Sleepwalking into a regional war

At this moment more than any other since the immediate aftermath of October 7, the Middle East could be on the verge of explosion. Last week’s assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in the heart of Tehran – alongside the elimination of Hezbollah official Fuad Shukr in Beirut’s Dahiyeh quarter just hours earlier – has put Iran in a position where it feels it must respond. While the Islamic Republic insists it wants to avoid a full-scale war, its aggressive rhetoric about the need to “punish” Israel suggests that we could be heading toward one nonetheless.

As Israel braces for possible scenarios, including a simultaneous attack by Iran and Hezbollah on major population centers, it is increasingly clear to Israelis that the current limbo that exists vis-à-vis Iran and its proxies is unsustainable. To the IDF’s credit, Hamas has largely ceased to pose a formidable threat to Israeli civilians. But the current holding pattern of “limited” attacks by other Iran-backed terror groups carries a cost: northern communities on fire, 80,000 Israelis displaced from them; 12 Druze children murdered by Hezbollah; a man in Tel Aviv killed by a Houthi drone that the IDF shockingly failed to intercept. If the current pattern holds, additional casualties are a question of if, not when. Even if the current saga ends with de-escalation, so long as the post-October 7 tit-for-tat persists, it’s only a matter of time before Iran or Hezbollah throw the match that sets the Middle East on fire.

If Israel wants to take the initiative to end this limbo, there are two obvious paths: initiating the full-scale war on its own terms or securing a ceasefire in Gaza that gives Hezbollah and the Iranians the pretext they’ve been looking for to de-escalate while saving face politically. There are legitimate arguments in favor of both options.

The problem is that the choice rests with Benjamin Netanyahu. His unwillingness to sincerely pursue one path or the other means that Israel’s window to be proactive rather than reactive in addressing the Iranian threat, either militarily or diplomatically, may soon close. This also applies to any hope of bringing home the hostages. Amid these mounting external threats, Netanyahu’s extremist government is fanning the flames of domestic extremist violence that undermines the rule of law, democratic norms, and national unity. All of this bodes poorly for successfully navigating the existential war the country may be dragged into.

In the face of contradictory political pressures, Prime Minister Netanyahu has sought to keep his options open: hostage negotiations chugged along, appeasing the security establishment, President Joe Biden, and, while he was a war cabinet minister, Benny Gantz. But in the seven months since this series of talks began, moments of optimism have consistently been dashed.

For months, protest organizations and the hostage families have alleged that the prime minister bears responsibility for the absence of a hostage deal. Israeli media reports suggested a concerning pattern: as negotiations progressed, Netanyahu would scuttle them through new conditions or unhelpful leaks to the press. He’d say one thing to President Biden, and another to his political partners and his right-wing base. The reason for Netanyahu’s foot dragging is obvious: Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich’s threats to blow up the government, which would all but guarantee his political demise and possibly a jail sentence.

Yet throughout this saga, Hamas has served as a foil that has given Bibi plausible deniability over his intransigence. No one can argue that Hamas is an honest actor, and there were stages when Israel’s negotiating team put forward credible offers that the terror group rejected. (Whether Netanyahu would have ultimately stood by the offers had Hamas accepted is another question.) Meanwhile, President Biden and Secretary Blinken have publicly insisted that the prime minister remains committed to Israel’s proposals and Hamas is the side that stands in the way.

But something has changed in the past week. President Biden seems to be losing his patience for giving Netanyahu political cover, chiding the prime minister to “stop bullshitting” him about his intentions in the talks. Tal Shalev reported that Netanyahu is planning to fire Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, and Shabak chief Ronen Bar over their opposition to Netanyahu’s intransigence in the negotiations. In leaked quotes from a closed-door meeting, Halevi reportedly pushed back on Netanyahu’s new insistence on holding onto the Philadelphi Corridor at the expense of bringing home the hostages. After a delay due to Haniyeh’s assassination, Israeli negotiators returned from a meeting with Egyptian officials in Cairo having failed to get the talks back on track due to new conditions put forward by Netanyahu. These media reports paint a picture of a deal being scuttled by a disingenous Netanyahu.

There is plenty on the Hamas side of the equation that could complicate a deal at this stage. Ismail Haniyeh’s assassination and the ascension of Yayha Sinwar to the formal helm of the terror group will have an unclear impact on the fate of the talks. Sinwar is typically viewed as more hardline (not that Haniyeh was by any means a moderate), and his appointment is a vote of confidence in the ethos of October 7. But with Sinwar hiding in the tunnels and in inconsistent communication with Hamas officials abroad, it is difficult to ascertain what he is thinking or how real his influence will be over the organization’s operations. If Iran and Hezbollah are serious about wanting to avoid a regional war, it’s possible they may press Hamas into agreeing to a ceasefire. The only way of knowing whether a deal is possible is if Israel makes a credible effort to pursue one.

Netanyahu’s unwillingness to confront his coalition partners is also threatening to tear Israel apart from within. Just last week, far-right MKs and ministers besieged two IDF bases where the military was addressing an alleged case of sexual abuse of a Palestinian prisoner apprehended in Gaza. This case was just the latest ultranationalist effort to undermine the rule of law – from rising settler violence in the West Bank to activists blocking humanitarian aid trucks entering Gaza. Not to be outdone, just yesterday, Haredi rioters stormed an IDF base in protest of the draft.

The police, meanwhile, seem to be far more occupied with confronting overwhelmingly peaceful anti-Netanyahu protesters in Tel Aviv. As it faces its greatest existential challenge from without, the country is simultaneously falling prey to extremist violence and division from within, and its leader is nowhere to be found to provide moral clarity and unity.

In the immediate term, unless Israel wants to start a regional war, which doesn’t seem to be the case, all it can do is wait for this post-Haniyeh/Shukr crisis to resolve. Nasrallah and Khamenei still have yet to respond. But once the ball is back in Israel’s court, Netanyahu’s personal political considerations and refusal to reign in his allies may get in the way of the country’s ability to calibrate an appropriate next step – whether a significant strike on Hezbollah and Iran, or a symbolic reprisal coupled with efforts to renew the negotiations to end the war in Gaza, bring the hostages home, and return quiet to the north for the time being. Netanyahu abetting extremism, rebuking his own security officials, and engendering Biden’s ire only serves Israel’s enemies, undermines the negotiating team’s credibility, and hurts Israel’s international standing at a moment when it could need it more than ever, should it be drawn into war in Lebanon. If things continue as they are going, Israel may lose its easiest opportunity to extricate itself from the morass of a regional war that even Netanyahu wants to avoid