Quibbling About Killing: Netanyahu’s Spat with Washington
Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is unhappy. Not so much with the Palestinians, whom he sees as terroristic, dispensable and a threat to Israeli security. Not with the Persians, who, he swears, will never acquire a nuclear weapon capacity on his watch. His recent lack of happiness has been directed against the fatty hand that feeds him and his country’s war making capabilities.
On June 18, the Israeli PM released a video decrying Washington’s recent conduct towards his government in terms of military aid. It was “inconceivable that in the past few months, the administration has been withholding weapons and ammunitions to Israel.” Having claimed such an idea to be inconceivable, Netanyahu proceeded to conceive. He stated that US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken had “assured” him “that the administration is working day and night to remove these bottlenecks. I certainly hope that’s the case. It should be the case.”
The release coincided with efforts made by President Joe Biden’s envoy, Amos Hochstein, to cool matters concerning Israel-Hezbollah hostilities, a matter that threatens to move beyond daily border skirmishes. It was also a pointed reference to the halt in a single shipment of 2000 pound (900kg) bombs to Israel regarding concerns about massive civilian casualties over any planned IDF assault on Rafah.
The White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was uncharacteristically unadorned in frankness. “We genuinely do not know what he is talking about.” Discussions between US and Israeli officials were continuing. “There are no other pauses – none.” It fell to the White House National Security Communications advisor, John Kirby, to field more substantive questions on the matter.
On June 20, Kirby admitted to being perplexed and disappointed at Netanyahu’s remarks, “especially given that no other country is doing more to help Israel defend itself against the threat by Hamas”. As he was at pains to point out, the US military industrial complex had enthusiastically furnished “material assistance to Israel” despite the pause on the provision of 2,000-pound bombs. The notion “that we had somehow stopped helping Israel with their self-defense needs is absolutely not accurate”. Netanyahu, in other words, was quibbling about the means of inflicting death, a matter of form over substance.
Blinken confirmed as much, stating that the administration was “continuing to review one shipment that President Biden has talked about with regard to 2000-pound bombs because of our concerns about their use in densely populated areas like Rafah.” All other matters were “moving as it normally would move.”
These remarks are unequivocally true. Annual military assistance to Israel from US coffers totals $3.8 billion. In April, President Joe Biden approved the provision of $17 billion in additional assistance to Israel amidst the continued pummelling of Gaza and the starvation of its thinning population. The Biden administration has also badgered Democratic lawmakers to give their blessing to the sale of 50 F-15 fighters to Israel in a contract amounting to $18 billion. But this, according to accounts from Israel’s Channel 12 and the German paper Bild, has been less than satisfactory for Israel’s blood lusting prime minister.
The disgruntled video precipitated much agitation among officials in the Biden administration. In an Axios report, three, inevitably anonymised, offer their views. One found it “hard to fathom” how the video “helps with deterrence. There is nothing like telling Hezbollah that the US is withholding weapons from Israel, which is false, to make them feel emboldened.”
The interviewed officials all admitted to Netanyahu’s inscrutability. A half-plausible line was ventured: running up points on the domestic front ahead of a visit to Washington from Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant. Not that the strategy was working for opposition leader, Yair Lapid, who found Netanyahu’s effort damaging in its reverberating potential. From Moscow to Tokyo, “everyone is reaching the same conclusion: Israel is no longer the closest ally of the US. This is the damage Netanyahu is causing us.”
Kirby’s remarks deserve scrutiny on another level. For one, they suggest a rationale that would have done much in flattening Israeli egos. “The president put fighter aircrafts up in the air in the middle of April to help shoot down several hundred drones and missiles, including ballistic missiles that were fired from Iran proper at Israel.”
Here arises an important omission: the intervention by the US was part of a coordinated, choreographed plan enabling Iran to show force in response to the April 1 Israeli strike on its ambassadorial compound in Damascus while minimising the prospect of casualties. Accordingly, Tehran and Washington found themselves in an odd, unacknowledged embrace that had one unintended consequence: revealing Israeli vulnerability. No longer could Israel be seen to be self-sufficiently impregnable, its defences firmly holding against all adversaries. In a perverse twist on that dilemma, a strong ally providing support is bound to be resented. Nothing supplied will ever be, or can be, enough.
Fractious Arenas: Netanyahu Dissolves the War Cabinet
You could almost sense the smacking of lips, accompanied by the rubbing of hands. The departure of Benny Gantz from the Israeli war cabinet, which had served as a checking forum against the conventional security cabinet, presented a perfect opportunity for those who felt his presence stifling. In these febrile times, Gantz, the leader of the opposition National Unity party, passes as a moderate centrist and had been one of its three voting members, alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.
The resignation was prompted by Netanyahu’s tardy attitude towards formulating a plan to end the war in Gaza. Gantz had given him till June 8 to come up with something satisfactory, “a plan of action” that would include the normalisation of relations with Saudi Arabia and the creation of “an international civilian governance mechanism in Gaza”. “Unfortunately,” stated Gantz, “Netanyahu is preventing us from achieving real victory. So we are leaving the unity government. With a heavy but full heart.”
According to Gantz, he joined the emergency coalition “because we knew it was a bad government. The people of Israel, the fighters, the commanders, the families of the murdered, the casualties and the hostages needed unity and support like they needed air to breathe.”
In his resignation letter, Gantz musters praise for his own role and that of his party. “After the October 7 disaster, we set up together the emergency government. Our joining was not under question at that difficult time… Our entrance contributed several achievements to the government… national unity and conveying a clear message to the international community as well as to our enemies.”
If the message had been one of a savage campaign littered with Palestinian corpses, the infliction of conditions of famine, the crushing of the Gaza strip, not to mention ignoring political realities, then it was certainly conveyed. If any moderate influence had been exerted on the part of Gantz and his colleagues, it was a statue yet to escape its marble confines. Much of what he has proposed are distinctions without much difference. He envisages the return of Israeli hostages still held by Hamas, the destruction and substitution of the organisation in Gaza, the return of residents of the north displaced from their homes and fortifying the US-led effort against Iran.
Fellow National Unity minister Gadi Eisenkot, who also resigned, explained that the cabinet led by Netanyahu was prevented from “making key decisions, which were needed to realize the war’s goals and improve Israel’s strategic position.”
Israel watchers speculated on the significance of the move. The Gantz gambit could well stimulate an early conclusion to the conflict. On the other hand, his bluff could be called, enabling the hard right of the coalition to entrench themselves.
Shalom Lipner, non-resident senior fellow for Middle East Programs at the Atlantic Council, suggested that the resignation placed the PM “at the complete mercy of his right-wing and religious fellow travellers who – in the absence of Gantz’s fig leaf – will steer policy in a direction that is anathema to the Biden administration and puts Israel’s essential ties with the United States at risk.” A bitter Israel Harel, writing in Haaretz, wondered what improvements might be made by Gantz’s departure. Would it, for instance, encourage Netanyahu to behave more responsibly in the face of pressure from the likes of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir? Or weaken Hezbollah’s will? Or “frighten Yahya Sinwar into giving up the life insurance the hostages are providing him?”
At first instance, Netanyahu urged Gantz to reconsider. “Israel is in an existential war on multiple fronts,” the Israeli PM wrote on X. “Benny, this is not the time to abandon the campaign – this is the time to join forces.”
On June 16, Netanyahu confirmed that the ship had sailed. The six-member war cabinet, described by opposition leader Yair Lapid as a “shameful arena for settling scores, fighting and discussions that lead nowhere”, had outlived its fractious usefulness. “The cabinet was in the coalition agreement with Gantz at his request,” the PM is said to have told the Security Cabinet. “As soon as Gantz left – there was no need for a cabinet anymore.” In its place, stated a spokesperson from the prime minister’s office, the security cabinet will simply meet with greater regularity, with Netanyahu holding ad hoc “security consultations” when needed.
Abolishing the war cabinet does serve one purpose. It prevents such nationalist demagogues as Ben-Gvir of Otzma Yehudit and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich of the Religious Zionist Party from adding their troubling names to the outfit. Ben-Gvir had insisted on his addition, arguing that it was time to bring in ministers who “warned in real-time against the conception and viewpoint that everyone today accepts was wrong.” He also argued against the secrecy of the war as prosecuted.
Both men, who have urged on even greater slaughter in Gaza and the eviction of Palestinians living there, remain members of the broader security cabinet. And they have made no secret about their mixture of delight and loathing at Gantz’s departure. “There is no less stately act than resigning from a government in time of war,” Smotrich haughtily declared.
For the moment, the scene is set for a war to go even more badly than it already has. As Gaza starves and continues to be levelled, Israel’s politicians will be circling in anticipation of an election date. Netanyahu’s primary goal till then, as it has been for some years: survive.
Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.
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