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Ten months after the Oct. 7 massacre which sparked a devastating war in Gaza, the Middle East is teetering on the edge of an even wider conflict. There are two seemingly contradictory ways to look at this tragedy, and understanding how both are true is the key to untangling one of the messiest situations in geopolitics since World War II.
In the first narrative, the Hamas terrorist group, which seized control of Gaza in 2006, last Oct. 7 invaded a surprisingly unguarded Israel unprovoked, barbarously massacred some 1,200 people, overwhelmingly civilians, and kidnapped about 250 into Gaza. It was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. Hamas did this because it's dedicated to destroying Israel and, in its demonic extremism, doesn't care about consequences to their own people. Hamas hoped to spark a multi-front war, and partly succeeded.
The Hezbollah militia, backed, funded and armed by Iran, has been attacking Israel ever since with drones, shells and missiles, most recently killing 12 children two weeks ago in a Druze town. Perhaps 80,000 Israelis have fled border communities in the north for fear of the group, which occupies much of Lebanon and is far stronger than the Lebanese military.
Similarly, the Houthi militia has been firing at Israel from 2,000 miles away in Yemen, and also attacking commercial vessels headed to the Suez Canal, imperiling a third of global container traffic out of solidarity with Hamas and hatred for the West. Also Iran-backed, the Houthis similarly don't care about consequences; they've occupied half of Yemen and caused 150,000 of their people to die in fighting since 2014 (and far more from disease).
Hamas had hoped to also spark a Palestinian uprising in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and a civil war in Israel itself, where 20 percent of the 10 million citizens are Arabs. That hasn't yet come about, though there certainly is tension; in recent days a West Banker attacked Tel Aviv area morning strollers with a knife, killing two.
Israel launched a counterattack in Gaza in mid-October aimed at removing Hamas from power. This has caused massive loss of life, probably in the tens of thousands, with the ratio of fighters to civilians unclear. The damage stems partly from Hamas embedding among civilians, and entirely because Hamas refuses to give up the hostages and lay down arms.
In recent weeks, Israel has assassinated a series of major Hamas and Hezbollah figures, most daringly Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh while he was a guest in Tehran. Iran and its various proxies have vowed to avenge the attack in Israel itself, and so the region is on edge.
I think the above is true. But there is a second narrative as well, about the true intentions of the current Israeli government.
In this narrative, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (facing trial for bribery) understood quickly that Oct. 7 was not an event a government in a parliamentary democracy is meant to survive. The failure was total: ignoring intelligence, abandoning the border, taking long hours to arrive on the scene. Moreover, it had attempted authoritarian reforms that caused a massive national schism and which security chiefs had warned were inviting attack.
So, polls showed three-quarters of Israelis wanted the government replaced and that the opposition would win a new election, as Netanyahu declared war with the popular twin aims of removing Hamas from power in Gaza and gaining the return of the hostages. He argued that any reckoning for Oct. 7 must await the end of the war. Many people bought this, creating an incentive to prolong and expand the war.
It is not just a question of putting time between Oct. 7 and the reckoning over it—or even of dragging things out until the next scheduled election in 2026. There's also an incentive to engineer so great a crisis that Oct. 7 somehow pales by comparison—while the discussion moves on, to bigger and worse things still.
One might think those things would merely be more calamities that extend the government's rap sheet—but that would be checkers. On Netanyahu's chess table, if the Oct. 7 argument cannot be won, perhaps some other argument can. Specifically, enough Israelis must be convinced that the world is against them and conflict is inevitable and force alone is the proper response.
Israel has endured a legitimacy drubbing since its tanks rolled into Gaza. More than 400 more soldiers have been killed and many more maimed, and its economy has suffered as tens of thousands are called up for months of reserve duty.
Its international standing has plummeted; the International Court of Justice has ruled that it might be guilty of genocide and that its West Bank occupation is illegal; the International Criminal Court is considering its prosecutor's request for arrest warrants against Netanyahu and the defense minister; boycotts and talk of arms embargoes grow; and the country is starting to endure a near-Russia-level ostracization as Zionism has become a dirty word on college campuses. Slowly, but surely, a siege mentality is settling in.
And whereas many blame Netanyahu, it's no longer three-quarters of the people who see things quite so clearly; many are indeed inclined to put recriminations aside in the middle of a war. One can work with this situation, if one's only goal is clinging to power. One might actually survive it politically, even if thousands of others—and Israel's own hostages—do not survive in real life.
Viewed through such a prism, it becomes clearer why the war is dragging on. Despite the massive destruction, Hamas continues to hold half the hostages (the other half were released in early deals)—and the group is still able to control any area that Israel's military evacuates. In this exhausting endless cat-and-mouse chase, there is political time bought.
For about three months early this year, Israel was said to want to enter the town of Rafah, Hamas' supposed last redoubt. Israeli officials leaked that the United States was preventing this; U.S. officials said they were merely asking for safe passage for the population. Eventually Israel provided safe passage and went in, halfheartedly and to little avail. Not much changed—more time bought.
There is a complex three-stage hostage deal on the table which actually amounts to an acceptance of the Hamas condition of an Israeli pullout in exchange for all the hostages. President Joe Biden on May 31 said it was Israel that proposed the deal, but Netanyahu now rejects it, adding requests that his own negotiators say (in a stream of leaked reports) are aimed at scuttling the whole thing. According to credible and persistent Israeli news reports, Netanyahu has been berating his negotiators—a retired general and the heads of the Shin Bet security agency and the Mossad spy agency—that they don't know how to drive a bargain. Put another way, they're not trying to buy time.
In fact, Hamas remains in a strong position due to Netanyahu's own refusal to allow the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority to retake the territory with much outside assistance—which is the only solution that might work. That's because Netanyahu's essential far-right coalition allies oppose it and because that would end the war.
Biden offered Israel an exit plan that also includes that massive global aid to the Palestinians, peace for Israel with Saudi Arabia and a Western-Arab-Israeli strategic alliance against Iran. Highly credible reports this week say Netanyahu, who has been ignoring the offer for six months, has decided to delay considering it until after the U.S. election. A rational Israeli government, a patriotic one, would grab this. But for Netanyahu, rejecting it buys still more time.
Now Haniyeh is assassinated while visited Tehran, guaranteeing retaliation by his honor-obsessed hosts. Millions of Israelis are hoping it will be mild so as not to spark a wider regional war. But if what one wants is for Netanyahu to buy yet more time via greater complications, deepening chaos and terrifyingly high new stakes—well, that is not what one is hoping for at all.
Observers might conclude that a leader who acts this way is a traitor, but there's no denying his skill at surviving against high odds. It is tempting to view this second narrative as a sort of conspiracy theory. But if one knows Netanyahu, it rings very true. "The PM doesn't want the war to end—he wants as long a war as possible," said retired General Dan Harel this week. Many Israelis think it's true, as does Biden, who reportedly told Netanyahu last week: "Stop b-----ing me."
Dealing with two conflicting narratives is known as cognitive dissonance. This state is useful for agents of chaos. It foments tension, confusion, divisions, indecision, and self-deception, opening the door wide to manipulation. In a society, unresolved narrative conflicts can lead to increased polarization—the classic context for the emergence and preservation of strongman rule.
That is the context in which Netanyahu can thrive. It is also an enormous boon to Hamas, Iran and the other enemies of Israel. Realizing how all these players' interests shockingly converge is the key to defusing the bomb they planted. This, too, will require a big stick.
Dan Perry is the former Cairo-based Middle East editor and London-based Europe/Africa editor of the Associated Press, the former Chairman of the Foreign Press Association in Jerusalem, and the author of two books about Israel. He first interviewed Netanyahu in 1988. Follow him at danperry.substack.com.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
