What Will It Take to Stop Israel?

Writing on the anniversary of 7 October is itself a thorny endeavour. What should this day commemorate?

One can be fully immersed in Israel’s decades-long denial of Palestinian rights and relentless provocations of the Palestinians; a people’s right to resist belligerent occupation; with Aimé Césaire and the “boomerang effect of colonisation” and the inevitability of violent blowback – all while fully cognisant of the criminality of acts perpetrated by militant Palestinian groups against Israeli and foreign civilians on 7 October 2023.

There will inevitably be criticism today of the inability of some to hold space for Jewish Israeli suffering. That pain is all too real, as memorial services taking place today across Israel will attest. Unfortunately Israel’s reaction to that 7 October attack, both in words and in actions, shrank that space for empathy in four key ways, ways that are central to the subsequent counter-reactions and narratives, especially in the west. Three were in the way Israel framed the attack. 

Losing sympathy.

First was Israel’s insistence on decontextualising the Hamas attack, as if 7 October hadn’t been preceded by 76 years of occupation and colonisation. Second, its doubling down on dehumanising the Palestinians, a manoeuvre that might have worked within Israel but lost it sympathy outside of the country. Third, Israel’s rapid deployment of disinformation campaigns, which even after being thoroughly debunked continue to resonate.

But it was the fourth domain of Israel’s response – not its words, but its actions – that most decentered the criminal acts of 7 October and made it necessary to confront Israel’s own criminal response, – and by extension, Israel’s criminal actions across decades. This is not about justifications – nothing can justify the decades long dispossession of Palestinians by Israel, nor the Hamas-led attack of 7 October, or the genocidal actions by Israel over the past year.

By late on Saturday, 7 October, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had committed to turning all places where Hamas could be hiding – having predefined that to include all of Gaza – “into rubble”. Netanyahu stated:, “I say to the residents of Gaza: leave now because we will operate forcefully everywhere.” Without there being anywhere for Gazans to go. By the morning of Monday 9 October, Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant had announced a complete siege on Gaza and the cutting off of all essential supplies, including electricity, food, fuel and water. The Israeli bombing campaign had begun, followed by a ground invasion on 27 October.

It took less than a week from 7 October for Israeli president Isaac Herzog to declare that “it’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. This rhetoric about civilians, it’s absolutely not true.” By 29 October, Save the Children reported that the number of children killed in Gaza in just three weeks (then at 3,195) had surpassed the annual number of children killed across all the world’s conflict zones in any average recent year. The number of Palestinian children killed now stands at over 16,500, with total losses estimated at nearly 42,000, not including the countless who lie under the rubble.

Western leaders, led by Joe Biden, rushed to condemn the Hamas attack. They ignored decades of Israeli criminality and provided cover for the mass killing that was to follow. They directly abetted the creation of a humanitarian disaster, one that has led the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to recommend urgent provisional measures in relation to plausible violations of the Genocide convention, and to the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor requesting arrest warrants for Israel’s leaders. In so doing, western leaders have poisoned their own domestic discourse as well as their ability to advance any credible political or moral argument or plan in relation to the region. How much longer can this horrific war (now more regional in nature and including the destruction of Lebanon) – this plausible genocide, in the ICJ’s view – go on? 

The urgency of the issue should be self-evident. Palestinians face an Israeli leadership transparent about its intention to eradicate them – now, in implementation mode, most evidently in Gaza but also in the West Bank, alongside the intimidation and silencing of Palestinian citizens of Israel. 

It is also very unlikely that Israeli Jewish society will emerge from this without experiencing more grief. Their future, for now and until a different path is taken, is likely to be one of largely self-inflicted uncertainty and insecurity. 

Israel is far from the world’s only bad actor – the differentiating factor is in the meeting point of heightened criminality with unparalleled impunity. The red lines Israel has crossed with western backing is unprecedented and will have consequences well beyond the Middle East for decades. 

Cost-benefit analysis.

It is clear that internal dynamics within Israeli politics will not on their own generate the changes required. We therefore need to look at the cost-benefit calculation for Israel. Such an incentive structure might look at six areas: the battlefield balance of forces; Israeli internal resilience and social cohesion; economic challenges; Palestinian and regional pushback; Israel’s legal complications; and Israel’s overall international standing. 

On the battlefield, Israel has recently brought its technology and intelligence advantage to the fore, notably against Hezbollah, having infiltrated the Lebanese movement’s communications systems. After a year of failing to secure its “total victory” against Hamas, Israel has belatedly restored some of its deterrence and power-projection reputation. 

While the “axis of resistance” – an Iran-backed alignment of states and armed movements spanning Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and OPT’s, each with their own independent political equities – has seen its capacity degraded in different ways by Israel, it is far from incapacitated. 

In important respects the balance of forces has shifted against Israel and highlighted vulnerabilities. Despite Israel’s decimation of Gaza, Hamas is very much still standing – and its ability to transition to more guerilla-style operations is likely to disadvantage Israel if the IDF pursues a long-term presence in Gaza. 

The various axis of resistance actors – including Iraqi Popular Mobilisation Forces and the Houthis, as well as the Iranian state – have deployed drone, missile and other technology previously not deployed against Israel directly. Israel’s US-guaranteed qualitative military edge limits impact but that edge erodes over time and cannot prevent Israeli losses, insecurity or socioeconomic frailties. Israeli attempts to reassert escalation dominance have not gone unchallenged by Iran. If Israel continues with a deeper ground operation in Lebanon it is likely to face another front of attrition which plays to its disadvantage. 

Israel has shown just how dependent on the US it is militarily, including replenishing its weapon stocks. And in asymmetric warfare, Israel has scored a number of own goals in its deployment of force that spill from the battlefield to other arenas. 

Where the battlefield ends and internal resilience and social cohesion begin is a grey zone. 

Israeli Jewish society has remained mobilised throughout the war, supportive of Netanyahu’s actions (in their extremity), and Israel has avoided high levels of casualties.

But as noted, wars of attrition do not serve Israel. There is increasing evidence of reservists not showing up for additional tours of duty; of exhaustion in the ranks; of a large number of seriously injured and traumatised soldiers; and of command structures coming under stress, including from soldiers who are going beyond orders given in the crimes they are committing.

Internal dissent.

Despite the breadth of consensus around the war, the combination of media mobilisation and censorship, and the absence of a meaningful political opposition, Israeli society was nevertheless polarised prior to 7 October, and remains so today. 

The protest movement is centred around the question of the hostages, but also speaks to a wider sense of a social contract between government and public having been broken. The 20% of Israelis who are Palestinian citizens (themselves not a monolith) are, in many respects, in a more precarious and alienated position than ever. Another 20% or more of Israeli society, the strictly orthodox or haredi, refuses to enlist in the military – a long-held tradition, though particularly conspicuous during a prolonged war – another acute fault-line in the country. 

Anecdotal evidence around brain drain, emigration, yet another wave of Israelis securing alternative passports and, where they can, even purchasing second homes adds to a not insignificant sense of unravelling. 

On other points, data is easier to come by: Israel’s deficit is now at 8.1%, its GDP growth just 0.7%. The increase in military expenditures is only partly offset by relentless budgetary and military transfers from the US; tourism has taken an obvious knock; and Israel’s credit ratings have been downgraded two notches.

The bigger worry, as recently reported by The Economist, is that Israeli banks are now experiencing capital flight, with customers asking to transfer savings to other countries or to index them to the dollar. Then there are the unknown economic impacts, such as the number of investments into Israel that have been deferred; companies relocating or finding alternative contractors. 

Meanwhile, there is the cost of living for Israel’s middle class. Israel’s economy is not on its knees, but as war continues with no end in sight, and as the prospect of Hezbollah or Iran bringing Tel Aviv and other commercial centres (where military bases are located) into the fray, the scene could look bleak, especially since Israel is hugely exposed globally – it runs anything but a resistance economy. 

Paradoxically, one of the few bright spots for Israel can be found in its Arab neighbours. 

Arab absence.

Despite Arab public sentiment, which has made itself quite clear, the surrounding regimes have offered little in way of pushback, beyond the rhetorical. Across the Arab world, there have been civil society-driven boycotts of western companies considered complicit in Israel’s illegal actions. In Jordan the public has been particularly on edge, with large protests in Amman. Qatar and Egypt have tried to act as mediators between Israel and Hamas (unsuccessfully, given the US primus inter pares status and its undermining of diplomacy). 

But the bigger picture is of an unwillingness among Arab states to deploy their leverage, which is nothing new. The Abraham Accords and other normalisation efforts have definitively been proven not to create a more peaceful regional environment (predictably enough, given the intention of marginalising and delinking Palestinian rights). They have, though, proven to be robust under the most trying of circumstances, and the US has continued to push an anti-Palestinian normalisation agenda in trying to advance a Saudi-Israel pact – which is yet to materialise. 

The Palestinians themselves have demonstrated what is known in Arabic as sumud or steadfastness. Acknowledging the multiple ways in which Palestinians have shown remarkable resilience cannot compensate for the debilitating effect of continued political division and absence of strategic leadership, which has a knock-on effect in failing to organise, challenge and embarrass the Arab hinterland and to put to use public popular support. The Palestinian leadership deficit remains one of Israel’s strongest cards.

The legal front.

Israel’s legal complications present a much less rosy picture. International law and the rulings of the international justice system have the weakness of not being self-enforcing. Instead they are best understood as a slow-motion earthquake, in the words of Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfard, forcing Israel’s hand over years rather than months.

Israel’s legal exposure has increased exponentially over the past year, from the ICC arrest warrant request to the ongoing genocide case initiated by South Africa at the ICJ (which will take time to reach a final decision but has already called for urgent provisional measures, predictably ignored by Israel), as well as the advisory opinion ruling by the ICJ on 19 July (initiated back in December 2022, but whose findings have undoubtedly been influenced by recent events). 

That ICJ ruling found the entirety of the occupation to be illegal and in violation of the convention on the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination, constituting a regime of discrimination,  apartheid, or both, and detailed the obligations and responsibilities of third parties to be non-complicit, including in arms sales. It is a ruling which has now been codified by an overwhelming majority of UN member states in UN resolution GA/12626. 

This creates an opening for instance, for lawsuits to be pursued in jurisdictions around the world on issues around complicity, arms sales and non-recognition of Israel’s illegal occupation. 

International standing.

Finally, what are the implications of the past year for Israel’s overall international standing? The treatment of Palestinians has, in many respects, become an avatar for injustices around the world. The Palestinian cause has generated narrative shifts and a strength and intensity of worldwide protest movement rarely seen, with innumerable new recruits and unprecedented cultural cachet. The cost to the west of supporting Israel’s illegal actions and racist pronouncements is stuck in an inflationary cycle. Western politics and societies themselves are divided, often in debilitating ways. 

At the level of state power, the vacuum has partly been filled by countries in the global south taking action in the international court system, downgrading or cutting ties and trade and challenging western double standards (see South Africa, Colombia, Turkey, Malaysia and Indonesia, among others). At a civic level, cultural, academic and consumer boycotts – declared or de facto – are growing, and even impacting the ability of Israeli football teams to compete in regular stadia. Jewish dissent is more vocal, organised, determined and widespread than ever. 

Ranged against all these remains the formidable lengths to which the US (and some western allies) will go in enabling Israel’s continued march down the path of ignominy and self-destruction. That enabling runs the gamut from military assistance to endorsing Israeli narratives, the deployment of spurious accusations of antisemitism, and attempts to criminalise truth telling. But geopolitical power is shifting – given a push also by the events of the last year.

One year from 7 October, Israel, its allies and friends would be well advised to ask a simple question: is this working for you? The future of Israeli Jews – of all Jews – must be delinked from a zero-sum project of endless war and ethnonationalist triumphalism. Israel’s push for an endgame completion of the Nakba will be devastating for Palestinians. That project, being pursued by a nuclear armed state is dangerous, whether it succeeds or implodes, also for Jews in Israel and worldwide. Getting Israel off this catastrophic path first requires acknowledging the terrifying reality we are dealing with.