Israel: The danger of wanting to change the order

In the face of a major terrorist attack, some countries with the necessary military capacity may carry out excessive responses and err in their cost-benefit calculations. Not only governments, but also citizens, can embark on misguided aspirations. It happened to the United States after 9/11 in 2021. And now it is happening to Israel after the Hamas massacre on October 7, 2023, which, understandably, caused national trauma.

It is not just that they lose their minds, but that some groups in positions of power take the opportunity to advance specific agendas and change a reality that ends up being stubborn. Netanyahu and his supporters want to change the order of the Middle East. He’s getting it short. For how long? Five, ten years? Changing the status quo can be dangerous, especially if it is done on an unfair basis. Reality may return, loaded with more hatred and violence.

After 9/11, the US launched, with the legitimizing endorsement of the UN Security Council, the poorly planned invasion of Afghanistan. Country that he abandoned along with his allies in a shameful way in 2021, leaving its women and men at the mercy of the Taliban regime that completed three years in power this year. Also, promoted by neoconservatives who sought to redraw the entire area based on the export of Western democracy, it got involved in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, which had nothing to do with 9/11.

Their foolish way of thinking and acting led to the illegal entry into Iraq, based on lies about the alleged weapons of mass destruction, and the dismantling of its State, which generated the new terrorism of Daesh, stirring up the region and giving more wings to Iran. . Biden voted for it, by the way. Not only that, but in part the United States stopped being a democracy, at least a rule of law, with laws like the infamous Patriot Act and others that ended with many legal guarantees, fortunately later revised in some of their most extreme parts.

In the absence of information, what the Netanyahu Government is doing, with broad support from Israelis, must be judged by the facts. He is wanting to change the reality of the country’s security and his personal future, and that of the region. A new order that goes beyond the destruction of those who attack their own territory. And he wants to do it before there is a new president in the White House on January 20. We are witnessing a struggle of future against past, of geography against history, of demography against armed force, of reason of State against humanity.

Israel has demonstrated its strength against Hezbollah. This movement had penetrated to the core, as the search and search attacks have shown. walkie talkiesand having reached important leaders, the most consequential being the death of the leader, Hassan Nasrallah. The massive death of civilians in Gaza, in South Lebanon, in Beirut, in the West Bank matters little in these intelligence and weapons successes. And although Israel has devastated Gaza, it did not see the October 7 attack coming and a hundred hostages remain in the Strip in the hands of Hamas.

Israel defends itself, but in some ways of doing so it loses a legitimacy that increased on October 7 and that it will need in the present and in the future, in addition to humanity and democracy. He is fueling a hatred that will eventually turn against him. Let us think of the children who, at the age of seven or ten, have experienced the massacres in Gaza – which they tried to empty, but Egypt stopped them –, the incursions in the West Bank or the bombings in Lebanon, the cripples who remain, even more so than the tens of thousands of dead, and destruction. How will the survivors see it in ten years, when they have grown up and find themselves without life prospects, if they are not kicked out? Israel can decimate Hamas or Hezbollah now, but in one form or another, those movements will return.

And it is not easy to solve it. The issue, for Netanyahu and his supporters, is to change the reality for today’s Israel. Yes, finish off those who attack him. And make a two-state solution impossible, which is almost impossible in itself, and even more so with a Palestinian Authority that has been left without auctorites some. Is it about weakening its external enemies and advancing towards Greater Israel? Who would recognize it? But no one from the outside seems to be able to influence Israel at the moment, unless, for the moment, it attacks Iran directly. The United States, its practically unconditional supporter, continues to send it massive weapons. Europe is divided and impotent, and the UN, as has been seen these days in New York, inoperative, and frontally challenged by Netanyahu.

Nearby Arab countries, those that have recognized Israel, prefer to remain silent for the moment. Although they look at what really matters to them, which is not the Palestinians, but Iran. Tehran has been weakened by the succession of its Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. Humiliated by some Israeli attacks, Iran is not interested in the situation escalating into a regional war. Furthermore, he never responds coldly. It still has pawns to move, but they are decimated: the remnants of Hezbollah, the Houthis – Israel’s last objective in Yemen – and a few others. Netanyahu wants to end Iran’s capacity to manufacture nuclear weapons when Tehran has once again shown signs of wanting to return to the path of an agreement for the control of its nuclear material with the United States.

The Arab governments that were in this game will now find it more difficult or impossible to resume the so-called Abraham Accords with Israel. Of course, that was an objective of Hamas with its attack on October 7, days before Saudi Arabia, the largest player, was going to join them.

“If it is necessary to be in this situation for ten years, we will be in this situation for ten years,” said one of the Israeli military spokespersons. “We are ready for whatever is necessary and for as long as it is necessary,” he stressed. Netanyahu may immediately win in personal terms. He has regained his popularity, he has no rival, the “peace party” is absent. The trials against him for corruption and abuse of power will be delayed, but he has begun to feel the encouragement of the International Criminal Court of which Israel is not a part, but by which it is increasingly affected. It gains immediate security, but it can generate perverse regional dynamics that escape all control. Lebanon could fall into untamed chaos, becoming the spark of a regional conflict. Winning militarily is not necessarily equivalent to winning politically, as Israel demonstrated in the 1973 Yom Kippur war.

The present has already changed, of course. Thinking about trying to influence the future is human, knowing that that future never ends up being as planned. As Antonio Machado wrote, “neither tomorrow – nor yesterday – is written.” Another future, perhaps another vision of the past, is needed for Israel, Palestine and the region very different from the one Netanyahu is trying to provoke. We must remember the Western follies of this first part of the century, from Afghanistan, to Iraq, to ​​Syria, or Libya. “The dream of reason produces monsters,” Goya noted in his famous etching.

Measured and sensible responses are missed today. It should be noted, for example, that Spain did not lose its head with the attacks of March 11, 2004.

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