Historic Israeli desire to ‘go it alone’ is tested by Gaza and Iran

As the world grows increasingly critical of the war in Gaza and pressure builds for a permanent cease-fire, Israel finds itself torn between two inclinations: cooperate with the international community that rallied to its side after Hamas’ attack in October, and Iran’s in April, or go it alone.

And as negotiations over a potential cease-fire and hostage release deal continue, and even as Israel ratchets up bombardments and other operations in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, Israel is sending mixed signals over which path it will take.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continued this week to use a blustery “we will go it alone if we must” rhetoric publicly. At the same time, the promised assault on Rafah has so far been limited and targeted – although a massing of Israeli troops outside the city Thursday suggested accelerating preparations for a ground assault.

The choice facing Israel is pivotal and indeed historic in its ramifications.

Does it hold fast to a fundamental tenet of its founding national security doctrine, that it depends solely on itself and fights its wars alone? Or do shifting geopolitical dynamics – and especially Israel’s desire to strengthen regional ties in the face of confrontation with Iran and its proxies – call for a more cooperative and international security strategy?

Israel was already shifting away from a go-it-alone stance before the Hamas attack and Gaza war, some analysts say, pointing to deepening cooperation with a growing number of Arab neighbors. The question now, they add, will be how far and for how long Israel’s chosen path in Gaza sets back or even reverses Israel’s opening.

“This is an important moment that will have a very significant impact on what was already a process of more integration into the region and more opening up to international cooperation,” says Nimrod Goren, senior fellow for Israeli affairs at the Middle East Institute in Washington.

“I don’t think we’ll be going back to the notion of ‘Israel alone’ that Netanyahu is preaching now,” he adds, “but there is a sense that Israel’s global standing is very much on the line and will face the consequences of what happens” both in Rafah and with the cease-fire negotiations.

Mohammed Salem/Reuters

Palestinians sit next to their belongings in the southern Gaza Strip, May 9, 2024. People are fleeing Rafah after Israeli forces launched a ground and air operation in the eastern part of the southern Gaza city.

For some military analysts, the so-far limited Rafah operation should be seen as pressure on Hamas to accept a mutually palatable cease-fire deal. But others see it as a nod to U.S. President Joe Biden, who has stated his strong disapproval of Mr. Netanyahu’s promised full ground invasion of Rafah, where more than 1 million displaced Palestinians are sheltering.

“Netanyahu may very well be making these moves signaling Israel’s going into Rafah to keep the pressure on” the cease-fire and hostage-deal negotiations, says Benjamin Friedman, policy director and a Middle East expert at Defense Priorities, a realist foreign policy think tank in Washington.

Biden delays shipment of bombs

The Biden administration put some meat on the bones of its Rafah assault objections by last week pausing an arms shipment to Israel, a first for a U.S. president who has long portrayed his support for Israel as complete and unshakable. Mr. Biden ordered a halt to a shipment of 3,500 large bombs over concerns, according to administration officials, that they would be used to strike Rafah.

The president went a step further Wednesday, saying the United States is “not going to supply the weapons and the artillery shells” for an invasion. “They’re not going to get our support if, in fact, they’re going into these population centers,” he said in a CNN interview aired Wednesday evening.

International objections to an assault on Rafah were further underscored by the French Foreign Ministry earlier this week, when it revealed in a statement that President Emmanuel Macron warned Mr. Netanyahu in a phone conversation Sunday that Israel would be committing a war crime under international law if it forcibly displaces civilians from Rafah.

“What we are seeing publicly now is a fight between President Biden and Netanyahu over what the priorities are in the war, with Netanyahu trying to play the Rafah card especially for domestic political reasons,” says Mr. Goren, who is based in Israel. “But there is a gap between public statements and what is happening on the ground,” he adds, “and if you look closely, you see that Israel has up to now been taking into account U.S. and Egyptian and others’ demands.”

The choice Israel faces has been salient at least since March, when the U.S. signaled its growing frustration by declining to use its veto in the United Nations Security Council to stop a cease-fire resolution – an expression of global condemnation that until then had been a red line for the Biden administration.

Common cause against Iran

But then in April, the U.S. assembled and led a coalition of countries – including Jordan, Egypt, and even Saudi Arabia – to help defend Israel against an onslaught of Iranian drones and missiles dispatched by Tehran as retaliation for Israel’s bombing of an Iranian compound in Syria.

At the time, some U.S. officials and Middle East analysts expressed hope Israel would value having international partners – particularly Sunni Arab neighbors that share common cause against Iran – and alter its historical approach as a friendless Jewish state willing to act alone in a hostile world.

Maya Alleruzzo/AP

Families of Israeli hostages and their supporters carry photos depicting those held by Hamas in Gaza in a march calling on the Netanyahu government to make a deal to obtain their release, in Tel Aviv, Israel, May 8, 2024.

Some have even posited that the war in Gaza presents Israel and in particular Mr. Netanyahu with an opportunity to end the conflict and fashion a postwar era that results in greater security for Israel and stronger relations with its Arab neighbors, including Palestinians and Saudi Arabia.

But shortly after the U.S.-led coalition’s successful response to Iran’s first-ever direct assault on Israeli territory, Mr. Netanyahu reverted to a more traditional position of Israeli self-defense unfettered by international entanglements.

“If we need to stand alone, we will stand alone,” Mr. Netanyahu said Sunday before a group of survivors of the Holocaust. “If we do not defend ourselves,” he added, “nobody will defend us.”

Such rhetoric is directed at a particular segment of the Israeli public and at Mr. Netanyahu’s own right-wing coalition government, some experts say.

“Netanyahu likes the optics of defying the Biden administration and saying, ‘We Israelis can defend ourselves and do things on our own,’” says Mr. Friedman. “He knows that if he says publicly, ‘I can’t go into Rafah because of Biden and all the other international pressures,’ he risks losing his coalition, and as a result losing power.”

Eye on Israeli elections

As for the path ahead, Mr. Friedman says he sees Israel staying the course toward greater regional cooperation that it was already on before the war. Where Israel’s execution of the war will have greater impact, he adds, is on Israel’s relations with Europeans and other “liberal Western countries” that place a priority on issues like human rights and treatment of the Palestinians.

Moreover, eventual Israeli elections will play a key role in determining how Israel moves forward in the war’s aftermath, experts say.

For Mr. Friedman, Mr. Netanyahu may be playing for time to see how the U.S. presidential election goes in November. The Israeli leader “may very well be thinking that if Trump wins, he can get everything he wants in terms of the region and relations with the Saudis” without any of the concessions Mr. Biden is seeking on Palestinian governance and an eventual Palestinian state.

Mr. Goren foresees the broad question of Israel’s relations with the world taking a front-and-center role in any campaign before the next set of elections, whenever they occur.

“The war and its impact on Israel’s global standing are viewed one way by the more international elements, the tech companies and the universities and professors, and another way by Netanyahu’s base and others who basically see a hostile world,” he says. “The debate between those two sides will be played and become more important before the next Israeli elections.”