Israel’s deadly incursion into the West Bank is another reminder Netanyahu seeks total victory

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If it wasn’t already obvious to those trying to broker a ceasefire in the Middle East, Israel’s two-day-old incursion into the West Bank is another reminder: Benjamin Netanyahu isn’t interested in a negotiated end to the fighting, at least not on terms Israel’s enemies are likely to accept. He’s seeking total victory.

The war against Hamas in Gaza, whenever it ends, could well be followed by another one in Lebanon, even if Israel and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia appeared to take a step back from the brink over the weekend with an exchange of blows calibrated to avoid escalation.

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Mr. Netanyahu has signalled repeatedly over the past 11 months that he will not accept a return to the pre-Oct. 7 normal on either Israel’s southern frontier with Gaza or its northern one with Lebanon. That means he is seeking the complete destruction of Hamas in Gaza, and to somehow force Hezbollah to pull its fighters and weapons out of southern Lebanon.

Mr. Netanyahu and his far-right government have also signalled an intention of trying to change the status quo in the West Bank, a Palestinian territory that, like Gaza, was captured by Israel in 1967. The West Bank has remained under Israeli military occupation ever since.

On Wednesday, hundreds of Israeli soldiers, backed by armoured vehicles, drones and helicopters, simultaneously entered the West Bank cities of Jenin and Tulkarem, as well as the al-Faraa refugee camp. Sixteen people – whom the Israeli army called “terrorists” – were reportedly killed in the first two days of the fighting, which was described as the most intense the West Bank had seen since the second intifada, a campaign of attacks aimed at ending the Israeli occupation more than two decades ago.

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While Israeli authorities said the incursion was aimed at destroying Hamas and Islamic Jihad cells that were believed to be plotting attacks on Israel, it comes in the context of Mr. Netanyahu’s government backing an unprecedented surge in Jewish settlement of the West Bank, which has been accompanied by a series of violent attacks by armed Jewish settlers targeting Palestinian civilians.

On Thursday, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres called on Israel to halt its military operation in the West Bank, saying it was “fuelling an already explosive situation.”

That won’t bother Mr. Netanyahu, who has served as Israel’s Prime Minister for all but 18 months of the past 15 years, and currently heads a coalition government that includes hard-liners who believe Israel should not only settle the entire West Bank, but do the same in Gaza. After a public clash earlier this year with U.S. President Joe Biden – a long-time proponent of a two-state solution that would create an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza – Mr. Netanyahu boasted that he had “for decades” blocked the establishment of an independent Palestine.

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Mr. Netanyahu instead laid out a vision under which Israel would retain security control over Gaza after the war there is over, as well as over “the entire area west of Jordan.” In other words, continued Israeli occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem as well.

There were hints of what Mr. Netanyahu intended to do even in the confusing and chaotic first days after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel that left more than 1,100 Israelis dead and saw more than 200 others taken hostage. Almost immediately, his government began referring to Oct. 7 as “Israel’s 9/11,” a comparison Mr. Netanyahu used again in his speech to the U.S. Congress last month.

The implication was clear. Just as the United States reacted to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington by invading first Afghanistan, then Iraq – seeking to remake the region that had given birth to the al-Qaeda network – Israel would also wage war where and when it saw fit. “I ask you to stand firm, because we are going to change the Middle East,” Mr. Netanyahu told the mayors of battle-scarred southern Israel on Oct. 9. The line could have been borrowed from one of George W. Bush’s post-Sept. 11 speeches.

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Israel was then only in the first phases of its retribution. That same day, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant announced the beginning of a “complete siege” of Gaza, with Israel cutting off the supply of water and electricity even as it was launching hundreds of air strikes a day on the densely populated strip, where the Israeli and foreign hostages were being held among the civilian population.

Almost 11 months later, the war still rages. More than 40,000 Palestinians are dead, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, and the United Nations estimates that more than 60 per cent of buildings in the strip have been damaged or destroyed. Hamas, however, still holds 108 Israelis and foreigners hostage – though dozens of them are believed to be dead – and occasionally strikes back at Israel, as it did on Sunday when it fired a rocket that fell in an open area near Tel Aviv.

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who formally became the most powerful figure in the group after the July 31 assassination of his predecessor Ismail Haniyeh – an attack in Tehran presumed to have been carried out by Israel – remains alive and at large, likely somewhere in the tunnels beneath Gaza. (Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, is seeking the arrest of Mr. Sinwar, and separately of Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Gallant, over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the fighting that began Oct. 7.)

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Even before the war in Gaza is over, Mr. Netanyahu appears set on opening new fronts in Israel’s campaign to remake the Middle East. In doing so, he’s repeating many of the mistakes Mr. Bush made in the wake of Sept. 11 – when instead of focusing on the rebuilding of Afghanistan after the ouster of the Taliban, Mr. Bush ordered the U.S. Army to invade Iraq to remove the threat supposedly posed by Saddam Hussein’s phantom weapons of mass destruction.

Two decades later, a large majority of U.S. troops have been ignominiously withdrawn from both countries, leaving only a token presence in Iraq.

The Taliban, meanwhile, have returned to power in Afghanistan. And Iraq is one of the countries from which Iran’s proxy forces launch their attacks on the U.S. and Israel – a reminder that previous attempts to change the Middle East through force of arms haven’t resulted in change for the better.