Tel Aviv today received a major “slap in the face” regarding the operations it has re-launched in the Palestinian enclave, and from a “bloc” of countries. France, Britain, and Canada have made it clear to Benjamin Netanyahu that they will not this time again “stand idly by” in the face of what they do not recognize as a necessary military operation.
Britain has already announced that it is putting on ice any trade deal with Israel, calling the way the Netanyahu government is currently moving in Gaza “unacceptable“. Benjamin Netanyahu may have left the moves of the three countries unanswered, speaking of “the wrong side of history”, but it is a given that there are now a growing number of Western powers, and rapidly, who have clear objections to “Gideon’s chariots”.
The truth is that it is not dependent on any European country to continue the war in Gaza that began after the “Black Sabbath” on October 7, 2023. Israel’s dependence exists only on Washington, and despite the given rift between Trump and Netanyahu, the US is not – not immediately – going to stop. But the “bloc” that is being created against Benjamin Netanyahu is far from small and far from negligible, and if the Israeli prime minister makes the mistake of going on the counterattack, it is a given that the three countries – four, if we add to them Spain, long opposed to Israeli practices – are not unlikely to become even more, and with even greater diplomatic influence and power.
The danger that Israel runs today is that it will “injure” its image to the West very seriously. Gideon’s “chariots” are based on the pillar of the very previous operation – the iron swords – and Tel Aviv insists that the presence of Hamas still poses a threat to it. And if in 2023 Hamas’s extremes of more than 1,200 dead and nearly 300 kidnapped shocked the planet, what is shocking today is that Tel Aviv has not the slightest hesitation in cutting off even the cataclysmic humanitarian aid that passes through just two border crossings, condemning to slow death by starvation those civilians who have survived the bombings.
The danger for Israel as long as it persists with this strategy, pushing for the immediate exile of Hamas cadres, the unconditional surrender of weapons and kidnapped persons, and complete Israeli control of Gaza, is that it will shatter its solid narrative that it has the right to defend itself against all those who wish its destruction.
The major problem for the country is also the fact that its prime minister insists on wanting to remain at its head by maintaining a situation that there is currently a way to manage through diplomatic means. Netanyahu’s far-right partners (Ben Yvir and Smodris) are the only ones who are complaining as it is their doctrine and narrative to have total control and management in Gaza and the West Bank.
The death toll in Gaza with the officially recorded (on the Palestinian side) death toll topping 53,000 and the number of those who have been dead for months but on temporary missing persons lists as it has not been possible to retrieve them from under the rubble is unknown, is rapidly becoming a “noose” in the throat of the local government’s efforts. Netanyahu has been unable to prevent the “leak” of the break with Trump, and all those who until recently expressed reservations are now on the hardest line in decades.
Benjamin Netanyahu, who is anything but “ignorant” and “ignorant in difficult times, should not take the message, especially from Europe, lightly. If the current bloc grows and others are added to it, then the issue and its dimensions will not be left to mere isolated discussions. If the union of Europe chooses to move forward forcefully, it is not unlikely that Israel will see in the coming months the pressures from its very close surroundings increase rapidly, and the US will “whistle” indifferently, watching the fall of “Bibi.”
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