Yves Smith: Is Israel Weaker Than Widely Seen in Hamas/Palestine “War”?

Yves Smith discusses Is Israel Weaker Than Widely Seen in Hamas/Palestine “War”?

Let us also remember the elephants in the room. Israel, even more so as it has become more right wing and ultra-Orthodox continue to increase as a percentage of its citizenry, has no end game for the Palestinians other than continued oppression and the hope that the current resident population leaves and/or otherwise shrinks. They have relied on policing and when the Palestinians have attacked Israel, the use of the IDF to contain the eruptions.

On the other side, there are militant forces in the Middle East that want Israelis expelled from Muslim holy areas, and potentially all of Israel. These desires have not gotten much of anywhere due to Israel having nukes and being perceived to be too formidable, particularly with US backing, for a hot conflict to have had good odds of success. However, Israel’s opponents have noted that Israel did not fare very well when it attacked Lebanon in 2006 to try to root out Hezbollah and instead failed abjectly. However, an offensive operation is also much more demanding and risky than defense.

In other words, the Israeli government has maximalist aims but has been implementing them slowly, and a meaningful contingent in the neighborhood also has maximalist aims.

Also keep in mind, given the need for Israel to project that it is undefeatable, both to deter attack and to maintain confidence at home, that just as in the Yom Kippur War, a battlefield win can still be a strategic loss. …

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Israel is implementing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians under the influence of the right-wingers. The illusion of Israeli invincibility is meant to deter any Western interference in that aim.

Marwan Bishara argues in "An Israeli civil war?" that:

From then on, American complicity in the form of economic and military support has provided the radical Israeli Right with much-needed momentum. And lately, Arab and Palestinian appeasement of fanatical Israel further hardened its racism. The Palestinian Authority has been repressing its own people in order to provide protection to Israel’s entrenching apartheid, rendering its survival an Israeli necessity.

Likewise, the willingness of autocratic Arab regimes to ditch the “land for peace” formula, and to sign up for unconditional peace and normalisation with colonial Israel, has provided Netanyahu and his fanatical allies with the legitimacy and the rationale to double down on their fanatical expansionist policies.

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This article was published before the current crisis. But Israel could collapse from within as the IDF refuses to fight in Gaza. The main problem for the Israeli religious fanatis is that they are exempt from military service, and so no voice within the IDF.