In Israel, concern grows that hard right is undermining war effort

Amihai Eliyahu, a far-right politician from Israel’s Jewish Power party and a junior minister in Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, gave his strategy for the ongoing Gaza war when interviewed on local radio earlier this week.

“There’s no such thing as uninvolved [noncombatants] in Gaza,” he said, arguing against the entry of humanitarian aid to the besieged coastal enclave.

Then he took it a stunning step further, surmising that the use of a nuclear weapon was “one of the options” for destroying Hamas, the militant group behind the devastating Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel.

The condemnation from inside and outside Israel was immediate and overwhelming, and Mr. Eliyahu’s later clarification that he was speaking “metaphorically” did little to lessen the uproar – not least his cavalier disregard for the survival of some 240 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.

Yet Prime Minister Netanyahu refrained from firing him.

As the conflict with Hamas enters its second month, with global anger mounting over the death toll in Gaza, the Israeli far right, in both word and deed, appears to be actively undermining the country’s war effort.

In the wake of Hamas’ assault, which led to the heaviest death toll in the Jewish state’s history, most officials from Mr. Netanyahu’s ruling coalition disappeared from public view.

Yet in recent weeks the far-right ministers have apparently refound their political footing and confidence.

Mr. Eliyahu’s comments were not an outlier. Other right-wing politicians and activists, even from Mr. Netanyahu’s own Likud party, have begun calling for the resettlement of Gaza, returning the territory to the situation that existed before Israel withdrew its military and over 7,000 Jewish settlers in 2005. And a report last month from Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence, which is considered a toothless entity that was constructed with no real authority and is led by a peripheral Likud minister, advocated for the forced relocation of Palestinians in Gaza to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

Yet the Israeli war cabinet prosecuting the campaign against Hamas, including Mr. Netanyahu, has made it clear that Israel does not seek to reoccupy Gaza and that its goal isn’t to transfer the population to Egypt, and it’s insisted it is doing everything possible to minimize civilian casualties on the Palestinian side.

And although aid groups deem it inadequate, the Israeli military has made a point of highlighting the humanitarian supplies that are entering Gaza daily through Egypt.

Senior Biden administration officials have raised all these points publicly as U.S. priorities as well. On Thursday, the United States said Israel had agreed to daily pauses to allow humanitarian aid in and for Palestinian civilians to flee the battle zone.

“In Israel we know they’re fringe radicals,” says one former Israeli official, referring to the various far-right politicians. “But the world doesn’t understand that and doesn’t know they lack any real power or influence. All it sees is Israeli ministers saying these things.

“Instead of being quiet and helping the war effort, they’re actively harming our international legitimacy,” the former official says.

More than words

Yet the problem, according to analysts and international officials, is not just deleterious far-right rhetoric, but actions.

Since Oct. 7, armed Jewish extremists have killed at least eight Palestinians in the West Bank, according to Israeli human rights groups. Several hundred Palestinians in rural villages have been forced off their land due to Israeli settler intimidation and violence, per the United Nations.

This is on top of an ongoing and expansive Israeli military operation in the West Bank targeting militants, especially Hamas members, that has already claimed the lives of more than 170 Palestinians in the past month.

“The settlers are taking advantage of the attention being focused on Gaza ... to take over vast swaths of West Bank land,” says one foreign diplomat based in Israel. “They’re scaring Palestinians away.”

The Israeli military has called for the settlers to respect Israeli law and the role of the army as the “sovereign” in the occupied territory. Yet according to human rights groups, only a handful of settlers have been detained, and no indictments have yet come down.

Defense analysts say this is harming Israel’s primary military campaign, drawing forces and attention away not just from the Gaza theater but also from the country’s northern border with Lebanon, where exchanges of fire take place daily with the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia.

“This is not just morally abhorrent but also undermines our national security,” says the former senior Israeli official.

Senior ministers within Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition, however, seem undaunted.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, leader of the far-right Religious Zionism party, issued a letter to Mr. Netanyahu this week demanding an “end to the neglect of settlers’ security” in the West Bank and the establishment of Palestinian-free “sterile security zones” around settlements and on roadways. He also demanded that Palestinians be stopped from accessing their olive trees for the season’s harvest, lest that also threaten the security of nearby settlements.

Analysts deem the request tantamount to further Israeli annexation of the territory, which the Biden administration and other Israeli allies have long opposed.

The head of Israel’s internal security agency, Shin Bet, late last month reportedly warned the government that settler violence could “set the area alight” and urged far-right leaders, including Mr. Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, “to take responsibility and calm things down.”

Yet last week, too, Mr. Smotrich ignited a political fight inside the Netanyahu government over the transfers of taxes that Israel collects to the Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the West Bank. The monthly disbursement makes up the largest portion of the PA’s budget, which it then uses to pay civil servant salaries, including for its security forces.

Mr. Smotrich insisted that the tax transfers be halted completely, calling the PA a “terror authority.” Defense Minister Yoav Gallant shot back that Israel had an interest in “maintaining stability” in the West Bank, “always and especially during these times,” and that the PA security forces were working to “prevent terrorism.”

The Netanyahu government, under U.S. pressure, ultimately disbursed most of the money, though the PA in protest said this week it was rejecting the entire amount.

Fears of escalation

Israeli security officials and analysts fear that the ongoing violence in the West Bank may escalate into yet another front in what is already a war that has extended beyond Gaza. The future of the PA itself, with the rising West Bank death toll and near-nightly demonstrations in support of Hamas, is also in jeopardy.

Nearly every credible plan for postwar Gaza, including the broad outlines put forward by Secretary of State Antony Blinken this week, calls for a major role to be played by a strengthened PA and a resumption of diplomacy aimed at a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Both elements are anathema to the Israeli far right.

Yet Mr. Netanyahu seems to have larger concerns, in particular his own political survival.

He refrained from firing Mr. Eliyahu, the junior minister, and only “suspended” him from cabinet votes. And he has mostly stopped short of publicly rejecting the incendiary comments of his political allies.

“Netanyahu’s political future is dependent on these people; he’s basically a hostage to them,” says Tal Schneider, a political and diplomatic correspondent for The Times of Israel. “And he definitely thinks he has a political future” despite the calamity of Oct. 7 and the ongoing war.

On Wednesday night Mr. Netanyahu convened the war cabinet at the Israeli military’s Central Command, responsible for the West Bank, where he finally denounced the rising settler violence, calling it the work of a “tiny handful of people ... who take the law into their own hands.”

“I condemn it and we will act against it,” he added.

Invited to the meeting were the heads of all the West Bank settler councils, a point Ms. Schneider says was revealing. Mr. Netanyahu is only meeting later this week, and for the first time, with local officials from southern Israel whose communities were either destroyed by Hamas or subsequently evacuated due to the war.

“He has no courage to deal with a public that didn’t vote for him or that might yell at him,” Ms. Schneider says. “He’s still acting like the prime minister of only one side.”