Since the baleful October 7 operation and the war it summoned, Israel and the Iranianophile militias have been waging another war on politics in tandem- the politics of today and the future. All of these parties are broadly pursuing an extreme form of what has, in some civil wars, been referred to as "arbitrary shelling." While politics drives actors to direct their efforts toward dividing the adversary as they vie to splinter the opposing front and to win over whomever they can from the other side, arbitrary shelling that indiscriminately targets everyone unites the various adversaries being bombed by the same enemy with the same shells and bombs. Accordingly, some argue that arbitrary shelling reflects belligerents’ love of war over all else, as well as a desire to perpetuate their enmity with the enemy, entrench its monolithic dimension, and consolidate its unity.
This applies to the attacks Israel launches on everyone without exception. By definition, this is expressed in its ongoing genocide in Gaza, settlements, territorial segregation, and its potential annexation of the West Bank, as well as its raid on Qatar, which has rightly been characterized as an assault on politics and the principle of negotiation. This behavior, with all the various forms of action that it encompasses, combines a rebuke of politics with seeing everyone as a single whole: this applies to equating civilians with soldiers, children, women, the elderly with fighters, Hamas and Islamic Jihad with the Palestinian Authority, and faulting Arabs who are not in the Rejectionist camp for grievances against Rejectionist Arabs... When he likened Israel to "super Sparta," Benjamin Netanyahu was declaring nothing less than a rupture with the entire world, with the sole exception of the Trump administration.
The actions of the various militias that are portrayed as resistance movements fall into the same category. They began their war with an operation that took the good with the bad. It speaks volumes that these militias, each in its own way, continue to ferociously cling to weapons that have largely become scrap metal, perpetuating the killing and the disruption of politics, just as ferociously as they are clinging to belligerent and hostile rhetoric.
Indeed, while the October 7 operation was successful in rallying Israelis behind the war, Israel's retaliation is currently succeeding in hardening the positions of moderate Arabs and pushing them to adopt more extreme views, with some going as far as tolerating the actions of the Rejectionists.
In a sense, the current state of affairs is the product of a decades-long evolution of contradictory identities, each making claims to total control over everything and entitlement to everything while conceding nothing to the other. These identities have been consolidating and their components were being assembled in parallel with the consistent rise of the nationalist and religious right in Israel, particularly since the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, and in conjunction the Rejections' seizure (led by Tehran and Damascus) of Palestine's representation and cause.
Since both sides that are behaving this way see the "other" as less worthy of life, and essentially ruling out any desire for future coexistence, both sides propose solving the conflict through endings that range from annihilation to humiliating subjugation. It might be an irony of history that the Treaty of Versailles, which had humiliated Germany and contributed to the rise of Nazism and anti-Semitism becoming state doctrine, was less punitive than the terms Jewish state seeks to impose on its neighbors.
The Rejectionist factions have suffered countless decisive blows, rendering their rhetoric about "eradicating Israel" and slogans like "from the river to the sea" a pathetic joke. The fact is that every indication points to a miserable end awaiting these factions. For their part, most of the countries that have recognized and continue to recognize the State of Palestine, backing the Saudi-French initiative, have affirmed that there is no place for Hamas in the future of Palestine and the region.
But what about Netanyahu? Removing him and his government has become the ultimate prerequisite for putting an end to death and returning to politics. Moreover, if it is true that the Arabs made their foundational mistake in 1947, when they rejected the UN’s resolution to partition the land and establish two states despite unanimous international support for the decision, then we are now seeing 1947 play out in reverse as Israel commits the sin of unequivocally rejecting the establishment of a Palestinian state, which has now extremely broad international support. On another note, the war in Gaza is now on a trajectory of its own that does not intersect with the developments in Lebanon, Syria, and Iran at any point. Its perpetuation is nothing but a crime of settling scores with the Palestinians and wiping out their rights- an assault that has no link to shattering the "Axis of Resistance" that no one would shed a tear for.
The world, with the exception of the Trump administration, is currently demonstrating that it is not willing to tolerate the persistence of this tragedy, because of its immense toll on civilians but also because of the broader toll it has taken on all other levels. However, this intolerance remains limited to declarations of positive intent; what is urgently needed- to stop the rampage at the very least- is a shift toward effective measures that leave a real impact. If such measures fail to pressure Netanyahu, they could pressure Israeli society and compel it to push harder to remove him from power and take the first step toward its own recovery.
