Israel’s dream of national unity

Israel’s and humanity’s bane, that Netanyahu whom every passing noble soul describes and portrays as a criminal, is the leader of the largest party, of the coalition with the most votes, and despite the intricate twists and turns of his country’s strictly proportional electoral system, despite the frozen pivotal role played by two lists of Arab parties in the land of apartheid, the only place in the Middle East where an Arab can live freely, despite everything he could remain Israel’s Prime Minister and bring the war on seven fronts to an end – first and foremost the Iranian front – thereby ensuring relative security for Israel and giving some respite to its people, who are oppressed by the consequences of 7 October 2023 – a pogrom – and by the Iranian nuclear threat, a threat of genocide, the real thing.

This political and national situation – which for many of us is obvious, predictable and even desirable – is nevertheless accompanied by an urgent need to reflect on the need to rebuild a bond of national unity in order to overturn the shameful equating of Israel with colonialism and Nazism that is rampant in the ‘right-thinking’ world, with the accompanying resurgence of global anti-Semitism that this entails, is being addressed in mournful tones by many commentators who had staked their hopes on a pipe dream: replacing Netanyahu with Eisenkot to do the opposite of what Netanyahu has done. A pipe dream, because if Gadi Eisenkot – a man of such high calibre that he should not be judged in the partisan terms used by his enemies to judge and condemn Netanyahu – had won, and if it were up to him to become Prime Minister, within eighteen months he would disarm Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and not through moral suasion, and he would have to remain vigilant, as promised, on the other six fronts of the armed encirclement of his country, rather than picking up the thread leading to the ‘two peoples, two states’ formula.

National unity—solid, ironclad, the result of a truly powerful historic compromise achieved under Netanyahu’s skilful and expert leadership, yet with ample scope for his strategic allies, today’s enemies—would also make it possible to rebuild a settlement policy not geared towards an improbable and undesirable annexation of the occupied territories of Judea and Samaria or the West Bank, settlements that originated under ‘left-wing’ Israeli governments – to use the flawed geopolitical terminology employed in such cases – and might perhaps pave the way for a solution to the issue of state service for the Haredim, who are objectively within their rights as conscientious objectors, but whose numbers are too great and who live in a country under such severe threat that they cannot claim total exemption from military service. All this, moreover, with a view to linking Israel’s new diplomatic approach in the Gulf and amongst the major Sunni countries involved in or affected by the Abraham Accords with the reality of what remains of the Palestinian people’s political experience following the triumph within their ranks of Hamas, jihadism, and the practices of autocracy and corruption – which are the only alternative, though by no means a great one, to nihilistic fanaticism. National unity would deal a decisive blow to the anti-Jewish sentiment prevalent within the humanitarian community associated with the UN and in many European governments – first and foremost, regrettably, the British government – and the image of an Israel capable of re-establishing a framework that is confrontational and democratic yet not characterised by the devastating kind of rancour we have seenat work in matters of justice and on the dramatic issue of hostages would in itself be a welcome turning point for the millions of Jews in the country and for others in the Diaspora, all of whom are entitled to be respected and judged free from the grotesque and demonising stereotypes that have taken hold since 7 October and the sacrosanct response from Gaza and the other wars still ongoing.