By Max Boot, Washington Post
Even before Donald Trump was elected president, I wrote that he was America’s No. 1 security threat. Today, I am convinced that Israel’s No. 1 security threat comes from its Trump-like prime minister: Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Bibi,” as he is universally known, doesn’t seem to care that his policies are undermining Israeli democracy, risking Israel’s close relationship with the United States, and might even be sparking another violent uprising — a third intifada — among West Bank Palestinians. Like Trump, he seems to care about nothing but holding onto power, and his radical policies are the price of keeping together a coalition of far-right extremist parties.
President Biden, a true friend of Israel, has been trying to warn Bibi off the destructive path he is on — but to no avail. Last week, Biden talked on the phone with Netanyahu and even invited him to meet for the first time since taking office in December at the head of what Biden has called “one of the most extremist … cabinets that I’ve seen.” Biden’s offer to meet was a conciliatory gesture that dismayed Israel’s opposition parties.
But the continuing discord between the two sides was evident in conflicting readouts of the Bibi-Biden call. The White House emphasized that the president had warned the prime minister against taking “further unilateral measures” to expand West Bank settlements and stressed “the need for the broadest possible consensus” before proceeding with judicial reforms. By contrast, Haaretz noted, the Israeli account “focused on Netanyahu’s favorite topics: Iran and the battle against terrorism.”
The White House was said to be aggravated by Netanyahu’s deceptive messaging. So, to set the record straight, Biden called in New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman “to make sure that Biden’s position is crystal clear to all Israelis,” which is that Netanyahu’s coalition needs to stop slamming through “a constitutional overhaul, without even the semblance of a national consensus,” Friedman wrote.
Unfortunately, Biden’s positive influence is being diluted by Bibi’s fervent Republican supporters, who ridiculously accuse Biden of being anti-Israel. Republicans seem as eager to enable Netanyahu’s assault on Israeli democracy as they are Trump’s assault on U.S. democracy. (In another parallel, both Trump and Netanyahu have been indicted on multiple criminal charges; Bibi’s trial is ongoing, Trump’s trials are upcoming.) Netanyahu may well calculate that, with all of his GOP support, he doesn’t have to listen to what the Democratic president is telling him — no matter how much long-term damage he does to Israel’s standing with American public opinion.
Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul bill, which had been shelved in the spring after massive protests brought Israel to a standstill, is now moving rapidly through the Knesset, despite mass protests and threats from Israeli military reservists (including elite fighter pilots and commandos) to refuse to report for duty if it passes. If the bill is approved, which might happen as soon as this week, Israel will lose one of its few checks on majoritarian tyranny, because the Israeli Supreme Court will no longer be able to override legislation on the (admittedly amorphous) grounds that it is not “reasonable.” The court has incurred the wrath of the right by overruling mass exemptions for the ultra-Orthodox from compulsory military service, limiting the expansion of illegal West Bank settlements and blocking Netanyahu from appointing to his cabinet the leader of an ultra-Orthodox party who was convicted of tax evasion, fraud and bribery.
Soon Bibi and his far-right cabinet are likely to have a free hand to enact even more of their ultranationalist agenda despite their ultrathin electoral majority — with dire consequences not only for Israeli democracy but also for Israel’s security.
Last month, the Israeli cabinet gave Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, an ultranationalist advocate of settlements, almost all control over the future growth of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. This is the same Smotrich who said earlier this year: “There is no such thing as a Palestinian nation. There is no Palestinian history. There is no Palestinian language.” Smotrich also said, following a rampage by Israeli settlers through the Palestinian village of Huwara (which an Israeli general described as a “pogrom”): “I think that Huwara needs to be erased.” Smotrich’s alarming goal is to double the number of Israeli settlers in the West Bank, from 500,000 to 1 million, which will further exacerbate an already volatile situation.
Nearly 30 years after the signing of the Oslo accords, Palestinians are losing hope that they will ever have their own nation. The Gaza Strip is ruled by the religious fanatics of Hamas, while the West Bank is ruled by the corrupt, incompetent officials of the Palestinian Authority. Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, is so old (87) that he makes Biden look like a young whippersnapper by comparison, and he has ruled for 18 years despite having last won a four-year term in 2005. The Palestinian Authority is further weakened by the continuing Israeli military occupation; to even move from one town to another, Palestinian security forces need permission from the Israelis.
Extremists have rushed to fill the power vacuum, particularly in the northern city of Jenin, which has become a no-go zone for Palestinian security forces. It is effectively ruled by militias affiliated with Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad or local gangs. Iran is supplying weapons to these fighters to try to open a “fourth front” for Israel in addition to the threats it already faces from Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. Violence in the West Bank is rising along with terrorist attacks inside Israel.
On July 3 and 4, the Israel Defense Forces mounted a major offensive on the Jenin refugee camp, backed up by airstrikes, to dismantle explosives, seize weapons, destroy underground hideouts and confiscate “terror funds.” This military operation — the largest in the West Bank since the height of the second intifada in 2005 — left 12 Palestinians and one Israeli soldier dead, hundreds of Palestinians injured, and thousands displaced. The operation might have been necessary to avert further terrorist attacks on Israel, but it could backfire if it simply fuels more anger and despair among Palestinians.
A U.S. security official told me that, for the Jenin operation to have any lasting effects, two things need to happen. First, Palestinian security forces need to reenter Jenin (which they did only briefly when Abbas visited on July 12 for the first time in years) for good to disarm the militias. Second, Israeli settler violence has to stop. “When settler violence stops all things are possible,” this American official said. “Until it stops, there is no way to move forward with real security measures or real stability.”
The Netanyahu government did one thing right in the wake of the Jenin operation by vowing to increase support for the Palestinian Authority. But what are the odds that a government so beholden to extremist settlers will rein in those very settlers?
“Israel’s strategic problem is that it doesn’t have a strategy regarding the West Bank and Palestinians, unless you consider creeping de facto annexation a strategy,” Chuck Freilich, a former Israeli deputy national security adviser, told me. “The tragedy is that misguided messianic beliefs are setting the basis for the demise of the Zionist dream of a predominantly Jewish and vibrantly democratic Israel.”
As Israel celebrates its 75th anniversary, it has much to be proud of: The Jewish state is wealthier and more powerful than anyone could have imagined in 1948. But it also faces a troubling dilemma that no one could have imagined in the days when Israel was led by giants such as David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir: What do you do when the gravest security threat to the state comes from its own leaders?
Biden is trying to reason with Netanyahu, but Bibi isn’t listening to reason — and both Israelis and Palestinians are likely to pay a steep price for the prime minister’s destructive and deluded policies.