Haaretz EIC on Netanyahu & “Israel’s Self-Destruction”

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, INTERNATIONAL HOST: Next, we turn to the horrors of the war in the Middle East. Palestinian health authorities say more than 29,000 Gazans have now been killed, while the United States pivots at the U.N. proposing a resolution for a temporary ceasefire, and warning Israel not to send ground troops into an offensive in Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians have fled. Aluf Benn is the editor-in-chief at Haaretz. His latest essay for “Foreign Affairs” is called “Israel’s Self-Destruction: Netanyahu, the Palestinians, and the Price of Neglect.” And he’s joining Walter Isaacson to talk about it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WALTER ISAACSON, CO-HOST, AMANPOUR AND CO.: Thank you, Christiane. And Aluf Benn, welcome to the show.

ALUF BENN, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, HAARETZ: Thank you.

ISAACSON: President Biden has been talking to Prime Minister Netanyahu, Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, they both urged him not to go into Rafah so hard. Prime Minister Netanyahu posted on X a pretty defiant statement in reaction to that. It says, we will continue to fight until complete victory with all of our strength on every front, everywhere, until we restore security and peace. Do you think that Prime Minister Netanyahu is right to be rebuffing President Macron and President Biden?

BENN: No. I think he’s wrong. I think that President Biden is actually offering Israel great — a great promise, a very promising peace plan that, you know, according to the reports that we’ve read at “The Washington Post” and other sources, he’s working with several Arab leaders on a very comprehensive plan for the day after the Gaza war with, you know, working towards the establishment of a Palestinian State, towards implementing the two-state solution, wider normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia and perhaps other Arab states. And of course, finding a mechanism for better security for Israel and its neighbors along the borders, both in Gaza and in the north. Whereas, there’s a lower intensity conflict with Hezbollah.

ISAACSON: Well, all that sounds good, but ever since the Oslo Accords, Prime Minister Netanyahu — and even before the Oslo accords, has been against a Palestinian State. In response to this plan, he wrote, Israel outright rejects international dictates regarding a permanent settlement with the Palestinians. How can we get from here to there if he’s not even going to be open to the question of a Palestinian State?

BENN: Well, that’s a very good — that’s the toughest question of all. Clearly, Netanyahu spent his entire career trying to derail the Palestinian national movement. And especially since returning to power in 2009, when he began by saying that he would somehow conditionally agree to a Palestinian State, he changed his mind, and his last coalition — the current one, very right-wing, the most right-wing coalition in Israel’s history, even declared that nobody besides the Jewish people has any rights in the entire space between the river and the city. Clearly, the Palestinians stemming again have shown that they’re not willing to forego their aspirations, their dreams, their fights against Israel in the case of Hamas. And time and again, this idea that we could simply ignore the problem came back to haunt Israel. But for 15 years, Netanyahu has told the story that Israel could prosper without peace, could reach out to the wider Arab world without peace. And to some extent, aided by the Arab Spring that, you know, dismantled and disrupted the Arab world, Israel was able to enjoy that quiet security, prosperity while most of the time ignoring the Palestinians. But after October 7, clearly, this no longer the case. Now, Netanyahu sticks to a coalition that is very right-wing, and suffering from a very low popularity due to the failures of October 7 and what got Israel into this war. So, he’s trying to rebuild his campaign by saying that he would be the only one who could oppose the international dictation towards a Palestinian State. And, clearly, President Biden too has his own political worries before presidential election regard the — you know, vis a vis, the progressives in his own party that are less for Israel than their parents and grandparents or the Biden generation, if — the Democratic Party, if you want. So, this fight serves them both politically, but it doesn’t get us out of the war, and it doesn’t get us towards a better coexistence or peaceful solution in the future. And that’s a problem.

ISAACSON: The more immediate problem is the hostages and the continuation of this war. CIA Director William Burns in the United States has been part of a process with a lot of nations. They were meeting in Cairo to try to have what I think the president called a sustained period of calm for at least six weeks and to have a hostage exchange. Now, Prime Minister Netanyahu is not even sending negotiators to be part of that process in Cairo. Will he face domestic pressure for not being able to release the hostages?

BENN: Netanyahu has been able — you know, regretfully, has been able to paint this — the call to release the hostages or to free the hostages, bring them back home in return for the release of some Palestinian prisoners into a political fight. So, he colored it as if the opposition that is against him and against his political base is supporting the hostage deal while he’s standing up to Hamas and to the rest of the world, while these hostages are dying there, and those who are alive are suffering the worst atrocities you can think of. But clearly, there is not enough pressure on Netanyahu to conclude this deal. He’s still suffering from criticism in his base towards a deal he signed with Hamas in 2011 to release one Israeli prisoner of war, Gilad Shalit, in return for over a thousand Palestinians, including Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, the organizer of the October 7 massacre. And so, now Netanyahu is trying to compensate that.

ISAACSON: Let me push back on you in that. Shouldn’t he be criticized for that deal?

BENN: Well, you know, it’s easy to say that, you know, looking back, it was a mistake to release Sinwar. It was not even so important to the Israelis at the time. The Israelis at the time resisted the release of other of other terrorists, not Sinwar, who was seen as a smaller time terrorist, because he killed only Palestinians and not Jews. But look, the circumstances were different. There was a lot of pressure to release Shalit. And, frankly, if the country was better prepared for war, the border was better protected, and, Netanyahu, rather than tear the country apart with what he you call legal reform, which was a kind of autocratic coup through dismantling the independence of the Supreme Court and other civil liberties and democratic freedoms in Israel, we would have been in a better shape. This was not a given that if you release someone from prison, they come back to fight you.

ISAACSON: You just published a piece in “Foreign Affairs” called “Israel’s Self-Destruction,” in which you say that Prime Minister Netanyahu’s policies paved the way for what happened on October7th . Explain.

BENN: Well, I think the major thing was the ignorance of Palestinians and the argument that Israel could live and prosper while not looking at the Palestinians or treating them, you know, as bad as possible without paying any price or with, you know, occasional outburst of terrorist attacks or occasional rocket fire from Gaza that Israel could live with and develop defensive systems to protect against. This obviously was not the case, as we see. But even more so, in the past year, since returning to power a year ago, Netanyahu did everything to split Israeli society through his judicial coup, ignoring time and again, warnings from his own defense minister, from the heads of intelligence, of security service, from senior military personnel acting and reservists telling him that this internal split is a temptation for Israel’s enemies to hit, and that’s — the risk of war is almost imminent. True. They were not focused on Hamas. They were focused on stronger enemies like Iran, like Hezbollah, like other Iranian proxies in the region. But still, Netanyahu ignored it. He did not see any risk. He also only saw political risk in these warnings. He never once said, OK, let’s check the security along the borders. Are we safe? He’s tried — he tried to fire the defense minister after he issued this warning. And he ignored the military intelligence chiefs whom he saw as supporting his opponents, many of whom were former generals and pilots and so on and then people who were very proud of their military service. And Netanyahu, throughout his career, always had very tense relationship with the Israeli military establishment. His main political rivals throughout the years, Yitzhak Rabin, Ariel Sharon, Benny Gantz, Ehud Barak, were all former senior military officers. And even though he sees them as timid, he doesn’t like their politics of, you know, being strong militarily but flexible diplomatically. He doesn’t like their ideas of conflict resolution. And, clearly, it came to a head, and the price — you know, we all paid the price. But Netanyahu, since October 7, has never once taken any iota of responsibility for what happened, both before the war and during the war, or in planning and looking ahead towards the day after the war.

ISAACSON: Many people, including President Biden, have said that the response after October 7th has now become over the top. And you see pushback around the world, anti-Israeli sentiment, because of the killings that have happened in Gaza because of the Israeli response. Do you think it’s been over the top, and what would have the alternatives have been?

BENN: OK. I think the war was and still is very, very popular among the system of Israeli-Jews. Very popular and still enjoys wide support. The main division is — as I said, is what comes first, releasing the hostages or destroying Hamas or winning the war. Now, Netanyahu is talking about total victory without actually explaining what it means. Look, Israel had to fight against Hamas because it would be very difficult to convince people to live not just along the border, as they did before October 7, and still have yet to come back both around Gaza and around the Lebanese border, but also in other parts of Israel. And, clearly, Hamas has been able to build a very sophisticated but — by very simple means, but a very sophisticated plan and deploy it without the idea of noticing. So, people are scared, and they want to see victory against Hamas. Now, for most of the Israeli public, they don’t see what’s happening in Gaza. We at Haaretz are the only ones who even report in Hebrew to Israeli audiences the level of damage and destruction in Gaza and killing. We interview people who live there. It has zero resonance within the Israeli-Jewish public, which is a problem because then the military feels that they have a free hand to do whatever they want and look away and turn — and look away at looting and, you know, use as destruction and so on. At the same time, it’s very difficult to fight a paramilitary group that is residing in tunnels, underground tunnels and bunkers, and that, you know, lives within the within the civil society in Gaza. So, it’s very difficult to say what would be the exact point after which it’s over the top. Clearly, the operation in Rafah that involves getting into occupying an area that — where most of the population of Gaza has fled to is very complicated, and I don’t see it coming. It’s imminent to happen tomorrow. There is military reasoning to argue that if you don’t close — if you don’t seal the Egyptian border and find a way to prevent further contraband getting into Gaza, and if you don’t deal with the remaining Hamas force, you’re at fault. But then again, you have to protect these civilians there, and you have to think of a way of them to get back to where they live, where they live before the war, rebuild Gaza, and rebuild Gaza in a way that is not just aimed at building a force to fight Israel, which they did, unfortunately, very effectively in those years of siege.

ISAACSON: Many within the Israeli leadership argue that this big response to October 7th was absolutely necessary. And you say that many Jews in Israel generally agree with that. Does that mean that this approach is not likely to change?

BENN: Well, look, if we look — if we judge by the past, whenever Israel was taken by surprise, either by the — by Egypt and Syria in ’73, Yom Kippur War, or by the first and second Palestinian intifadas, usually, there is a major shift towards the right and towards just, you know, use more force and deploy more soldiers and just crush them. But then after a while, people realized that this not a long-term solution for coexistence, prosperity, and security. And therefore, they try to seek the diplomatic peaceful solution, which, again, that’s — it’s never an end in itself. And what we know now after 50 years of peace processing is that, you know, it’s a living organism that you need to feed and you need to worry about. It’s not just signing something and then throwing the throwing away the key.

ISAACSON: So, do you think there’s a possibility of a peace process towards a two-state solution once this over?

BENN: Look, I’m — I belong to a minority of optimists in this part of the world where usually pessimism is there is the surest way to be right most of the time. Yes, I believe there is. The big question is who could play the role (INAUDIBLE)? The leader of Egypt who went to war in ’73, and then four years later came to Jerusalem and eventually signed the peace treaty that is still holding despite his assassination a couple years after. But President Biden is trying to do is to fill in for the lack of that kind of Palestinian leader with MBS, with the leader of Saudi Arabia, and make him sort of the custodian of that peace process in return for whatever security guarantees and other goodies that Saudi Arabia wants from the United States. It’s a very long shot, but it can be the beginning of something. And we must remember, it took several years from the Kissinger Shuttle Diplomacy to the peace treaty that eventually was signed when Carter was president, it took a while from Baker’s Madrid conference to the Oslo Accord signed at the front yard of Bill Clinton, et cetera, et cetera. So, it’s not something that is going to happen tomorrow. But I hope that the Israeli public opinion would also realize that the Netanyahu approach and the right-wing approach is a wrong approach because it only brings more tragedy and more problems afterwards, even if, immediately, it’s seen as the only way to deal with the problem.

ISAACSON: Aluf Benn, thank you so much for joining us.

BENN: Thank you, Walter.