Thomas L. Friedman

Opinion

What would you do?

There is no other question that Israel’s government has posed to the world more often since Hamas invaded Israel on Oct. 7 and Hezbollah attacked Israel on Oct. 8.

What would your country do if terrorists crossed your western border and killed, maimed, kidnapped or sexually abused hundreds of Israelis they encountered and the next day their Hezbollah allies sent rockets over your northern border, driving away thousands of civilians — all cheered on by Iran?

What would you do?

It is a powerful and relevant question and one that Israel’s critics often dodge.

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But they aren’t the only ones dodging it.

This Israeli government, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, wants you and me and every Israeli and all of Israel’s friends — and even enemies — to believe that there was always only one right answer to that question: Invade the Gaza Strip, hunt down every Hamas leader and fighter, kill every last one and not be deterred by the civilian casualties, then pummel Hezbollah in Lebanon — and do both without spending time planning an exit strategy for either.

I’ve argued from Day 1 that it was a trap, a trap I’m sorry to say the Biden administration was not firm enough in stopping Israel from falling into and not firm enough in insisting on a better road, a road not taken.

Jewish State Faces Grave Danger

This is no time to be pulling punches. The Jewish state of Israel is in grave, grave danger today. And the danger comes from both Iran and the current Israeli ruling coalition.

You see, I have never had any illusions about the macro reasons this war happened. It is the unfolding of an Iranian grand strategy to slowly destroy the Jewish state, weaken America’s Arab allies and undermine U.S. influence in the region — while deterring Israel from ever attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities — by using Iranian proxies to bleed Israel to death. That is the macro story.

The immediate trigger and goal of the war was a Hamas-Iranian interest to scuttle the Biden team’s diplomatic initiative to forge Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Saudi Arabia into a ring of peace.

The Iranian-Hamas counterstrategy was to ignite a ring of fire around Israel, using Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, pro-Iranian Shiite militias in Iraq and West Bank militants armed by Iran with weapons smuggled through Jordan. The Iranian strategy is exquisite from Tehran’s point of view: Destroy Israel by sacrificing as many Palestinians and Lebanese as necessary but never risk a single Iranian life. The Iranians are ready to die to the last Lebanese, the last Palestinian, the last Syrian and the last Yemeni to eliminate Israel (and distract the world from the Iranian regime’s abuses of its own people and imperialist control over Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq and Syria).

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The problem for Israelis and the Jewish people is that while the Netanyahu government was right in its diagnosis that this was a war of annihilation, it refused to conduct it in the only way that could hope to bring success — because that strategy ran counter to the political interests of the prime minister and the messianic ideological interests of his coalition.

Israel faces an existential threat from the outside, and its prime minister and his allies have been prioritizing their own political and ideological interests ahead of that. They have even lately resurrected their judicial coup attempt to crush the Israeli Supreme Court — in the middle of a war of national survival while hostages rot in Gaza. It is one of the most shameful episodes in Jewish history, and shame on the AIPAC pro-Israel lobby in Washington for not speaking out against it.

Israel to Counter Iranian Threat Network

To counter this Iranian threat network, Israel needed four things: a lot of time, because this ring of fire could not be extinguished overnight; a lot of resources, particularly from the United States and other Western allies; a lot of Arab and European allies, because Israel cannot fight a war of attrition alone; and, perhaps most crucial of all, a lot of legitimacy.

President Joe Biden and his team offered Israel a road map for that counterstrategy but, sadly, they just never had the steel to impose it on Netanyahu with a combination of leverage, diplomacy and ultimatums. Such a road map would have involved persuading America’s Arab allies to fundamentally reform the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank with new, credible leadership and then getting Israel to agree to open negotiations with that Palestinian Authority leadership on a long-term pathway to a two-state solution.

That would have done the following: 1) Opened the way to isolating and pressuring Hamas to agree to a cease-fire in which Israel gets out of Gaza in return for all the hostages — ending the war there and eliminating Hezbollah’s excuse for attacking Israel from the north. 2) Opened the way for Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel — a devastating blow to Hamas and Iran. 3) Opened the way for the United Arab Emirates to partner with a reformed Palestinian Authority to put troops on the ground in Gaza and do the thing Hamas would hate most — replace it as the governing authority there, backed by hundreds of millions of dollars for rebuilding Gaza, which would probably make it the most popular Palestinian force in Gaza overnight.

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Up to now, though, Netanyahu has turned Biden down (while openly playing footsie with Donald Trump) because the prime minister would have had to break with the right-wing crazies who brought him to power and form a different governing coalition with more moderate parties. Netanyahu has prioritized his personal political security over Israel’s national security. And for months, he’s been spinning the world and his own people to disguise it.

Netanyahu thought he could just tell the world that Israel was defending the frontier of freedom against Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran and everyone would fall in line behind Israel. What would you do? But the only place in the world that that gets you a standing ovation is in the U.S. Congress.

The rest of the world, particularly the moderate Arab states and the Europeans, told Netanyahu: Bibi, you don’t have a clean story. You cannot tell the world you are defending the frontier of freedom against Hamas and Hezbollah while expanding — increasingly violently — Israel’s settler occupation over Palestinians in the West Bank. You don’t have a clean story.

So the Israeli prime minister opted instead for the Netanyahu doctrine: Fight alone on three fronts — Gaza, Lebanon and the West Bank — with no plan for the morning after anywhere. In doing so, he rejected the Biden strategy: Embed Israel in a U.S.-Israeli-moderate-Arab coalition that would isolate Iran and its proxies, provide some hope that maybe one day we’d see two states for two indigenous peoples between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean and make clear to the world that the source of trouble in the region is not the Party of God in Israel but the Parties of God in Lebanon, Yemen and Iran.

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Friedman: Netanyahu’s Strategy Is a Disaster

Netanyahu’s strategy is a disaster. As a veteran U.S. military commander who has observed close up Israel’s war strategy in Gaza told me privately, anyone with two eyes in his head knows that the only way to way to defeat Hamas is a strategy of “clear, hold and build”: Destroy the enemy, hold the territory and then build an alternative local, legitimate Palestinian governing authority. Israel’s strategy in Gaza, he said, has been: “Clear, leave, come back, clear again the same place, leave again, come back and clear again.”

Yes, yes, I know the criticism: You are delusional. What Israeli or Palestinian leader would come together on such a plan? Well, two friends of mine have done just that: former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert and former Palestinian Authority foreign minister Nasser al-Qudwa. Biden should invite them both to the Oval Office as soon as possible to embrace their plan for a two-state solution, which is totally in line with U.S. interests.

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I repeat: Israel is in terrible danger. It is fighting the most just war in its history — responding to the brutal, unprovoked murder and abduction of women and children and grandparents by Hamas — and yet today Israel is more of a pariah state than ever.

Why? Because when you fight a war like this with no political horizon for this long — one that denies any possibility for more-moderate Palestinians to govern Gaza — the Israeli military operation there just starts to look like endless killing for killing’s sake. That is just what Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran want.

There was always a road not taken. Do I know for sure it would work? Of course not. The only thing I know for sure is that the road that Netanyahu has Israel locked on now is a road to ruin, encircled by a ring of fire. Stay that course, and Israel’s most talented people will start to leave, and the Israel you knew will be gone forever.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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