeli army has probably weakened as never before the military wing of Hamas responsible for the terrorist attack of October 7, 2023, and wiped out its political leadership.

The same sledgehammer achieved the same results in the fall with Hezbollah in Lebanon, which was dragged into the conflict, without sparing the trapped civilians either. Finally, an essential cog in the pro-Iranian axis, the regime of Bashar al-Assad, was swept away on December 8 in Syria by a lightning offensive of Islamist rebels. And the first direct clashes between Israel and Iran this year underlined the blatant limits of the Islamic Republic.

This assessment highlights Israel’s military supremacy. It was backed in this conflict by the unwavering support of the United States, which, out of political weakness, did not really seek to obtain the slightest quid pro quo from the coalition in power in Israel. Circumstances, such as the Syrian regime’s collapse into oblivion, and the war in Ukraine, which prevented Russia from intervening once again to save it, also worked to Israel’s advantage.

Inexcusable international indifference

Netanyahu, who has yet to account for the security fiasco that led to the massacres of October 7, has free reign. This makes the inhuman treatment he continues to inflict on Gaza residents, who are still waiting for a ceasefire, all the more worrying. Such a ceasefire would allow the release of the Israeli hostages who are still being held there in dire conditions.

The decommissioning of the last remaining hospital in the north of the narrow strip of land, announced on December 27 by the World Health Organization following an Israeli raid, is part of a strategy of permanent war that is also illustrated by Israel’s military reoccupation of routes allowing for harmful territorial fragmentation.

This strategy of permanent war means that the appalling Palestinian death toll, now exceeding 45,000, continues to rise. It leaves open the question of survival in Gaza, and even more so that of the totally illusory reconstruction of a ravaged territory that the Israeli authorities continue to arbitrarily cut off from the world. Lacking the slightest coordination with the Palestinians to re-establish a modicum of order, it also creates chaos that adds to their plight, amid inexcusable international indifference.

Israel knows, however, that military success in such conditions cannot provide a lasting solution to political conflicts. And that it is abandoning some of the values it has long claimed by sinking into the quagmire created in Gaza. These reasons should lead to a reconsideration of the strategy of war in favor of a strategy of peace. If Netanyahu proves incapable of doing so, who in Israel will be able to deliver such a truthful message?

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