When speaking about Israel today, it is easy to borrow the irony of British writer and historian Max Hastings, who has witnessed and chronicled many wars. Just as he once mocked America’s appetite for conflict by asking, ‘What if they started a war and nobody came?’, we may now invert the question for Israel: What if Benjamin Netanyahu woke up one day and found no wars left to start?

Hastings, who documented the failures of the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan before Washington even reached its failure in Iran, possessed a sharp political instinct. Since his emergence in the mid-1990s, Netanyahu has possessed only one instinct: war as destiny and hostility as identity.

One dark night in October 1995, Netanyahu stood on a balcony overlooking Zion Square in Jerusalem while a banner reading ‘Death to Arabs’ was raised before him. At that moment, Yitzhak Rabin was striving for a historic peace agreement, while the Israeli right was pulling the country in the opposite direction.

Netanyahu was not just a young party leader; he was a pupil at the school of hatred, where he discovered the political power of incitement and the profitability of fear for the first time.

Netanyahu was not just a young party leader; he was a pupil at the school of hatred, where he discovered the political power of incitement and the profitability of fear for the first time.

Nothing has changed since then.

The Netanyahu who once stood beneath a banner calling for death is the same Netanyahu who now speaks of ‘moral standards’.

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The man who incited hatred against Rabin is the same man who presents war as the only path to security.

Therefore, it is not difficult to anticipate another war before the upcoming Israeli elections in October.

Netanyahu, who has plunged Israel into an existential internal crisis and unprecedented international isolation, knows that war is his last remaining instrument of political survival.

Netanyahu, who has plunged Israel into an existential internal crisis and unprecedented international isolation, knows that war is his last remaining instrument of political survival.

But the more dangerous question remains: Could Israel one day lose the United States’ support, meaning that every war Netanyahu enters would become Washington’s war by extension?

No one has a clear answer.

However, what is certain is that the old justification — that Israel’s survival depends on perpetual war — no longer convinces Israelis themselves.

The war in Gaza exposed the limits of power and illusion, and the extent to which everything can be justified in the name of ‘security’. Yet Netanyahu remains outside these limits. He envisages Israel as a ‘Greater Sparta’, a besieged yet heavily armed fortress.

In reality, however, Israel increasingly resembles a modern version of apartheid-era South Africa.

A land without a people and a people without a land: this is Netanyahu’s true project. The methods are unmistakable: mass killing and rendering the land uninhabitable. This is not an exaggeration.

Within Israel itself, writer David Grossman warns that the country is ‘living a nightmare’, asking: ‘Who will we be when we rise from the ashes?’

He concedes that what happened in Gaza was so vast and horrific that it cannot be understood through traditional frameworks.

Meanwhile, Yuval Noah Harari argues that Jewish extremists have led Israel into a doctrine of ‘violent coexistence’.

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As elections approach, Israelis will have the opportunity to reconsider the logic of fighting on multiple fronts.

However, the public mood after Gaza leans towards fear, not reflection.

And, as Netanyahu knows better than anyone, fear is a fuel that never runs out.

In his memoir, Boris Johnson recounts an absurd episode: after Netanyahu visited him at the British Foreign Office, a listening device was found in the private bathroom of his office.

Perhaps it was a coincidence; perhaps it was not.

But it captures something essential: no one can teach Netanyahu polite behaviour, not even when politeness is imposed on fools.

Ultimately, Harari seems almost naive in the face of such brutality when he asserts that there is ‘no objective reason’ for Israelis and Palestinians to fight and that the land is ‘wide and rich enough for all’.

However, Netanyahu sees this land only as a battlefield and views peace as nothing more than a pause between two wars.

However, Netanyahu sees this land only as a battlefield and views peace as nothing more than a pause between two wars.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

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