Israel’s military successes are undeniable, but is Netanyahu risking long-term peace?

1 October 2024, 15:33 | Updated: 1 October 2024, 16:38

By Andrew Marr

@AndrewMarr9

All last week, I was warning about the prospect of full-scale war in the Middle East, and today, it seems to have started.

After the explosive pager attacks and the assassination of the leader of Hezbollah, Israeli special forces began to move across the Lebanese border, and the tanks prepared for a full ground invasion.

In a purely military sense, their operations so far have been brilliant. I don't think we should regard the killing of Hezbollah leaders as particularly outrageous compared to, for instance, the slaughter of civilian bystanders.

In fact, if more countries at war with one another started off by trying to kill opposing leaders rather than killing soldiers or bombing cities, then perhaps we would have fewer wars.

But this is exactly the problem. Israel has killed so many people in Gaza and now in Lebanon that it's created a circle of hatred all around itself.

Tomorrow's suicide bombers, tomorrow's enemies. For much of the world, the notion of Israel as a peaceable, democratic, cultured haven, the Israel so many of us admired for so long, is being pounded away in smoke and gunfire.

From Brazil to South Africa, it's now seen as a ruthless, no-compromise military state, uninterested in the numbers of mere outsiders, Muslims or Palestinians or Lebanese, who die whenever it's threatened. And that is surely very dangerous for Israel. Again today, Britain's been calling for restraint. We might as well be singing songs to the wind to try to stop it from blowing.

Longer term, whatever its stunning battlefield successes, I fear the state of Israel is playing a dangerous game with its very future.

But then, I'm a relentless optimist, and it was interesting that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed an appeal, not to Israelis, but to Iranians.

He said: "With every passing moment, the regime is bringing you, the noble Persian people, closer to the abyss; the vast majority of Iranians know their regime doesn't care a whit about them.

"If it did care, if it cared about you, it will stop wasting billions of dollars on futile wars across the Middle East. It would start improving your lives."

It's extraordinary, really, to hear Benjamin Netanyahu directly talking to the Iranian people. He seems to think that the entire region might be on the verge of a kind of revolution, particularly in countries like Syria and even in Iran itself.

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