I could talk endlessly about Netanyahu as the undertaker of the modern state of Israel. A few points that come to mind, don't bother reading this long piece.

1. When in 2005 Ariel Sharon insisted on Israel's departure from Gaza, Netnayahu was strongly opposed to it. Netanyahu never believed in the "land for peace"-doctrine, and later developments seemed to have proven him right. With the exception of 1978/9 when a "land for peace"-deal succeeded: The peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, with Israel handing back the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt. Had that not occurred, Sharon would probably not have assumed that Gaza could be a successful candidate as well.

2. Netanyahu had two beliefs, one half true, the other possibly: The one, half true, belief is mentioned above: The peace accord between Israel and Egypt was a shining counter-example to Netanyahu's belief that "land for peace" could not succeed. The other examples (Gaza, South Lebanon, Golan Heights) proved him right. The second belief is probably (or: perhaps) true: Netanyahu insisted that for its security Israel needed the West Bank as buffer zone against the Arab states to the North and East (Lebanon, Syria, Jordan). This was in line with the Likud party platform (Article 5, ironically) which categorically ruled out any existence of a sovereign Palestinian state on the territory of the West Bank.

3. This security interest in the West bank was the venue in which Netanyahu's secular orientation could join with the religious interests of the Orthodox, the settlers, and the Nationalists. Not to forget, a later development, the secular and tech savvy middle class who looked for affordable housing beyond places like Tel Aviv.

4. The various interests in the West Bank made what the Jeremy Corbyn Left likes to call "occupation" of what Palestinians call "their home land" a multi-layered problem. International Law forbids settling in occupied territory. To which many Israelis would reply that they have been living there "as well" since 3,000 years thus this doesn't constitute a settling violating International Law. The other argument would be to reply that this wasn't and isn't "Palestinian land" in the first place (skipping over various possible forms of land ownership and ways to prove them) because after Israel's War of Independence in 1948, Transjordan occupied the West Bank and became the Kingdom of Jordan, so that when Jordan lost that territory in again 1967, Israel wasn't technically occupying "Palestinian" but Jordan land.

5. The Palestinians are not a homogenous populace (I leave that topic aside), but the main issue here is that today's Hamas (ruling Gaza) and the Palestinian Authority (PA) (ruling West Bank enclaves) have often been treated as one and the same problem. "From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free", as exterminationalist slogan goes. And in the beginning this may have even been the case. But already in 2009 it was Netanyahu who thought to strengthen Hamas (arising form Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood) in order to weaken Fatah and the PA under Mahmood Abbas. Or put differently: The creation of a rift between Gaza and West Bank served Netanyahu's and the Israeli nationalists' purpose to not talk to the PA under the pretext that Abbas and the PA would not represent "all" Palestinians. And given this stallmate, the occupation of the West Bank territory could prolong, settlement activities could enhance, and the prospects of a Palestinan state would become dim. (One should not forget in this context that earlier the Palestinians had declined two peace plans with sovereign Palestinian statehood in most of the West Bank: one in the year 2000 (Ehud Barak-Plan) and the other in the year 2008 (Ehud Olmert-Plan).)

6. Hamas rose from tiny terror group to one of the strongest Islamic organisations in the area. While Netanyahu lost "control" over it Iran stepped in to finance and train Hamas cadre and soldiers. The terror attacks from Gaza and the militant attacks in the West Bank differed in size, organisational level, deadliness, and rigour. Also, Hamas and Fatah (or Fatah-controlled PA) differed in goals: the former went for outright destruction of Israel, the latter for a kind of "two peoples side by side". Both served Netanyahu well: Hamas he could fight and the PA he could starve out. But it was exactly the pointlessness of negotiations between PA and Israel in the 2010s that allowed Hamas to spread its influence in the West Bank youth as well.

7. When Netanyahu returned to power in 2022, he formed a coalition govenment with the extreme right and blatant racist Jewish parties. His government launched a judicial reform that paralized the country. (Aiming at curtailing the powers of the judicary over the executive.) In the meantime, his extremist government set out to implement its agenda of promoting and developing settlements in all of the West Bank. In order to secure some form of "calm", Netanyahu's government ordered IDF military from the Gaza area to the West Bank. This decision opened Israel's Western flank.

8. To make things worse, Netanyahu had lobbied intensively U.S. President Trump and Congress to walk out of the three party Nuclear Deal with Iran (Obama administration, Europe, Iran) which had created a framework for inspections of the Iran nuclear program, its facilities, and a reduction of centrifuges to subcritical quantities in exchange for softening of economic sanctions. (The often cited $450 million dollar cash delivery to Iran was done because Iran was decoupled from SWIFT and this money were frozen assets from the Shah regime by which it had prepaid never delivered weapons orders in the U.S.). Instead, Netanyahu wanted a tide sanctions regime on Iran believing that this would end its nuclear threat to Israel as well as its financial support of Islamic and terrorist organisations. Netanyahu succeeded even though Chief of the General staff of the IDF Gadi Eizenkot in 2019 declared the Iran Nuclear Deal to be working and the containment for the time being successful.

10. And so we have it. Without judging Netanyahu's motives, his policies and political actions have not just undermined Israel's security, have never provided lasting solutions for Israel's security problems, but have made possible a terrorist attack on Israel that in its breadth and depth has nothing to compare to since the European progroms. The lesson, at least for Israel, is obviously that although the political Right is fond of the security topic, it in fact can't and doesn't deliver on it and, in particular, endangers the very security it professes to make their policies and impositions all worth while.The Israel after Netanyahu will be a very different country.

#talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten