What Israel’s recent attacks tell us about Netanyahu’s next move

The Israeli ground offensive in Lebanon is nearing the end of its second week, as Israel’s war has entered its second year. Calls for a ceasefire have increased following an airstrike in Beirut on Thursday evening and the wounding of UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon by Israeli military fire on Friday.

A new offensive is taking place in Jabalia in the north of the Gaza Strip, despite continued calls for an end to the conflict there. Israel’s allies are also urging restraint as the country prepares for a retaliatory strike against Iran following last week’s ballistic missile attack.

However, Israel will continue to pursue its own path and resist this pressure for three reasons: October 7, Benjamin Netanyahu and the United States.

It was in January 2020 when Iranian General Qassem Soleimani landed at Baghdad airport on an overnight flight from Damascus. Soleimani was the head of Iran’s notorious Quds Force, an elite secret unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard that specialized in foreign missions.

The group – whose name means Jerusalem and whose main adversary was Israel – was responsible for arming, training, funding and directing proxy forces abroad in Iraq, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories and beyond. At the time, Soleimani was perhaps the second most powerful man in Iran, after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

As Soleimani’s convoy left the airport, it was destroyed by missiles fired from a drone that killed him instantly.

Although Israel provided intelligence to locate its arch-enemy, the drone belonged to the United States. The order to kill was given by then US President Donald Trump and not by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“I never forget that Bibi Netanyahu failed us,” former President Trump later said in a speech about Soleimani’s assassination. In a separate interview, Trump also suggested that he had expected Israel to play a more active role in the attack, complaining that Netanyahu was “ready to fight Iran to the last American soldier.”

While Trump’s account of events is controversial, it was believed at the time that Netanyahu, who praised the killing, was concerned that direct Israeli involvement could trigger a large-scale attack against Israel, either directly from Iran or from its proxies in Lebanon and Lebanon Palestinian territories. Israel fought a shadow war with Iran, but each side was careful to keep fighting within certain limits for fear of provoking the other side into a larger conflict.

Just over four years later, in April of this year, the same Benjamin Netanyahu ordered Israeli warplanes to bomb a building in the Iranian diplomatic compound in Damascus, killing two Iranian generals, among others.

Then in July the Israeli Prime Minister approved the assassination of Fuad ShukrHezbollah’s top military commander in an airstrike on Beirut. The current US president’s reaction was reportedly to insult him, according to a new book by Bob Woodward, who claims President Joe Biden was appalled that the Israeli prime minister was willing to escalate a conflict the White House wanted to bring an end to months.

“You know, the perception of Israel around the world is increasingly that you are a rogue state, a rogue actor,” President Biden said is said to have said.

The same prime minister who was called too cautious by a US president was then castigated as too aggressive by his successor.

What separates the two episodes is, of course, October 7, 2023 – the bloodiest day in Israel’s history and a political, military and intelligence failure of catastrophic proportions.

What unites these two moments, however, is that Netanyahu is defying the will of a US president.

Both factors help explain the way Israel continues to wage the current war.

Israel’s recent wars ended after a few weeks when international pressure increased so much that the United States insisted on a ceasefire.

The ferocity and scale of the Hamas attack on Israel, the impact on Israeli society and its sense of security, mean that this war was always going to be different from any other recent conflict.

For a U.S. government that is pumping billions of dollars’ worth of weapons into Israel, the death and suffering of Palestinian civilians in Gaza are deeply unpleasant and politically damaging to the government. To America’s critics in the region, the superpower’s apparent powerlessness to influence the largest recipient of American aid is baffling.

Even after U.S. jets took part in repelling Iranian attacks on Israel in April – a clear sign of how Israel’s security is guaranteed by its larger ally – Israel continued to fend off attempts to change the course of its war.

This summer, Israel decided to escalate its conflict with Hezbollah without first seeking approval from the United States.

As Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, Netanyahu has learned from more than 20 years of experience that he can withstand, if not ignore, U.S. pressure. Netanyahu knows that the US, especially in an election year, will not take any action that would force him to deviate from his chosen course (and certainly believes he is fighting America’s enemies too).

Particularly in light of the recent escalation, it would be wrong to assume that Netanayhu operates outside Israel’s political mainstream. If any, The pressure on him is to be tougher to take tougher action against Hezbollah, but also against Iran.

When the US and France discussed a ceasefire plan for Lebanon last month, criticism of the proposed 21-day ceasefire came from the opposition and Israel’s main left-wing group, as well as right-wing parties.

Israel is determined to continue its wars now, not only because it believes it can withstand international pressure, but also because Israel’s tolerance for the threats it faces has changed after October 7.

Hezbollah has for years declared its goal to invade the Galilee in northern Israel. Now that the Israeli public has experienced the reality of armed men breaking into homes, this threat cannot be contained, it must be eliminated.

Israel’s perception of risk has also changed. Long-held notions of military red lines in the region have evaporated. In the past year, several acts were committed that, until recently, could have led to a full-scale conflict with bombs and rocket attacks on Tehran, Beirut, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Israel assassinated the head of Hamas while he was a guest of the Iranians in Tehran; it also killed Hezbollah’s entire leadership, including Hassan Nasrallah; It assassinated senior Iranian officials in diplomatic buildings in Syria.

Hezbollah has fired more than 9,000 missiles, missiles and drones at Israeli cities, including ballistic missiles at Tel Aviv. The Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen have also fired large missiles at Israeli cities that were intercepted by Israeli defenses as they re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere over central Israel. Iran has launched not one but two attacks against Israel in the last six months using more than 500 drones and missiles. Israel invaded Lebanon.

Any of these circumstances could have triggered a regional war in the past. The fact that it isn’t will change the way a normally cautious, risk-averse Israeli prime minister decides his next move.

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