With Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu locked in a tight race
for re-election, the Hamas militant group has suddenly emerged as a major
vulnerability for the Israeli leader.
This week’s outbreak of fighting between Israel and Hamas,
sparked by a rocket strike on a home in central Israel, was the latest reminder
of Netanyahu’s inability to find a way to cope with the Gaza Strip’s Hamas
rulers.
Just two weeks ahead of the vote, Netanyahu finds himself
facing questions from residents in southern Israel and tough criticism from
opponents across the political spectrum.
Yair Lapid, a leader of the rival Blue and White Party, said
Israel has lost its power of deterrence over Hamas on Netanyahu’s watch.
“A terrorist organization can’t determine our daily
routines,” he told Israel’s Army Radio. “Hamas can’t run the show. Hamas can’t
decide when the fighting starts and ends.”
In the latest round of fighting, Israel struck dozens of
targets throughout Gaza following Monday’s early-morning rocket attack.
Palestinian militants responded by firing dozens of rockets
into southern Israel, forcing residents to spend the night in bomb shelters and
canceling school for thousands of children. By early Tuesday, the fighting
appeared to have subsided.
The violence came less than two weeks after a similar
conflagration sparked by a rocket attack on Tel Aviv, Israel’s densely
populated commercial and cultural capital.
Israel has grappled with the Hamas question since the Islamic
militant group, which seeks Israel’s destruction, toppled forces of Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas and seized control of Gaza in 2007.
Israel has maintained a tight blockade on Gaza, restricting
who and what enters the territory, fought three wars against Hamas and engaged
in dozens of smaller flare-ups like this week’s fighting.
This policy has succeeded in containing Hamas. Yet the
weakened group remains firmly in control in the territory. Unable to topple
Hamas, Israel has been forced to reach unspoken understandings with its bitter
enemy to maintain stability in the impoverished territory of 2 million people,
amid repeated outbreaks of fighting.
Hamas’ Gaza leader, Yahya Sinwar, has compared the people of
Gaza to a “caged animal.” With few tools at his disposal, Hamas has tried to
heat things up over the past year, staging weekly border demonstrations,
allowing protesters to launch flaming kites and explosives-laden balloons into
Israel and tolerating the occasional rocket attack, all in hopes of drawing
concessions and easing the blockade.
This strategy has had only limited success but repeatedly put
Netanyahu in uncomfortable situations.
Netanyahu came under tough criticism several months ago when
he allowed Qatar, a key behind the scenes mediator, to deliver millions of
dollars of humanitarian aid to Gaza in cash-stuffed suitcases through an
Israeli border crossing. The money was badly needed to ease the dire living
conditions in Gaza.
And every outbreak of violence draws renewed attention to the
flawed policy of an Israeli leader who has made security the hallmark of his
election campaign.
The recent rocket attack marred a visit by Netanyahu to
Washington, where he was invited to the White House to celebrate the US
recognition of Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights. He then planned a
campaign-style speech to the pro-Israel AIPAC lobbying group. Instead, the
Golan announcement was overshadowed by the fighting in Gaza, and Netanyahu had
to cut short the visit and rush back to Israel.
“This rocket was bad for Netanyahu,” said Gideon Rahat,
professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “This
conflict right now does not play into his hands.”
Speaking to AIPAC by satellite on Tuesday, Netanyahu put on a
tough face, saying Israel had pounded Hamas on a scale not seen since a 2014
war. “I can tell you, we are prepared to do a lot more,” he said.
But in Israel, such claims are greeted with skepticism after
so many rounds of fighting.
“The residents are angry that this has been continuing for a
year. They want quiet and a normal life,” said Gadi Yarkoni, leader of the
Eshkol regional council in southern Israel.
After failing to capitalize on a series of corruption
allegations against Netanyahu, his opponents are sure to step up the criticism
of his Gaza policy in the final stretch of the campaign.
The centrist Blue and White Party, which is running neck and
neck with Netanyahu’s Likud, is led by Benny Gantz, a popular former military chief
who led the army through wars against Hamas in 2012 and 2014. Two other
ex-military chiefs are in the party’s top ranks.
“If you are looking for deterrence, look to the people who
brought the deterrence to Israel and led the army in times like this,” Lapid
said.
Whether this strategy can work remains to be seen.
Netanyahu’s rivals have offered various alternatives that have no guarantee of
success.
Lapid called on Israel to resume its policy of “targeted
assassinations” of Hamas leaders, a tactic that in the past unleashed heavy
fighting.
Naftali Bennett, leader of the ultranationalist New Right
party, called for even tougher action and for Israel to wipe out Hamas’ entire
leadership and military capabilities.
Speaking on Channel 12 TV, Bennett said Israel must “chase
down every Hamas commander, from the chief to the platoon commander and the
foot soldier. Just kill, kill these people, destroy their homes on a scale they
don’t know.”
Such an operation, he said, would take months to complete. It
also would carry a heavy price for both Hamas and the Israeli military.
Aron Shaviv, a political consultant and former strategist for
Netanyahu, said the Israeli leader is “caught between a rock and a hard place.”
He said that if Netanyahu responds forcefully in Gaza now,
voters will wonder why he took a more cautious approach in the past four years.
“He would have a hard time explaining why he has changed his
approach and why an attack on central Israel warrants a harsh response versus
an attack on southern Israel,” he said.
Fortunately for Netanyahu, he said Blue and White leaders
have “failed miserably” to capitalize on their security credentials so far. He
said alienated right-wing voters are likely to support other hard-line parties
that would end up joining Netanyahu in a coalition in any case.
In Gaza, meanwhile, Hamas is likely to continue to test
Netanyahu until election day on April 9.
“Hamas is trying to press Netanyahu ahead of the elections to
lift the blockade,” said Ibrahim al-Madhoun, a pro-Hamas writer in Gaza. “This
equation gives Hamas leverage that it can use against him. So I think
escalation or calm will greatly affect the Israeli elections.”
