On video: citizens of the Gaza Strip bathe at Deir El Balah beach/documentation on social networks according to Section 27 A of the Copyright Law
The last time Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of "total victory" was more than ten days ago. Still, he said it enough times earlier in the last six months for this pair of words to star in the comments to the video from the beach in Deir el-Balah, or alternatively: "as a step from victory", another phrase that Netanyahu has been pumping up lately.
The video does not accurately reflect the reality in Gaza at the end of six months of the IDF's stubborn war with Hamas - in Gaza there is hunger, destruction and devastation, more than 30 thousand dead and millions of displaced persons without a home, it is not impossible that many of those recorded are also vacationing in the waves and sand. But it It also reflects the military situation with the withdrawal of IDF forces from Khan Yunis last week: there is no real war in Gaza anymore, only repeated promises of action in Rafah. In Israel, on the other hand, two areas of land have been abandoned by their inhabitants, and tens of thousands of refugees from the north and the south still have no prospect of a return to normalcy. Nor for the 133 abductees and their families who are trapped in a terrible nightmare.
In Gaza, the sights from the seashore revealed, they are already on the day after the war, while Israel only gets involved in more fronts and new threats to its security. The IDF's air defense systems were impressive in intercepting the Iranian missile and UAV attack on Saturday night, but with the generous assistance of an international and regional coalition led by the United States, not exactly "Israel will defend itself with its own forces", another sentence Netanyahu coined in recent years in his speeches to Yifa.
He who has made a career of speeches and threats against Tehran will be recorded in the history books as the one during his tenure Israel received the first direct attack from there, not to mention the Iranian nuclear program that reached the brink of a bomb; The one who built a brand as "Mr. Security" will be inscribed on 7/10, the biggest security failure in the country's history, and on the continued lawlessness of the abductees and residents of the north and south, who, even six months later, are still being shelled far from their homes. Thus, even Netanyahu's promises of total victory, which were intended for the ears of the base and were never a realistic goal in the war, are now shattered in a split image between the beach in Gaza and the abandoned Metula.
Shuffle in Gaza has a clear address. The IDF, as the securityists praise, brought important and impressive achievements on the battlefield, but Netanyahu did not fulfill his part in the campaign: without a political goal, it is impossible to win the war. Next week will mark 200 days of the Iron Swords War, and the Israeli government has not yet adopted or declared a policy Or a strategy regarding the day after in Gaza, and meanwhile, among the ruins, Hamas is on its feet and returning to control. Therefore, of the three goals of the war, only one has been achieved - the removal of the threat of another massacre and the occupation that surrounds the other two goals - the return of the kidnapped and Mitut Hamas - it is difficult to achieve without a political plan and without a willingness to pay the price.
It is Netanyahu who postponed and prevented any significant discussion on the political horizon in Gaza, so as not to undermine the extremist and messianic elements of his coalition, who dream of returning to Gush Katif and new settlements in the Gaza Strip At every strategic-political juncture that could bring Ben Gabir and Smotritz closer to threats of retirement, for the most part, he simply does not make a decision: from the issue of Palestinian workers and the steps to weaken the Palestinian Authority to the negotiations for the return of the remaining 133 abductees, which has dragged on for four months without a decision.
Netanyahu could have used the iron dome of Gantz and Eisenkot in the emergency government to make difficult and significant leadership decisions for the future of the country, but he drags them with him into procrastination and indecision and runs away - only because the personal and political significance for him will be heavy.
Ben Gvir says it black and white: "There is no war - there is no government", he repeated and clarified yesterday in an interview with Yaakov Bardogo on Channel 14; Smotrich convenes a faction meeting in an uproar whenever there is a report of progress in the negotiations. The widespread assessment in the political system is that they are muscle, not credible threats to dissolve the government, but Netanyahu's partners constantly remind him of the limits of the decree - and he has been careful not to exceed them until now.
The warming in the Iranian sector changes the strategic situation, but will place Netanyahu, once again, in the same conflict between his political interests and the interests of the state, between Ben Gabir and Smotrich and the patriots on Channel 14 who demand that the owner of the house go crazy in response to the Iranian attack, and the Biden administration which is trying to stop the escalation, And on the way also to end the war in Gaza, to the chagrin of the followers of absolute victory.
In Washington, they returned to waving the carrot of normalization with Saudi Arabia and hope to upgrade the impressive regional security coalition formed with Israel against Iran into a regional defense alliance. This is Netanyahu's wet dream, an opportunity to get out of the Gaza mud with a historic achievement that will go down in his legacy and will be able to quell the fury of failure in the next elections, but whatever outline there is will require him to commit to a future Palestinian state, even if only on paper, which will put him, once again, in the trap of 64 with his partners .