What will he say when age betrays him? What will he say when he is summoned to a court? He knows who awaits him there. David Ben-Gurion, Levi Eshkol, Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Menachem Begin, Ariel Sharon and others.
Will he remind them that he is the longest-tenured prime minister of Israel? What if they pressured him and made him admit that the fragility of Israel’s deterrence power was exposed during his time in office? He won’t dare reply. How could he justify the failures of the intelligence agencies? How could he justify the failures of the medaled generals?
He did not predict such an end. This time the accusations are not abuse of position and accepting lavish gifts. They are far more dangerous than that. He is accused of tarnishing the image of the fortress that is armed to the teeth.
Since October 7, he wakes up to a bitter pill awaiting him. All choices are difficult, painful and suicidal. He is ashamed before the families of the hostages. He is ashamed before the mockery of the soldiers, whom he called up to avert disaster. He can hardly believe what has happened. The attackers rattled the settlements and uprooted the settlers. They took some hostage into the tunnels. They rained down rockets on cities and towns. They won’t accept anything less than the release of all Palestinian prisoners. They are demanding a major reward for their deadly blow.
He and bitter pills go a long way back. He remembers the first time he was confronted by one. It was June 1976 when his brother Yonatan Netanyahu returned home a corpse after fighting in the Entebbe Operation. Palestinian leader Dr. Wadie Haddad had at the time organized the hijacking of an Air France plane in Uganda with 77 Israelis on board.
General Rabin was prime minister at the time. He refused to yield to Haddad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. He sent special forces 4,000 miles to Uganda to kill the hijackers and free the hostages. They returned to Israel with one casualty, Benjamin’s brother. From that day onwards, he vowed to carry out revenge whenever he had the chance.
After a diplomatic career in Washington and New York, he returned to Israel as a member of the Likud party. He would defeat Peres and compete against Sharon. He was a skilled player and orator. He would become prime minister for the first time in 1996. He was Israel’s first prime minister to be directly elected through the ballots boxes and the first to be born in Israel.
In 1997, Netanyahu dreamed of the big prize. The Mossad had made him an exciting proposal: Assassinate the head of Hamas’ politburo Khaled Meshaal, who also held Jordanian citizenship. The Mossad opted against resorting to explosives and bullets given the diplomatic ties between Jordan and Israel. They instead chose poison.
On September 25, Netanyahu sat in his office, waiting for news about the operation. Meshaal was indeed poisoned, but the perpetrators, who had traveled on Canadian passports, were arrested. The operation turned into a disaster. King Hussein was enraged. He contacted Bill Clinton and threatened to shut the Israeli embassy.
Netanyahu had no choice but to take the bitter pill. He handed over Jordan the antidote that would save Meshaal’s life. In return, he released Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and several prisoners.
Twenty-six years later, Meshaal would appear after the Al-Aqsa Flood operation to demand that Netanyahu free all Palestinian prisoners in return for the release of all the hostages held in Gaza. Yassin, Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, Salah Shehade, Yahya Ayyash and others were all killed, but Hamas was not.
Years before the attempt on Meshaal’s life, specifically in October 1995, the Mossad found out that a passenger Ibrahim al-Shawish, who was passing through Malta airport and traveling on a Libyan passport, was none other than Fathi Shaqaqi, the founder of the Islamic Jihad Movement. He was promptly assassinated. Twenty-eight years later, the movement is firing rockets from Gaza at Tel Aviv without denying its relations with Iran.
What will Netanyahu say when he is confronted by former Israeli leaders? Will he berate Rabin for shaking hands with Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn and agreeing to the Oslo Accords? Will he inform him that Arafat returned the Palestinian flag and returned to the territories that cannot tolerate two flags, two peoples and two states?
Netanyahu recalls his first meeting with Arafat. It was like swallowing a bitter pill. He attempted to make dictates to Arafat, but the Palestinian leader outmaneuvered him. Will he tell Rabin and Peres that they had both returned to the land Arafat, whom the army had driven out of Beirut in 1982 with the aim of eliminating his cause and keeping him away in exile? Will he say that Arafat’s flexibility was part of his plan to tie the fates of Palestinians and Israelis so that Israel could not enjoy security as long as the Palestinians did not have their own independent state?
Netanyahu has to answer many questions. These are the days of bitter pills, and the worst are yet to come. Hamas cannot be eliminated without eliminating Gaza. The fighting in Gaza could easily spill over into the region, which cannot tolerate a long war and the world will not accept it.
It is as if the attack that emerged from the tunnels has led Israel down a tunnel that is difficult to exit. He knows that they will soon rise up against him for what he did to the Oslo Accords, allowing uninhibited settlement expansion and leading Israel down a dark tunnel that it can only exit once it swallows the bitter pill that is an independent Palestinian state.
How difficult it must be for a player to reach the end of a long career. How difficult it must be when this end is painful and terrible. Committees will be formed when the artillery and planes go silent. Investigations will be opened, questions will be asked and accusations will be traded. More killing will not solve the problem. We kill them and they don’t die. A generation is eliminated but succeeded by one that is more extremist. How difficult it must be for your enemies to lead you into the tunnel.
