Israel's One State Solution

 

“War is an act of violence pushed to its ultimate bounds”.

Carl von Clausewitz

Netanyahu’s War Aims

What are Benjamin Netanyahu’s war aims? Look at the map above – imagine an Israel without either Gaza or the West Bank.

Clausewitz said there was a ‘trinity’ of war – policy, chance and people.  This is exactly how Netanyahu sees the current war and his future place in Israeli and Jewish history.  Clausewitz also said, “No-one starts a war, or rather no one is his sense ought to do so, without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by the war and how he intends to conduct it”.  He went on, “The Statesman, knowing his [military] instrument [of power’] being ready, and seeing war inevitable, and who does not strike first is guilty of a crime against his own country”.

Any analysis of Israel’s war in the Levant must look beyond the emoting in Western democracies.  There is no such thing as a nice war, and such emoting has more to do with internal divisions herein than the strategic and political situation in the Levant.  British prime minister Starmer’s ‘recognition’ of the non-existent state of Palestine is simply the latest example of the gesture politics of the powerless at its very worst.

Netanyahu and Putin

Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin have two things in common: an ultra-nationalist belief in country reinforced by theological supremacy and a willingness to go to extreme lengths to see off any perceived threat.  War for Netanyahu and Putin is by its very nature and character brutal and people die in great numbers for they are the stakes.  Any proper analysis of the war must thus take place from that perspective – war as the continuation of fundamental politics by all and any violent and extreme means.  In Israel’s brief history it has fought several such wars in 1948, 1967, 1973 and 1982. They have all had the same war aims: the expansion of Israel’s borders and protect Israeli security by all means necessary. For Netanyahu and Likud the struggle is a metaphor for Tel Megiddo, both fundamental and existential.  

By attacking Israel on October 7^th, 2023, and in the way that Hamas attacked Israelis, was a declaration of a war with no clear aims.  It also gave Netanyahu the justification to destroy Gaza, which is precisely what is now happening.  Critically, the attack took place without Tehran’s permission which not only demonstrated Iran’s lack of real control over Hamas, its unruly proxy, but also unhinged Iran’s entire regional anti-Israeli strategy. Tel Aviv have since used all of its many instruments of power to break Hezbollah in Lebanon, bring down the puppet Assad regime in Syria, and attack and disrupt Iran’s nuclear programme.     Israel’s war aims have also been helped by the tacit support of Egypt and the Gulf states all of which are only too happy to see Israel weaken Iran.  Even Israel’s September 2025 missile attack on against the Hamas leadership in Doha was met with only the mildest of condemnations by the leaderships of many Arab states.

One-State Solution

Therefore, Gaza is the first step for Netanyahu and Likud on the road to a one-state solution.  The ‘experiment’ of Palestinian bodies politic within Israel’s self-designated borders is now over. It is hard to escape the conclusion that having destroyed Gaza he will turn Israeli power more overtly against the West Bank. The West Bank is already being undermined from within by illegal Israeli settlements and the Palestinian Authority are old, weak and corrupt. Of course, that will not mean an end to the Palestinian struggle, but it does signify a Tel Aviv regime that is prepared to live in state of permanent war if needs be.

Rather, Tel Aviv will seek to export the struggle and Palestinians, first to Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, but also to Europe. The struggle will take many forms but much of it will take place on the streets of Europe which will increasingly find itself in the front-line of this war.   

And, of course, so long as Vladimir Putin is in power, he will do all he can to exacerbate the threat to Europe.  Yes, it is terrible what is Israel is doing to Palestinians, but such violence is the enduring character of war that is immutable.   If Europeans want to protect themselves from the fall out they will need to act together strategically and engage Israel and wider region with a clear alternative.  In that light, the gesture politics of Starmer (and Macron) is little more than the pathetic in pursuit of the pointless. This is because for Netanyahu and Likud Israel is engaged in the “War of the Lords” against it enemies.  It is the same for Putin.  

Julian Lindley-French