Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week has been engaged in increasingly public spats with his military, his right-wing coalition partners and his most powerful supporter, the White House. The successive clashes – all with allies standing by his side in the battle against Hamas – have renewed difficult questions about the future of the war and about the Israeli leader’s own political survival.
“We are fighting on many fronts,” Mr Netanyahu said in a statement this week to his embattled coalition partners – whom he told to “behave” – ​​but he could just as easily have been describing himself.
In the ninth month of the war, Mr. Netanyahu finds himself increasingly isolated. His pledges of “total victory” against Hamas are at odds with his military leadership, which has signaled it wants to ease combat operations in Gaza and that only a ceasefire can bring home the remaining Israeli hostages. He has alternatively appeased and coddled his right-wing allies, whose support he needs to stay in power but whose aggressive positions on the war and Palestinian rights have drawn international condemnation.
Analysts say the combative strategy reflects Mr. Netanyahu’s need to balance competing interests — to show domestic audiences that he is standing up for the country amid growing global condemnation of the war while keeping his right-wing allies close enough to do so. . to leave him.
But he is picking a high-stakes battle with the Biden administration, which has provided political cover for Israel’s destructive military campaign while supplying it with essential weapons. On Monday, President Biden overcame congressional opposition to complete one of the largest US arms sales to Israel, an $18 billion deal for F-15 jets.
But the next day, Mr Netanyahu released a video attacking the United States for hiding some heavy munitions, an apparent reference to the Biden administration’s decision to freeze a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs over concerns about their use in densely populated areas. of Gaza.
That video prompted a sharp response Thursday from White House spokesman John F. Kirby, who said that “no other country has done more, or will continue to do more, than the United States to help Israel to defend himself”. The Israeli leader’s comments were “deeply disappointing and certainly disturbing to us,” Kirby added.
Soon after, Mr Netanyahu issued a statement saying he was “willing to absorb personal attacks if that is what it takes for Israel to get the weapons and ammunition it needs in the war for survival”.
Although the Biden administration has expressed growing frustration with the direction of the war, there are no signs that Mr. Biden will significantly reduce US support for Israel in an election year. Mr. Netanyahu retains strong support from Republicans in Washington, who have led an effort to invite the Israeli leader to address a joint session of Congress next month, an apparent effort to make a campaign issue of some progressive Democratic opposition to war.
More pressing for Mr. Netanyahu at home is the standoff with his military leadership, which also escalated this week.
Airing on frustrations that have been simmering for months, the armed forces’ chief spokesman, Vice Admiral Daniel Hagari, appeared to criticize Mr Netanyahu’s oft-repeated call for “total victory”, saying: “The idea that it is possible to destroy Hamas, for for Hamas to disappear – that is throwing sand in the eyes of the public.”
The military has said it wants to end the fighting in Gaza, saying on Wednesday it was easing some wartime restrictions on Israeli communities near the border and that it was close to defeating Hamas forces in Rafah, the town it described as the last stronghold of the armed group.
But Mr Netanyahu has shown no sign of wanting to end the war, refusing to support a US-backed ceasefire proposal for a cessation of hostilities, the release of hostages and open talks on a permanent truce. On Thursday, after meeting hostage families in his office in Jerusalem, Mr Netanyahu signaled he wanted Israeli troops to keep fighting.
“When we are in Gaza, the pressure changes. Our activity creates opportunities for the return of hostages,” he said, according to a statement from his office. “We will not leave the Gaza Strip until all the hostages are returned, and we will not leave until we have eliminated Hamas’ military and governmental capabilities.”
This position is supported by his right-wing cabinet ministers, led by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, the Minister of National Security. But both oppose amending Israel’s laws to allow the conscription of ultra-Orthodox Jews, a change the army says is necessary to reduce the war on its forces – and another point of contention between the army leadership and Mr. Netanyahu.
However, the Israeli leader has also fallen out with Mr Ben-Gvir. After the far-right minister demanded a greater role in wartime decision-making, Mr Netanyahu dissolved his informal war cabinet this week in an attempt to exclude Mr Ben-Gvir from analysts. A member of Mr Netanyahu’s party later accused Mr Ben-Gvir of leaking state secrets.
Amos Harel, a columnist for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which is often critical of Mr Netanyahu, wrote that the prime minister was “shooting” “everyone in his way”.
“In security, in politics, in Israel’s foreign relations, Netanyahu continues to pursue a cutting-edge policy and in a way that has become much more extreme during the war,” he wrote in a column published Friday.
