Benjamin Netanyahu doesn’t want a ceasefire and has no real day after strategy

Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, will not allow for a Gaza ceasefire because it will represent an admission of defeat. Yet, if he is not forced to conclude an agreement, war with Lebanon is inevitable.

The Secretary-General of Hezbollah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, used the boxing analogy to describe the actions of the Resistance in his first speech following the outbreak of war on October 7, stating that the knockout blow had not yet been delivered and they were at a point scoring phase of the battle.

If we are to stick with the boxing analogy, Netanyahu is about to head into the twelfth and final round of the fight, clearly losing on points and physically exhausted. He is being slowly broken down and is wobbling all over the ring, with only two options left; take a knee [agree to a ceasefire] or throw one last haymaker in the hope that it will knock out the opponent [attack Lebanon]. The only problem with throwing a massive punch is that this could result in Netanyahu being knocked out cold, which is why he is hesitating so much.

As all serious political analysts have said from the beginning, the United States could have ended this war a long time ago and is the only one with the power to pressure the Israelis to do so. However, it is clear that US President Joe Biden is not in his right mind, and his administration is not willing to pressure its Israeli allies and continues to support them unconditionally, so we can rule this out. Although a ceasefire would favor Washington right now and perhaps even save it from further embarrassment in the region, the narcissistic incompetency of the Biden administration will not allow for such an end to the war.

With the American government ruled out of this situation, at least for the time being, we can safely say that the Israeli premier has been given no incentive to end the war in Gaza. On the contrary, according to polling data, half of the Israeli public support the re-occupation of the Gaza Strip, while only 8% believe that Palestinians should rule Gaza after the war. When you specifically look at the Israelis who identify with the right wing – primarily supporters of the Netanyahu coalition – roughly 70% want the Zionist military to re-occupy the besieged coastal territory.

While many prominent members of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party and his coalition partners from the likes of Religious Zionism still seek the total destruction of Hamas and the re-occupation of Gaza, the problem for them is their inability to complete either of these tasks. Netanyahu knows this, but when his Police Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, encourages Israelis to prepare to build settlements inside the Gaza Strip and even says he would be “happy to live” there after the war, it is difficult for him to tell the truth publicly.

If the Israeli PM decides to agree to a ceasefire, he will lose the support of his coalition and a new round of elections will be triggered – a situation in which he faces the possibility of losing. At the same time, the Zionist leader also faces internal pressure over the embarrassing blows dealt to the temporary entity along the Lebanese border areas and now beyond. Hezbollah has been battering the Israeli regime in the north of occupied Palestine, suffering blows to their military sites and intelligence gathering equipment, and forcing over 100,000 settlers to flee the area. The settler residents of the north have almost completely lost confidence in their regime, and so an attack on Lebanon is the only way to recover their image.

However, this is not 2006 and there is no guarantee for the Zionist entity that it will even walk away from launching a war at all, let alone come out of it in good shape. Even Israeli media outlets have floated around the idea that at least 15,000 settlers and soldiers will be killed in such a war. The goal for the Israeli government would be to launch a limited war, with the best case scenario being a missile exchange and some brief ground encounters, then ending the war in a stalemate militarily, from which they would have received a massive blow, but will claim to have greatly impacted the Lebanese Resistance’s capabilities.

Under this ideal situation for Benjamin Netanyahu, he would conclude the war in Lebanon with an agreement to end the war in Gaza also, then choose to pivot toward the occupied West Bank. The Israeli Prime Minister knows that in the likely event that Donald Trump wins the presidential race, the American President will recognize “Israeli sovereignty” over the West Bank, which means he can “annex” around 60% of the land, or what is known as Area C, stealing the territory with the backing of the US and also avoiding having to absorb 3.2 million Palestinians living in Area A and B of the territory.

If this “annexation” is combined with a large-scale military campaign, mimicking 2002’s “Operation Defensive Shield,” aimed at dismantling the resistance groups inside the territory, it will provide Netanyahu with the perfect cover he needs to claim a “victory”.

To do this though, there must be some kind of a day after plan for the Gaza Strip set in place so that the armed confrontation does not re-ignite, which is why he has attempted to formulate a plan involving a range of Arab regimes to collaborate with him.

Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly stated that he does not want the Palestinian Authority (PA) to run the Gaza Strip in a post-war setting, despite this being the only real option on the table for him. There are two reasons for this. The first is the fact that his coalition partners despise the PA due to its desire to acquire a state on 22% of historic Palestine, for the likes of Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, who see the PA as a threat to their West Bank settlements. The second major reason is that the PA’s takeover of Gaza could then create a situation where there would be international pressure placed upon the Israelis to conclude a deal on a so-called “two-state” solution.

However, we should not rule out there being a plot from the side of Benjamin Netanyahu to allow for a form of the PA to take over administrative control in the Gaza Strip. Although the Palestinian Authority, based in Ramallah, is headed by Mahmoud Abbas, there is the possibility that the PA President’s longtime Fatah rival, Mohammed Dahlan could be used as a PA leader in the Gaza Strip.

Due to the fact that there have been no Palestinian National Authority legislative elections since 2006 and that Mahmoud Abbas’ presidential mandate technically ended in 2009, there could be an argument made that would bring the surviving elements of the PA under the de facto leadership of Dahlan inside Gaza. The US and European governments would then place pressure on the PA, through their control of its funding, to allow this to take place, while the United Arab Emirates (UAE), along with other Arab nations, could step in to finance this project.

Although this would technically mean that the PA would be playing a role in governing the Gaza Strip, it would keep the West Bank leadership divided from Gaza, due to the rivalry between Abbas and Dahlan. Under such a scenario, the US would ideally bring in Saudi Arabia to normalize ties with the Zionist entity also and the West Bank’s PA would be in a position where its hands are tied.

The above-mentioned scenarios may not even be likely to occur, but they do have to be mentioned for us to consider the thinking of the entity. At this current point in time however, the Palestinian Resistance in Gaza, under the command of Hamas’ al-Qassam Brigades, is continuing to crush the Zionist military and remains far from defeat. On top of this, the other supportive fronts of the regional resistance are piling on the pressure and have the Israelis cornered.

If we are to judge the Zionist entity based on its actions over the past 9 months, we can rely on it to make foolish decisions that will only further imperil it. The above-mentioned strategies for ending the war, in a way that will not represent a victory for the Zionist entity but will enable Benjamin Netanyahu to survive, appear to be far from coming to fruition. This is because there are clearly no real day after plans at this point, just chatter about what could happen and delusional statements about building settlements.