Israel’s war cabinet was set up to fail Gaza is no longer Netanyahu's priority

It was Gantz and Eisenkot who insisted a war cabinet be set up before they agreed to join Netanyahu’s emergency government in late 2023. Their rationale was twofold. First, the country needed to come together in a moment of national crisis; and second, they wanted to, as far as possible, sideline national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, a couple of bloviating extremists with little military understanding or interest beyond constantly urging a more aggressive approach and rejecting any concessions for the release of the hostages. Over the past six months, these malignant cranks have spent much of their airtime arguing for the reestablishment of Israeli settlements in Gaza.

The breakdown of the cabinet is, in certain regards, a microcosm of the problems facing Israel. For a start, the state’s ludicrous parliamentary system of almost pure proportional representation means that every single Israeli government is a coalition. This, in turn, means they almost always contain minor parties populated with various loons who are elevated to the role of kingmakers. It also means that governments tend not to see out their full terms. This is a legacy of Israel’s socialist beginnings; and it was perhaps the most egregious error David Ben Gurion, Israel’s founder, ever made. The results are plain 80 years later. Netanyahu feverishly needs both Ben-Gvir and Smotrich to keep his coalition together — especially now. He has no choice but to take account of their various religious and political pathologies. Without them, he’s out.

Perhaps the second greatest mistake Ben Gurion ever made was to exempt the Orthodox Jewish Israelis from military service. He did this because, back then, there were relatively few of them (they made up around 5% of the population). They didn’t have to serve or pay tax, because they fulfilled their duty by “praying for the state”. Obviously, Ben Gurion knew this was nonsense, but it was the easiest way to keep them on side. The problem is: when you don’t have to pay taxes, and indeed get a host of benefits for doing essentially nothing, you tend to have a lot of children (as the Orthodox do anyway), especially when you get benefits for every child. There are now expected to be two million Haredis by 2033.

In early June, as the Supreme Court heard arguments that the exemptions are unlawful, dozens of Haredis blocked roads in protest. The tensions around this issue cannot be underestimated. At the turn of the century, I flew to Israel to take part in a debating competition when I was Chairman of Debating at the Inner Temple during an ill-advised (and ill-fated) foray into law. Inner Temple were the reigning champions and, with my debate partner Michael (a Northerner who had lived in Israel for 20 years), I had to bring the oversized trophy. For this, I purchased extra legroom seats on the El Al flight so we could rest the trophy securely in front of us. After dozing off for a while, I awoke to find the space occupied by two Haredis davening (praying). As they rocked back and forth, a look of disgust passed across Michael’s face. “Fuck off!” he roared. “Michael, you can’t speak to them like that,” I whispered, mortified. “Fuck ‘em — freeloaders,” he retorted. “And pay some fucking tax!” he bellowed at their retreating figures.

These issues have dominated Israeli politics for decades. Now, they threaten to unravel it. Netanyahu is a masterful politician, but, more than this, he is an old man desperate to stay in power. All his political skills are now devoted to this; winning the war is a secondary priority. He knows that when all this is finally done, the official enquiry will come and, as prime minister, he will not be able to escape blame.

With the more reasonable and more military experienced voices now gone, the prognosis for the sanity and pragmatism of Israeli government decision-making does not look good. Israel is engaged in a war in which its avowed and overarching objective — the total elimination of Hamas — has already failed. It had recent success in rescuing four hostages in operation “Seeds of Summer”, an extraordinary military operation involving its special forces. But the effect is ultimately limited. Especially given, as an IDF official admitted to me in Tel Aviv, there is a belief that many of the hostages are now dead. 

With no military solution likely, only a political one remains — to the degree that any “solution” to all this is possible, which I suspect it is not. The best that can be hoped for is a cease of hostilities and some kind of governmental transition to ensure that a terror group like Hamas cannot govern Gaza again. The problem is that there is now a nexus of interests at the centre of Israeli politics that is less interested in compromise. And pragmatism and compromise will always have to come from Israel because, even though Hamas started all this, Israel is a democratic state, and Hamas is a bolus of psychopathic thugs.

At several points since Hamas’s attack, I’ve returned to the words of a fellow Middle East analyst who, over a beer in a Jerusalem bar, summed up the Israel-Palestinian conflict to me in a single sentence. Looking more exhausted than anything else, he replied: “I think the technical term for all this is irretrievably fucked.”

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David Patrikarakos is UnHerd‘s foreign correspondent. His latest book is War in 140 characters: how social media is reshaping conflict in the 21st century. (Hachette)

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