Netanyahu Will Win The War But He Could Lose The Peace

The first sentence of the editorial in Haaretz, the liberal newspaper whose English edition is sold in Israel inside The New York Times, could hardly have been more stark: “The disaster that befell Israel on the holiday of Simchat Torah is the clear responsibility of one person: Benjamin Netanyahu.”

- DONALD MACINTYRE

Haaretz was talking not only of the colossal intelligence failures before Hamas’s murderous breakout from Gaza on the religious holiday that marks the end of Sukkot. It also cited the formation and the policies towards the Palestinians of his coalition government, Israel’s most right-wing ever. But it was not alone in generally levelling blame at what former prime minister Ehud Olmert this week called the “arrogance” of Netanyahu. Even the right-wing, historically pro-Netanyahu Israel Hayom published an op-ed on Monday by veteran defence analyst Yoav Limor which it headlined “A failure of unimaginable proportions made worse by a leadership vacuum”.

Maybe a report that Netanyahu ignored a warning 10 days earlier from Egypt that something “unusual” and “terrible” was being planned in Gaza – which Netanyahu flatly denies – will turn out to be untrue. But the question still arises of whether he will survive not so much the current war but what will surely be the subsequent inquiry into the circumstances which led to an Israeli death toll now estimated at more than 1,000 as well as so far incalculable Palestinian casualties in Gaza.

Many, especially, but not only, loyalists in his Likud party believe that he will. It is not only that Netanyahu, by some way Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, is a world-class political survivor. It’s not just his Machiavellian skills, which no doubt will be deployed, at least post-war, in the search for scapegoats at the head of the intelligence services or the army. It’s also a matter of will.