Killing to Cling to Power? The Dilemmas of Israeli Prime Minister

Abstract

Hamas's strategic surprise attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, is not only a military and intelligence failure on the part of Israel, but it also casts doubt on the capacity of the Israeli Prime Minister to provide the security needs of Israelis. What this paper does is explore the complexities and dilemmas of Israel’s war on Gaza despite domestic pressure to halt the Gaza war to enable the release of hostages, the call on the coalition government to account for the needless deaths of Israelis on the fateful October 7, 2023 attack and the growing pressure abroad to respect humanitarian law of war in Gaza. The war nevertheless continues unabated while Hamas is ducking for cover with the multiracial captives. The multilevel demands on the Israeli PM and his right-wing coalition have ramifications on the regime’s legitimacy, a bleak future for the two-state solution, and the general implication of the war on global politics. This paper utilised the Diversionary Theory of War to explain the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. The paper argues that Hamas attacked Israel to thwart the normalisation process between Israel and Saudi Arabia, while the Israeli prime minister is using the Gaza war as an alibi to boost his reelection bid and to divert the attention of Israelis from the toxic domestic politics to cling to power.