They reject a political solution with the Palestinians
The conflict in Gaza showed that the policies of Trump and Netanyahu have failed completely
Former President Donald Trump gave full support to Netanyahu's vision of crushing the Palestinians.
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Israel and the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) stopped their "war" that extended for 11 days, but even before the bombing stopped, it was clear that this war changed the political scene.
The confrontation between Israel and the Palestinians has shifted the focus from Gaza to many other fronts, such as Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Israel itself, and any escalation in any of them could trigger a new round of violence.
The events that occurred in Jerusalem sparked the last crisis, and there are other opportunities for its recurrence.
It seems that the extremist right-wing groups in Israel are determined to tighten their grip on the city of Jerusalem, and to wipe out the Palestinian presence from it at the earliest opportunity.
"The political temperature will remain high, but it will still be slightly below the boiling point," said Daniel Levy, a former Israeli diplomat and head of the US/Middle East project.
Any ignition that occurs in Jerusalem can raise it to a boiling point.”
Israeli leaders hoped that dividing the Palestinians into cantons, three million in the West Bank, two million in Gaza and the same number in Israel, and 300,000 in East Jerusalem, would also divide them politically, as well as geographically.
At first glance, this policy seemed to be working, but during the past two weeks, as soon as the crisis broke out in one of these cantons, it quickly spread to the other cantons.
The efforts of the Israeli police to remove the Palestinians from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in Jerusalem, and the use of sound bombs and tear gas by its members in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, prompted the "Hamas" movement to launch a barrage of rockets from Gaza.
This, in turn, incited widespread protests by Palestinians in Israel, in a manner that has not occurred since the second intifada nearly 20 years ago.
In the West Bank, protesters poured into the streets of all cities, while the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority was mocked and marginalized.
Despite empty negotiations on one-state, two-state solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the very clear result is that the fourth war centered in Gaza proves that the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean is a single political unit.
Anything that affects one part of it affects the rest.
The difficulty of fighting the Palestinians
The recent war showed that Israel is having difficulty fighting and engaging the Palestinians, and it is certainly surprised that Hamas fired 3,700 rockets at it.
Even if Hamas seems to have developed a little of its military muscle, there is no dispute over the Israeli superiority, especially in light of the confrontation with the ill-armed “Hamas” militia, but this Israeli superiority did not give Tel Aviv a victory that Israel does not know how What it will look like, despite the destruction of Gaza and the killing of 232 people, including 65 children.
But Israeli commentators are frankly aware, and fully aware, that this battle has not been successful, more than their counterparts in the Western world.
Haaretz editor-in-chief, Aluf Benn, described the recent conflict as "Israel's most failed and absurd operation in Gaza."
Other countries faced similar frustrations when they engaged in what is known as asymmetric warfare against an enemy that is militarily weaker, but not easy to defeat.
This happened to Britain in Northern Ireland between 1968 and 1998.
The logical response to any government that fails to achieve its goal through force is to search for ways to engage in political and diplomatic solutions with the other party to reach a settlement.
dominant vision
But this exact approach cannot be taken by the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
For nearly a quarter of a century it has been his strategy since his election as Israel's leader in 1997, when he said that Israel could have a lasting peace without reaching a settlement with the Palestinians.
This is the prevailing view from the center-left to the extreme right in Israel, according to which the Palestinians must be inflicted with a crushing defeat, and there is no need to make any concessions to them.
Given that former President Donald Trump gave full support to this vision during his administration, many Israelis were convinced that Netanyahu was right.
Gaza was comprehensively besieged, the West Bank divided into cantons, Israeli settlement activity was rapidly increasing, and Jerusalem was surrounded on all sides by settlements, while the Palestinians were being emptied from the inside, and even the Palestinians living in Israel remained a weak minority.
Mirage
But it was all a mirage, as the latest war in Gaza may look like the previous wars in 2008, 2009, 2012, 2014, but it is much more important because the Netanyahu/Trump policy failed miserably. The Palestinian-Israeli crisis has returned to the surface, and it is more intense and widespread than before. The new feature of this war is that the Palestinians of Israel took to the streets demanding equality and an end to racial discrimination. West Bank settlers have returned to Israel to lead anti-Palestinian demonstrations in towns and cities where a mixture of Palestinians and Jews live.
This does not mean that the balance of power between the two sides of the conflict tends to the Palestinians. On the contrary, one of the problems that face persuading the Israelis of all stripes to negotiate with the Palestinians lies in the fact that they believe that they do not need to.
Hamas may have become more powerful and the credibility of the Palestinian Authority collapsed to the bottom as a result of the recent war, but there is an overall vacuum in the Palestinian leadership.
This is not a crippling negative trait as it appears, because Palestinian political movements have a long tradition of tightening their grip on power as one of their top priorities.
In fact, the ceasefire reached between Hamas and Israel heralds an era of instability.
Daniel Levy believes that Israel will be in a permanent crisis, because it does not have a military solution to Gaza and Hamas, while its right-wing leaders are surrounded by ideological concerns that prevent them from opening up to diplomatic and political options with the Palestinians.
Finally, it became clear that weakening the Palestinians through fragmentation and dividing them is an ineffective means.
Now Israel's leaders will have to deal with different variants of the Palestinian-Israeli crisis, each of which may be like the coronavirus, becoming the tyrannical strain, and then unleashing the explosions.
Despite empty negotiations on one-state, two-state solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the very clear result is that the fourth war centered in Gaza proves that the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean is a single political unit. Anything that affects one part of it affects the rest.
Israeli leaders hoped that dividing the Palestinians into cantons would also divide them politically, as well as geographically. At first glance, this policy seemed to be working, but during the past two weeks, as soon as the crisis broke out in one of these cantons, it quickly spread to the other cantons.
Patrick Cockburn ■
British journalist and reporter who previously worked in the Middle East.
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