Israel Won’t Stop Until the US Cuts Off Its Arms Supply

War is in Netanyahu’s interests.

by Ash Sarkar

7 October 2024

Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the 79th United Nations General Assembly, September 2024. Mike Segar/Reuters

Today marks one year since 7 October, when Hamas fighters broke out of Gaza and launched a cross-border attack on Israel which killed 1,200 people and took more than 200 people hostage.

The subsequent war on Gaza, which began with Israel cutting off water, food, aid and energy supplies to two million people who live in the densely-populated strip, has killed at least 40,000 Palestinians. Despite 117 hostages being released early in the war, 105 of them as part of a negotiated pause to the fighting, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has since repeatedly rejected ceasefire deals.

Though no serious person could claim the conflict started on that day (by September, 2023 had already been the deadliest year on record for Palestinian children in the West Bank), the events of 7 October were clearly a point of no return. Having hoped that the Abraham Accords would quietly disappear the Palestine issue from international politics, Israel now finds itself conducting two ground invasions (Gaza and Lebanon), maintaining an occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, conducting airstrikes in Syria and Yemen, and poised to attack Iran

Since 7 October, Iran’s Axis of Resistance strategy (supporting militant groups in the Middle East hostile to Israel) has been dealt blow after blow. Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader of more than 30 years, was killed by IDF airstrikes on Beirut last week, and Hezbollah’s threat to aim long-range missiles at Israeli cities has yet to materialise.

7 October didn’t just transform the parameters of conflict between Israel and Hamas – it upended the status quo in the Middle East.

The horror of Israel’s assault on Gaza is beyond the ability of statistics to convey. In June, it was reported that ten children in Gaza lost one or both of their legs every day. Doctors in Gaza have stated they regularly see children in hospitals with sniper wounds to the chest and head. Palestinians taken prisoner by the Israeli military have reported widespread torture and rape, the latter having been corroborated by video evidence. Though it matters little to Israel’s supporters, who dismiss the idea that children are being targeted by the IDF as an antisemitic conspiracy theory, its army has become synonymous with unmitigated savagery.

An Al Jazeera investigation, published a few days ago, revealed Israeli soldiers boasting of human rights abuses on social media. “Look, I’m going to show you his back,” said one IDF combatant, pulling a detainee from a truck. “You’re going to laugh at this. He was tortured.” Soldiers have shared videos and photos of themselves rummaging through women’s underwear, draping detainees in the Israeli flag, and desecrating religious items when ransacking Gazan homes. The claim that the IDF is the most moral army in the world has always been a falsehood – but now it is truly farcical. 

Despite Israel standing accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, and being found by the International Criminal Court of being responsible for apartheid, the US has funnelled billions of dollars in military aid to Netanyahu’s government. The past year has seen Israel lead American foreign policy by the nose, as its war on Gaza and Lebanon, and escalation with Iran, has forced the Biden administration to turn back to the Middle East after trying to reorient towards Eastern Europe. Israel does not have an industrial base large enough to support wars on multiple fronts. All that it has done this year, and may do in the future, is due to being enabled by a global superpower.

In the immediate aftermath of 7 October, it seemed inevitable that Netanyahu would be punished politically for overseeing the worst security breach in Israeli history. But endless war has proved beneficial to shoring up his domestic position. He has stonewalled the families of hostages demanding a ceasefire and the return of their loved ones and mitigated the ability of rivals such as Benny Gantz to manoeuvre against him. Though the majority of Israelis say, when polled, that they want him to resign, Likud would still be the largest party if elections were held tomorrow.

For Netanyahu, the incentives align with escalation. War keeps him in power, it draws the US deeper into the Middle East and preserves the flow of military aid into Israeli coffers. Last month’s pager attack in Lebanon, the killing of Nasrallah and the assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran demonstrated the quality of Israel’s intelligence operations. And why negotiate, when your arm can reach even to the heart of Tehran? The fact is that Israel won’t stop until the US cuts off its arms supply.

Ash Sarkar is a contributing editor at Novara Media.

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