Netanyahu Has No Incentive to End Gaza Genocide: Top Professor
The Trends Journal has said: When all else fails, they take you to war
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has no incentive to end the genocide in Gaza because once the war is over, he will have to face questions about how Hamas was able to carry off such an asymmetric attack on 7 October, according to a top professor.
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Nader Hashemi, a professor of Middle East politics at Georgetown University, spoke with The New York Times and said, “Netanyahu has a personal incentive to continue this war and expand it, if possible, knowing that as soon this war ends, his day of reckoning with the Israeli people will arrive and his career will be over.”
“He oversaw national security on Oct. 7, and Israelis will demand accountability for what happened,” Hashemi said. He said Netanyahu’s personal motives are, no doubt, “complicating negotiations” with the U.S.
In December, Itamar Ben-Gvir, the convicted racist Israeli national security minister, made it clear that he would pull out of Netanyahu’s fragile coalition government if the ceasefire in Gaza was extended.
“Stopping the war = dissolution of the government,” he posted on X.
Later that month, he said if anyone halts the IDF “before Hamas has been defeated and all the hostages have been returned, he should take into account that Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) will not be with him.”
With reports that Israel was inching towards a new deal with Hamas to release hostages and a cease-fire, Ben Gvir said he would not stand for any concessions.
“I say this clearly: a reckless deal means the dissolution of the government,” he said.
The Financial Times reported that Israel does not have to hold elections for two years but there is a risk that a vote occurs earlier because the “veneer of unity that has covered Israeli politics since the outbreak of the war” is beginning to crack.
Yohanan Plesner, president of the Jerusalem-based think tank the Israel Democracy Institute, told The Wall Street Journal, “Ben-Gvir has huge leverage over Netanyahu. The last thing Netanyahu needs is an early election and Ben-Gvir knows that.”
Ehud Olmert, the former prime minister, said in an interview in November that Netanyahu is in a state of “nervous breakdown” as he tries to maintain his power after the 7 October Hamas attack.
“[Netanyahu] has shrunk,” he told Politico. “He’s destroyed emotionally, that’s for sure. I mean, something terrible happened to him. Bibi has been working all his life on the false pretense that he is Mr. Security. He’s Mr. Bullshit. Every minute he is prime minister he is a danger to Israel. I seriously mean it. I am certain the Americans understand he is in bad shape.”