Regardless of how the Israeli settlement with Hamas ends, the call for accountability in Israel is not limited to the Palestinian group. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government and the security services have a lot of explaining to do about how the Hamas attacks happened.
The head of Israel’s domestic intelligence service Shin Bet acknowledged early this week that his service failed to timely detect and prevent the horrific attacks on Saturday, October 7. “As head of the organization, the responsibility for this lies with me,” Ronen Bar said in a statement. “There will come a time for investigations. Now we fight.”
In an interview with The Economist Ehud Barak called the surprise attacks by Hamas the “greatest failure in Israeli history.” The 81-year-old politician enjoys some prestige: he was commander-in-chief of the Israeli forces, prime minister and served twice as defense minister. He is one of the two most decorated soldiers in the country’s history.
The former prime minister considers the government of his former political ally “primarily responsible” for the circumstances that led to the attacks. From the inadequately patrolled border and the slow response of the security services, to the broader policies towards the Palestinians in recent decades.
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According to Barak, the fact that so many civilians became victims shows that “the state has failed in its first obligation to its citizens: to keep them alive. That was the worst kind of negligence.”
Polls indicate that an overwhelming majority of Jewish Israelis share that sentiment. The left-wing quality newspaper Haaretz headlined a day after the Hamas attacks: ‘Netanyahu bears responsibility for this war between Israel and Gaza.’
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Unverified images show rocket strike hospital in Gaza
‘Destroy Hamas completely, what does that mean?’
Many Israelis are in favor of an invasion of the Gaza Strip by ground troops. That does not mean that there is no room for criticism of the government on that front. Former Prime Minister Barak, for example, warns that the total destruction of Hamas that Netanyahu has in mind is not a credible war goal.
“What does that mean? That not a single breathing person believes in the ideology of Hamas anymore?” He prefers to see the concrete goal that Hamas’s military capacity is damaged to such an extent that the group no longer poses a major threat.
Indeed, there is no agreement within the Israeli government yet on what the Gaza Strip should look like when the offensive is over, Israeli media report. That is an essential question. In addition to retaliation for the Hamas attacks, the Israeli population above all wants something like this not to happen again in the future.
‘Mr. Security’ has been toppled from its pedestal
Prime Minister Netanyahu is nicknamed ‘Mr. Security’, after the promise he prided himself on during his political career. He closed the borders between Israel and the Palestinian territories (with fences, walls and a host of security gadgets) and put any form of peace negotiations at a dead end. Under Netanyahu, Israeli cabinets focused mainly on East Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank, where Israeli settlements were systematically built and expanded.
The ‘Palestinian issue’ was further hidden as far away as possible. Palestinians in the West Bank came under a strict Israeli security regime to keep them under control, from travel restrictions to raids and home foreclosures.
Critics call it an apartheid regime. The Gaza Strip was sealed off, becoming the largest open-air prison in the world. Everything for the safety of Israeli citizens was the motto. That citizen was sensitive to that: Netanyahu is the longest-serving prime minister in Israeli history, with a total of sixteen years.
That image is in tatters after Hamas showed in a deeply shocking way that Netanyahu’s strategy has not worked. If the guns fall silent and the Israeli gaze turns inward again, it could mean the end of his political career.
After the war, the reckoning comes home
Netanyahu and his far-right governing coalition were already under fire for their attempts to curtail the independence of Israel’s judiciary, which led to mass protests.
The Hamas attacks and the war have demanded attention, but these political divisions will not disappear. The fierce criticism about the government’s actions in the Gaza conflict comes on top of this.
For Netanyahu, losing power is an extra frightening prospect: his premiership provides him cover in a lawsuit surrounding several cases of fraud and corruption of which he is suspected.
The Israeli leader will hope that the coming offensive in the Gaza Strip will be such a resounding victory that it will counterbalance the storm that awaits him when Israel steps out of war mode. That will be a tough task. In a recent poll, a majority of respondents said Netanyahu should resign.
The conflict explained
2023-10-18 03:09:00
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