The very carefully choreographed official photo could not have been more misleading. There, on his way to Washington DC, was Benjamin Netanyahu. He looked calm, focused, posing with a pile of papers to communicate the seriousness with which he was preparing for his speech to the US Congress on Wednesday. Next to the Israeli prime minister sat his wife, Sara, positioned so as to indicate her supposed influence on said speech. On the desk in front of them was the pièce de résistance: a blue Maga-esque cap with the words “Total Victory”.
But what was Netanyahu leaving behind as he boarded Wings of Zion, the official plane which only took off for its first flight this month after years of setbacks and more than $200m dollars in refurbishments? A nation in anguish, in danger—and a region very much still at war.
On Monday, the day that the Boeing-767 was taking off, the Israeli army had informed the families of two Gaza hostages—75-year-old Alex Dancyg and 35-year-old Yagev Buchshtav— that they had died months ago in the Strip, one possibly by IDF fire. That same day, Israel’s army had ordered some 400,000 Palestinians to evacuate Khan Yunis in southern Gaza ahead of the army targeting the area, which it said was being used by Hamas to launch rockets. Dozens were killed in the ensuing onslaught.
And that weekend, Israel’s multi-front war had gained yet another arena: a drone launched by the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen hit a block of flats in central Tel Aviv, killing a 50-year-old man and injuring eight others. The following day, the Israeli military struck Hodeidah, a Red Sea port controlled by the group, reportedly killing three people and injuring dozens more. On Sunday, the Israeli army said it had shot down yet another missile from Yemen. “The fire that is currently burning in Hodeidah is seen across the Middle East and the significance is clear,” warned Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.
The Houthis have been shooting projectiles at commercial vessels in the Red Sea for months, disrupting a major global shipping route ostensibly in support of Hamas in Gaza. But now the group had managed to infiltrate Israel’s air defences. On 13th April, Israel was able to defend itself, with support from allies including the US and UK, as Iran attacked with hundreds of missiles. And yet the Houthis had managed to penetrate Israel’s airspace with one drone, which landed very near to the US diplomatic mission, thought to have been the intended target for the attack.
“The Houthi strike on Tel Aviv has moved the group from the margins of the Gaza conflict to the centre of diplomacy and the allied strategy to try to end the fighting permanently,” as the US-based Soufan Center put it in a briefing. The Israeli response could expand even further, and also frustrate US efforts to stop the Houthis from attacking ships in the Red Sea. Strategically, the response was a dead end, too, given the fact that Israel’s army cannot sustain war on multiple fronts. The country is on its knees after 10 months of conflict, already stretched between Gaza, Lebanon, and a massive increase in settler violence in the West Bank.
Amid all of this, Netanyahu had made himself absent. There he was on a flight to Washington, alongside a handful of released hostages and other hostage families, keen to send a message of relevance to the people back home, and hopefully avoiding the collapse of his coalition in the process.
The US trip hardly seems urgent, and the PM does not seem to be in demand on the Capitol. On Tuesday, Israeli journalists were reporting that Netanyahu’s schedule was fairly empty—so empty, in fact, that the Prime Minister’s Office released pictures of the PM meeting with the hostage families he had travelled with to DC from Israel. Aside from Wednesday’s Congress address, and a meeting with Biden (postponed because of a bout of Covid) and Kamala Harris on Thursday, he was also due to meet with Donald Trump. According to the Republican nominee’s post on Truth Social, Netanyahu asked to move that meeting to Friday. Instead of getting back to a country in flames, Netanyahu will head to Mar-a-Lago in Florida for the weekend.
Back home, regional tensions are rising. Protests calling for a ceasefire and hostage release deal and elections are only gathering momentum, as Netanyahu seems intent on scuppering any chances of an end to the war in order to save his political skin. At the end of June, a historic High Court ruling ended the exemption for ultra-Orthodox Jews from army service in order to study the Torah. This has been the default since Israel’s founding, and has caused much resentment for Israelis who do serve. In July, the army issued 1,000 Haredi draft orders. Community leaders have urged ultra-Orthodox youths to ignore the orders, and there have been protests. More disruption may follow.
And while Netanyahu was getting ready to pay lip service to Israeli democracy and the potential for Saudi normalisation (on ice as the war in Gaza has continued) in his Congress address, yet more extremist members of his government were seizing opportunities to pursue their ideological agenda. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir announced at a meeting in the Knesset that the highly sensitive status quo on the disputed Temple Mount/Al-Aqsa complex in Jerusalem had officially changed, with Jews now allowed to pray there. Ben-Gvir was subsequently branded a “pyromaniac”—and the Prime Minister’s Office overruled the minister, stating that the status quo had not changed. Meanwhile, Nissim Vaturi, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, posted a map of Jewish resettlement of Gaza.
Such extremist posturing has seen Israel shed international support, alongside its military response to the 7th October Hamas attack and its lack of action against settler violence. Last week, an advisory opinion by judges of the International Court of Justice found that “Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the regime associated with them, have been established and are being maintained in violation of international law.” The court called for Israel to pay restitution for harm and evacuate all settlers and existing settlements. This opinion will be hard for world leaders to ignore. The PM’s Office’s response was defensive, and divisive: “The Jewish nation cannot be an occupier in its own land.” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, one of the more extreme right-wing members of the cabinet, posted on X: “The answer to the Hague - Sovereignty now,” a reference to West Bank annexation. That same week, Israel’s Knesset parliament had passed a motion opposing a Palestinian state “at this time”. Smotrich was quick to post his delight. This was a sign, he said, that there would never be “an Arab terror state in the land of Israel.”
As he has done on at least three occasions in the past, Netanyahu was also set to warn Congress about the dangers posed by Iran—a central obsession of his political career. But as the Houthi attack, the escalation with Hezbollah and April’s direct confrontation with Iran show, for all his warnings, Netanyahu’s Iran approach does not seem to have worked.
Nor has his strategy of avoidance and delay on Gaza worked, either. The prime minister cannot run forever, nor can he postpone a ceasefire deal in perpetuity. A letter co-signed by eminent members of Israel’s security establishment to the Republican and Democrat speakers and House majority leaders warns of their “grave concerns” over the prime minister’s visit, listing his prioritisation of “personal political interests”, his lack of willingness to “conceptualise a post-war plan” and the fact that he is “a leader without a mandate… who is facing prosecution for major war crimes” by the International Criminal Court. Dozens of Democrats reportedly were planning to boycott his Congress address.
Public opinion is catching up with him, too. A poll by the Haaretz newspaper, out just before he flew to the States, found that 70 per cent believe he is “very” or “somewhat” responsible for the failure to reach a deal to free the hostages still in Gaza. The Israeli public seem to be seeing him and his failures more clearly—even as he refuses to do so.
This article has been amended to clarify that the estimated cost of refurbishment for Wings of Zion was more than $200m
