September 2024 offered Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu an unexpected headache with the screening of an extraordinary documentary, a work-in-progress about the corruption charges he is facing, at the Toronto International Film Festival in Canada.

Titled “The Bibi Files,” the documentary includes leaked footage on the police interrogation of Netanyahu on fraud and bribery charges in Israel.

However, what was perhaps most irritating for Netanyahu was the fact that he failed to stop the screening of this documentary that portrays him as dragging his country into a multi-front war in the region that has killed over 50,000 Palestinians and Lebanese, mostly women and children, to secure his position until the end of his term in office in October 2026.

“There is no doubt that a central objective of Netanyahu’s extended war on Gaza was his wish to delay any serious trial on the charges he is facing in Israel. This much is clear,” said an Egyptian source close to the mediation efforts involving the US, Egypt, and Qatar.

These have been trying since the end of the one-week truce in November 2023 to bring an end to the Israeli war on Gaza.  

“At the beginning of our attempt to either extend the truce [of November 2023] or to sign another one, it seemed to us that Netanyahu did not have the political will to move towards another truce. A few months down the road it was clear that Netanyahu simply wanted to keep the war going and to expand it,” the same source said.  

Mediators in Egypt showed themselves “too hopeful” in assuming that Netanyahu would not start a war on Lebanon and to attack Hizbullah in a similar way he had attacked Hamas in Gaza.

Netanyahu, the same source said, was not just fighting in Gaza and South Lebanon but was also ordering aggressive attacks against Palestinian targets in the West Bank, attacking Iranian targets in Tehran and Damascus, and plotting to expand the scope of the regional crisis he had created or aggravated to serve his own political interests.

Today, the source said that the “clear demands” of US President-elect Donald Trump for Netanyahu to “clear up the mess” he has created in the Middle East prior to the inauguration of Trump on 20 January have been consequential in Netanyahu’s decision to agree to a ceasefire in Lebanon and to pursue a basic ceasefire for Gaza that might take months to develop into a sustainable ceasefire even with a close Israeli security watch on Gaza.

According to the same Egyptian source, Trump’s pressure was essential. He explained that the outgoing Biden administration has also been using pressure to the maximum effect to help deliver a ceasefire for South Lebanon and to make “strides” towards the start of a ceasefire for Gaza

However, he added that it is important to note that this “bowing to the pressure moment” does not mean that Netanyahu, or his extremist-dominated government, will give up the aggressive schemes they have for Lebanon, Syria, Gaza or the West Bank.

“Netanyahu created this situation deliberately. He did not want anyone to think of anything other than the ongoing wars,” the same source said.

MULTI-FRONT WAR: During his first testimony before a court of law in Israel last week on charges of corruption, Netanyahu told the judges that it was wrong of them to investigate him while he was managing a multi-front war in the interests of Israel.

According to Mohab Adel, a researcher in Israeli affairs at the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies (ACPSS) in Cairo, it is “true that despite the personal ambitions behind his current attitude, the wars that Israel has been launching against Hamas, Hizbullah, and others, including the Israeli targeted assassinations that eliminated the leaders of Hamas and Hizbullah, are not just about the strict political interests of Netanyahu.”

“They are equally about the established strategic interests of the Zionist state.”

Israel, Adel said, has an established security policy of working to create crises in neighbouring countries. “It either creates them, or they are there already, and it works on expanding and exploiting them,” he said.

“This relates to the core of the Israeli legitimacy of being at war,” he added.

 “Israel, not just Netanyahu or his extremist government,” would have acted to start a war on Gaza even if Hamas had not carried out its 7 October 2023 resistance attack on Israel.

According to Adel, attacking Hamas, Hizbullah, and the resistance movements in the West Bank is not strictly about Netanyahu’s tactical pursuit of political gains. It is more about “using an opportunity to execute plans to eliminate the resistance axis.”

This is not just about undermining any possible security threats that come from these groups, but is also about clipping the wings of Iran, Israel’s most important worry.

Adel said that by eliminating the capacities of Hizbullah, Hamas, and later by being the partner, even by silent consent, to the ouster of the Al-Assad regime in Syria at the hands of the Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) group, Israel had left Iran with few options.

Regional diplomatic sources agree. They suspect that Israel’s next strike will target the Houthi group in Yemen, one of the few remaining allies of Tehran.

They say that the Houthis will not be a difficult target to go for, given the role they have been playing in interrupting vehicle traffic from Israel via the Red Sea. Already both the US and the UK have tried to halt the Houthi attacks but with limited success.

An Israeli strike against the Houthis, according to the same diplomatic sources, would be “particularly problematic” given that Yemen is already in a state of civil conflict with many regional players involved.  

The pro-Iranian militias in Iraq, the same sources argue, are also potential targets of Israel’s expanded regional warfare. Iran did not move these militias into Syria to help the Al-Assad regime before its sudden fall.

It is unclear whether this was about Tehran’s reluctance to support Al-Assad at the end of a year that had seen considerable Iranian frustration with the Syrian ruler, or because the Iranian regime decided to cut its losses after Israel attacked several Iranian installations in Syria before the fall of Al-Assad.

According to the same sources, all closely following Israeli moves, irrespective of the Iranian rationale, the pro-Iran militias in Iraq are on the Israeli hit-list.

What counts most for Israel is to keep pushing Iran into a corner, one diplomat said. This comes with the potential risk of strengthening hardliners in Tehran who are becoming increasingly impatient with the overtures of moderates, including Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, to the West.

According to Mohamed Abbas, chief Iran researcher at the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, Israel is not unaware of the advanced nuclear capacities of Iran that could allow it to move towards producing a nuclear weapon.

However, Abbas said that the Israeli calculations take into account two things. The first is that Israel has shown that it has considerable access into Iran. The second is that in case of an escalation, “which is possible in October 2025 upon the expiry of the existing nuclear agreement with Iran,” it will not just be Israel versus Iran.

Meanwhile, Adel said that in October this year Israel targeted a factory that produces equipment that could be used in making nuclear arms. “This was a clear message of deterrence,” he added.

Neither Israel nor the US nor any regional player would like to see an existential crisis of the regime in Iran, given the possible ramifications of such a scenario, he said. Instead, Israel could continue to exercise its pressure on Tehran to keep it in a corner.

“Israel has a policy of inducing internal crisis in the countries it is targeting,” Adel said. A clear example is the case of Lebanon, where Israel tried to incite a civil war even after the elimination of top Hizbullah leaders.

Israel has also used the ethnic card to build alliances in Syria, especially with the Druze, but also with some factions of the Kurds.

“At the core of its attempts to stir up crises in the countries around it is Israel’s working to manage the demographic imbalance that does not work in its favour,” Adel said. This relates to the obvious fact that the overall Israeli population is 10 million, while it is surrounded by Arab countries of over 200 million.

“So, Israel is in a continuous state of upscaling the crises in these countries, not just from a tactical point of view, but also from a strategic point of view,” he stated.

TARGETS: According to the regional diplomatic sources, Jordan, a country that has had a normalisation deal with Israel since 1994, is one of the next targets for the Israeli crisis-escalation.  

They said that there has been a lot of tension this year, with Israel arresting people that it said were smuggling arms into the West Bank through Jordan.

According to these diplomats, with the growing isolation of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank and the open confrontation between PA security forces and the Palestinian resistance factions, Israel is getting ready to annex large parts of the West Bank that had been transferred to PA security management either fully or partially as a result of the 1993 Oslo Accords.

“It does look imminent,” Adel said, adding that it is compatible with the expansionist plans of the current Israeli government, “which are becoming increasingly clear.”

According to a diplomat who has recently served in Tel Aviv, Netanyahu has been giving top positions in the Israeli Army to generals with radical religious affiliations.

In November this year, Israel passed one of its biggest military budgets ever. “It is clear that this is not just about Gaza or even the annexation of the West Bank,” the diplomat said.

According to a recent study by the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) at Tel Aviv University, Israel is experiencing an unprecedented economic contraction and a potential financial crisis due to mounting debt.

The report attributed the bulk of this debt to massive military spending, which came to 155 billion shekels ($43 billion) in 2024.

The diplomatic source said that the Israeli war policy is generally subject to consent. “The generals might agree or disagree on the objectives of a war or its implementation, but this does not mean that Netanyahu stands alone in wanting to use military force to expand beyond the immediate borders of Israel, just as he did in the case of Syria recently,” he said.

With the fall of the Al-Assad regime, Israel expanded its military presence into Jabal Al-Sheikh beyond the established border line since 1974. This month, during a visit to Israeli troops, Netanyahu said that Israel will stay in Jabal Al-Sheikh until the end of 2025.

According to Adel, this “expansionist” scheme comes at a price, societal as economic. “A prime issue now is the crisis about the recruitment of the Israeli Hardeim who have been traditionally exempted from military service,” he said. “There has also been some obvious economic impact,” he added.

Israeli reports have warned of the profound and enduring economic impacts of military spending. Raising money for war leads to debt, inflation, national deficits, tax hikes, cuts in social welfare allocations, and lower real wages due to reduced purchasing power.  

Israel has spent nearly $120 billion on its wars so far, according to many estimates. Meanwhile, the cost of living has soared in Israel, pushing tens of thousands of Israelis below the poverty line.

Economic growth has fallen to zero or negative, while rising interest rates, the highest among the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, and inflation rates are driving away investors.

The Israeli central bank the Bank of Israel (BOI) has repeatedly expressed its concerns about the impact of the Gaza war on inflation.

However, according to Adel, despite these impacts Israel could still go on with its wars and could still spend more on promoting chaos in the countries on its hit list. “It can afford to put up with the consequences,” he said.

HASBARA: In the opinion of Susan Hattis Rolef, an international relations scholar who has worked as a researcher for the Knesset, Israel is facing “a major diplomacy problem.”

An indication of this was when the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2720, which called for an increase in humanitarian relief to Gaza and did not include a condemnation of Hamas for its acts on 7 October.

In an opinion piece for the Jerusalem Post, Rolef wrote that “part of the problem is that many states, organisations, and individuals believe Hamas when it denies the atrocities that Israel claims to have taken place.”

“Besides the frustrating and enervating nature of the denials, the denials and their reflection on the UN refusal to condemn Hamas for the atrocities it committed create a major hasbara [public diplomacy] problem for Israel.”

In the second week of December, Israel said it was closing its embassy in Ireland due to tensions over the Israeli war on Gaza. The Irish government last week decided to formally intervene in South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which accuses Israel of committing genocide in Gaza.

In May, Israel recalled its ambassador to Dublin after Ireland announced, along with Norway, Spain and Slovenia, that it would recognise a Palestinian state.

According to the diplomat who recently served in Israel, this diplomatic unease is not really a major concern to Israeli society or the government in Tel Aviv, however.

Israelis, he said, and Netanyahu are more worried about the legal process that was started by South Africa and led to an ICJ ruling in July this year that all but called the Israeli war genocidal, along with the International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant for Netanyahu and top military figures for their role in the war on Gaza.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 26 December, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly