Turmoil has hit the streets of Israel once again, as thousands of protesters gathered in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem to oppose Benjamin Netanyahu’s dual effort to rekindle the war in Gaza, risking the lives of Israeli hostages there, and to dismiss senior civil servants who are struggling to halt Israel’s slide to autocracy.
Early on Tuesday, the Israeli prime minister ordered the bombing of Gaza, ending a two-month ceasefire with Hamas and killing hundreds of Palestinians in the midst of Ramadan.
It was a devastating tactical surprise. But it was not unexpected or unheralded. Netanyahu and his newly installed military chiefs have made clear their intentions of resuming the war to “crush Hamas once and for all” and “prevent any future threat from Gaza”. They rejected the January deal, which mandated ending the fight in return for the remaining 59 Israeli and foreign hostages held in Gaza since Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October 2023.
The Trump administration has given Israel a free hand vis-a-vis the Palestinians. Donald Trump even drew the goal: relocating Gaza’s more than 2 million inhabitants and turning the rubble into beachside resorts. His idea came almost as divine intervention to the Israeli far right, which has advocated for decades the “transfer” of Arabs from the occupied territories. What was traditionally viewed as an extremist, marginalised idea has now become US policy, masked as a “humane solution” rather than what it would be: an outright war crime. Once aired by Trump, the idea has enjoyed wide support among Israel’s Jewish majority as a fitting punishment for the 7 October massacre.
So far, the Israel Defense Forces have not given an explicit order to ethnically cleanse Gaza of its Palestinians. Nor did the IDF direct its ground force reserves toward an occupation campaign. Tuesday’s assault was framed as an attack on Hamas’s rearming effort and its governance organs, targeting several of its civilian executives along with their family members.
Nevertheless Trump, Netanyahu and senior Israeli officials have threatened Hamas with “hell”. Israel’s ministry of defence has established a new office to facilitate “voluntary emigration” from Gaza via Israeli air and seaports. The minister of finance, Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right leader, envisions a transfer of 10,000 Palestinians a day, depopulating the entire Gaza Strip within several months. The defence minister, Israel Katz, whose office runs the emigration project, indicates that 2,500 daily evacuees will suffice. Israel and the US have already asked Sudan, Somaliland and other governments to take the Palestinians.
Most Israelis, however, are still considering the talk of a transfer, or second Nakba – recalling the 1948 “catastrophe”, or exodus of most Arabs from what became Israel – as rightwing political gobbledegook. Israeli public attention is focused on the 59 hostages held in Gaza, between 22 and 24 of them apparently alive. To Netanyahu and his allies, the fate of the tortured, starved hostages is a nuisance, a disturbance on the way to “ultimate victory”. The government’s opponents, centred on the old Israeli mainstream, view the return of the hostages as paramount. They have found an unlikely ally in Trump, who hosted freed hostages in the Oval Office, a gesture that Netanyahu has yet to perform. Having shrugged off responsibility for the 7 October disaster, he escapes looking the victims in the eyes.
Tuesday’s bombing decided the debate. Netanyahu ignored the pleas of hostages’ families and survivors of Hamas captivity and sent bombers to the skies of Gaza, knowing that Hamas, with its back to the wall, might kill the remaining captives. The deadly attack paid immediate political dividends in Jerusalem. Israel’s Kahanist party Otzma Yehudit (“Jewish Power”), which left the coalition to protest against the ceasefire, came back on the eve of a crucial budget vote. Passing the budget would buy the government time to win its coveted victory in a second, though by no means secondary, battle at home.
Since returning to the helm in late 2022, Netanyahu’s goal has been to turn Israel from a quasi-liberal, however battered, democracy – at least on this side of the green line separating Israel proper from the occupied territories – into a Jewish autocracy. Having already transformed Likud, the ruling party, into his personality cult, and partnering with the once-pariah Kahanists, Netanyahu sought to drive out the old elite from its power bases in the defence-intelligence complex and the judiciary and replace it with his alliance of “Bibist” loyalists, religious nationalists and ultra-Orthodox rabbis’ disciples. The secular, westward-looking former elite fought back with mass protests that slowed down the judicial upheaval. Then came 7 October, and domestic strife was put on hold.
But Netanyahu never lost sight of his national overhaul. With the war winding down, and his ideological buddy Trump taking over in the US, the Israeli coalition relaunched its coup. Laws that would do away with judicial independence were rushed in the Knesset. With the police force and prison service already politicised, and the IDF chief of staff replaced, Netanyahu aims at the most sensitive and powerful targets: Shin Bet, Israel’s security service, and the attorney general, who serves as the country’s chief law enforcer.
Netanyahu’s motives are personal as much as political. Gali Baharav-Miara, the attorney general, is leading the prosecution in Netanyahu’s corruption trial. Replacing her with a crony might throw the case out of the window. Ronen Bar, the Shin Bet chief that Netanyahu wants to sack, is investigating claims of shadowy financial ties between the prime minister’s spin masters and Qatar, the main sponsor of Hamas. Netanyahu, expectedly, argues that “Qatar-gate” is a last-ditch effort by his adversaries, Bar and Baharav-Miara, to avoid being ousted. Both loyal bureaucrats who turned into unlikely dissidents, they would lead a legal battle to keep their jobs and preserve remaining civil service independence and authority.
And so the dual battle lines, inside and outside Israel, are drawn for the showdown. Netanyahu wants to fight Hamas all the way to ethnic cleansing and is willing to sacrifice the hostages along the way. And he wants to purge the country’s establishment of his traditional rivals, the members of the military, academic and legal elites, keeping the right wing in power for ever.
His opponents, struggling to save the hostages and protect democracy, were weakened by the failure of the IDF and Shin Bet to anticipate the 7 October massacre and protect the border communities. The historic debacle has irreparably shattered the prestige of the military and intelligence community, whose former leaders led the anti-government protest. The political opposition is weak, leaderless and lacking a postwar vision. Nevertheless, despite all these obstacles and facing Netanyahu’s unbelievable stamina, the “anti-Bibists” realise that if they lose now, they may not be able to protest again and be reduced to watching their country descending down the autocratic path already paved in Hungary, India, Turkey and Trumpist America.
In the coming weeks, we will see if Israel is edging closer to the abyss of war criminality in depopulated Gaza and de facto dictatorship in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, or whether the Netanyahu stampede can be slowed down. The stakes for Israel’s future have never been as high. And the protesters are trying once again to turn the ever-higher tide.
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Aluf Benn is the editor-in-chief of Haaretz
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