Iran attack could be ‘start of worst phase of a major Middle East war’, says Israeli political analyst

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: It’s obviously a very frightening night tonight. What do you think the combination of this missile attack and this terror attack has on the Israeli people’s support for the war?
Dahlia Scheindlin: Which war? We have several wars going on. Israelis do see them as different wars in a way, which does tie into something that Richard Haass was saying about how the American government sees these as two different wars. The problem is they are fundamentally linked. Hezbollah has made that very clear from 8 October when Hezbollah joined in Hamas’s fight by beginning to attack Israel across the border. And Israel does not accept this linkage of the wars, but they are fundamentally linked, whether Israel likes it or not. And the fact is, having gotten to this stage of severe escalation, there is not that much to be done. I know I’m responding a bit to your earlier conversation, but if there had been a ceasefire, a de-escalation with Gaza before, we may not have been quite at this level of brinkmanship.
Now in terms of what Israelis think, Israelis were already getting very anxious about the war in Gaza in the sense that they supported it in the beginning. They justified it. They still justify it, but they were frustrated by the lack of a hostage deal, frustrated by the lack of a clear ending point and frustrated by the lack of clearly defined goals. Now, with relation to Lebanon, I have to say with Hezbollah, Israelis feel much more of a sense of unification and rallying against what seems like an external enemy that, you know, it’s a very unambiguous attack on Israel. It has been this whole time from the regional perspective, for Israelis. But in terms of how to react to this day, Israelis are pretty divided over what to do, even today there was a survey that came out from the Israel Democracy Institute showing that Israelis are deeply divided over whether there should be, for example, a ground operation. But, of course, when you have a terror attack in Jaffa, by which as far as we know right now, eight people were killed, civilians as far as we know. I mean, it’s not a dispute but it’s a terror attack because they were directed against civilians and that makes everybody much more belligerent. And that’s when Israelis start to tie all of the fronts together.
Krishnan Guru-Murthy: What we’ve seen in recent weeks, as you know, is actually, as you were saying, quite a lot of support for what’s going on with Lebanon and an increase, it seems, in opinion polls in support for Benjamin Netanyahu and new people coming into his coalition. I mean, when he promises at the UN and on television that he will strike Iran if they try and hurt Israel, which they have done tonight, that’s sort of the core question, isn’t it? Will Israel now be behind a bigger war with Iran?
Dahlia Scheindlin: It very well could be. I mean, as we speak, I have no way to predict what the Israeli reaction will be. But I can tell you that there are very significant political voices calling for an all out strike on Iran, including from a former defence minister who’s not currently a member of the government, but who said during the day that Israel should take the initiative, bomb Iran, set it back 100 years, and he’s certainly not alone in terms of voices within the governing coalition. Now it really remains to be seen, I think that even in this stage, both Iran and Israel have the capacity to signal to one another that there is some sort of restraint still in play. That’s my assessment. But nobody knows. Israel really could decide that it is going to respond as harshly as possible and then we’re in a completely different situation and we very well might be seeing the beginning of the worst phase of a major all out Middle East war.
Does the Israeli public support that? Again, I think the Israeli public is very anxious and nervous. And it’s not that there was any great joy over the last week or so. Israelis might have felt a sense of relief because they thought the government was taking the kind of strong action against Hezbollah that might finally truly push them back from the Litani River and allow the people of the north to go back home, civilians who’ve been evacuated. But I don’t see euphoria in the streets. I see people very anxious, wondering how close they are to the nearest shelter, stockpiling batteries and worried about losing power and water. So everybody is concerned about the situation and it very easily could spiral out of control. It seems helpless to say it shouldn’t have gotten to this phase. But now that we’re in this, I still think both sides could show, could signal to each other restraint if they wanted to. Israel will respond. But like in April, it can execute a calibrated response and it very much depends on what the US is signalling. Right now the US has continued to signal, frankly, a blank cheque approach to Israel in terms of what it does in the region.
Krishnan Guru-Murthy: Last week, [Israeli National Security Minister Itamar] Ben-Gvir threatened to withdraw from the government if Benjamin Netanyahu stopped in Lebanon. To what extent do his coalition partners dictate the terms?
Dahlia Scheindlin: I don’t think they can dictate the terms unless Netanyahu is prepared to allow them to dictate the terms. It’s true that if these people, if these parties leave the governing coalition, the government could collapse. But there are numerous ways that Netanyahu can protect at least the government, at least for the purpose of advancing certain policies. For example, if he had wanted to sign a hostage release ceasefire deal in Gaza, we have long known that opposition parties would support the government to do that.
The problem is that Netanyahu either is clinging to power so much that he is willing to do what those ultra nationalist, extremist, religious fanatic parties want him to do. Or, and this is ultimately my reading, he and the Likud Party that he has fashioned over the last many years are becoming indistinguishable ideologically from the ultra nationalist parties represented by Itamar Ben-Gvir, the Minister of National Security, and Bezalel Smotrich, the National Minister of Finance. It’s very hard to actually spot the differences in terms of what their party members of Netanyahu’s Likud and those parties advocate and say and the style in which they do it. So I think that we have to really take into account that Netanyahu and his party are not that different from those.