In spite of Israel’s military dominance over its regional foes, is the Zionist entity actually at its most vulnerable point in history? And more importantly — can it sustain the Jewish state project?
Despite the demoralization and destruction produced by Israel’s two-year-long genocidal campaign on the Palestinians, Israel potentially finds itself at its weakest point in its short history.
In his new book, Israel on the Brink, renowned Israeli historian Ilan Pappé makes the case that Israel’s current path forward is unsustainable. With a combination of domestic, political, military and international pressures, Israel will continue to destabilize.
Pappé writes, “A potential fall of Israel could either be like the end of South Vietnam, the total erasure of a state, or like South Africa, the fall of a particular ideological regime and its replacement by another. I believe that in the case of Israel, elements of both scenarios will unfold sooner than many of us can comprehend or prepare for.”
Hedges and Pappé chronicle the path Israel has taken to reach this point, one of radical religious fanaticism manifesting itself in figures such as Benjamin Netanyahu and Itamar Ben-Gvir at the highest positions in government, and what the future looks like for them as well as the devastated Palestinian population.
Transcript
Chris Hedges
The Israeli historian Ilan Pappé argues that Israel is imploding. He defines the current far-right government of Benjamin Netanyahu as neo-Zionist, meaning that the old values of Zionism have become more extreme, more openly racist, more supremacist and more violent. This neo-Zionist state has abandoned the incremental approach, the slow-motion ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, which characterized past Zionist governments.
It is using genocide as a weapon to empty the Gaza Strip of Palestinians and soon perhaps the West Bank. It is dominated by Jewish extremists that have turned Israel into what he calls the State of Judea, distinct from the old state of Israel. The state of Judea, run by fanatic Jewish colonists, 750,000 of whom live in the West Bank, fuses religious Zionism with Orthodox Judaism. It seeks to establish an Israeli empire that will dominate its Arab neighbors, especially Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.
The hatred for Palestinians by those who run this neo-Zionist state, the state of Judea, extends towards secular Israeli Jews. This, he argues, means that ultimately Israel will fracture, making Israel unsustainable. At the same time, as the American empire unravels, a process accelerated by the ineptitude and corruption of the Trump administration, Israel’s fundamental pillar of support will erode, forcing retrenchment by the United States, including in the Middle East.
What will the collapse of Israel mean for Israelis, Palestinians and the Middle East? Will it usher in a process of decolonization? Or will it foster even more violence, bloodletting and extremism? Will it be possible to replace Israel with a secular state, one where Palestinians have equal rights with Israelis, a country of one person, one vote? Or will Israel atrophy into a despotic theocracy, with its educated secular elite fleeing the country and its economy disintegrating under the onslaught?
Joining me to discuss the future of Israel, and his new book Israel on the Brink, is Ilan Pappé, professor of history at the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter in the UK and director of the university’s European Center for Palestine Studies. His other books include The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Ten Myths About Israel and A History of Modern Palestine. Let’s begin with the latest news out of Qatar, this attempted assassination of the leaders of Hamas who were apparently gathering to discuss and by all reports accept the latest ceasefire agreement.
Ilan Pappé
Yeah, Chris, thank you for having me once more on your show. It’s a great pleasure and honor to be here. I think that those of us who follow closely Benjamin Netanyahu’s policy towards the negotiations with Hamas or towards the idea of finding an exit out of the present war in Gaza, were not surprised by the attack.
In the previous cases where there was a chance for a deal, Netanyahu found non-military, if you want, ways of making this impossible. This time, because of the American involvement, it was clear that Hamas was going a very long way towards meeting the Israeli demands and therefore a deal was possible and the only way to do it was by this provocative attack on the Hamas negotiating team.
It’s not even the Hamas leadership. He attacked the negotiating team hoping that this would lead to a situation where negotiations would be a non-starter. Both the attack itself failed and also the Hamas position has not changed. They’re still willing to negotiate a deal. I think that’s one dimension of that attack.
The other dimension is what you referred to in your introductory remarks. This is the DNA of the present Israeli government, the sense that they are the rulers of the Middle East, that they are the dominant power. And it’s good every now and then to show every part of the Middle East that they have the power and the ability to do whatever they want regardless of international law or the sovereignty of Arab countries.
It is really a sense that they have that the Arab world, or at least the regimes of the Arab world, are totally at their mercy and under their submission. And I think that these were the twin objectives of this attack — one was tactical about the negotiations, but the other one was part of this hubris sense that they are now really the power in the area, which fits very well with this neo-Zionist messianic vision of reconstructing the ancient kingdom of Israel that they have read about in the Old Testament, in the Bible, thinking that they are now being able to rebuild it with the same kind of power and influence.
Chris Hedges
And just the reaction of the Trump administration, it’s hard to know what’s true. Trump lies like he breathes but he claims, of course, that he didn’t learn about it until the US military told him about it.
The warning that supposedly was delivered to Qatar, according to Qataris, began ten minutes after the bombing began. There’s the largest US airbase in the Middle East in Qatar, they certainly would have been able to read through radar systems, the approach of Israeli warplanes. How do you read the US response and the effect on the United States of this strike?
Ilan Pappé
I think this is a way of trying to cover up for what really happened. After all, it’s not only that you have the biggest American base in the Middle East, in Qatar, you have the high command of the whole region, the American high command of the whole region in Qatar. The Israeli air force would have not sent one aeroplane to that airspace without at least informing that headquarter in Qatar.
So I think that the Americans knew that this was coming. I think Trump begins to understand that Netanyahu believes that sometimes established facts are good enough in order to make sure that Trump, even if he’s not entirely happy with an action, will go along with it after it had occurred. And therefore, I do think that the Americans knew about it.
They decided not to stop it by any powerful or forceful means and hoped and they still probably believe at this moment that they have succeeded in somehow glossing over this incident as they would call it and maintain their good relationship both with Israel and Qatar.
At one point this kind of adventurous policy would not be that easy to reconcile for the Americans. It works so far because of the weakness of the Arab governments, the lack of self-respect and dignity. But they might find one day that this is even too much for them. And then this whole American game of navigating or balancing between the two different interests of the United States in the region, this balancing act may not be possible anymore in the future.
Chris Hedges
At a dinner in Cairo a few months ago with Nasser’s former head of the Minister of Information who [former President of Egypt Anwar El-]Sadat had thrown in prison for 10 years and he made for me exactly that point. He said the problem is not that Israel is strong, it’s that the Arab governments are weak.
Ilan Pappé
Absolutely, absolutely. It’s something, you know, whatever we may think about [former President of Egypt] Gamal Abdel Nasser, previous leaders of the Ba’ath in Syria and Iraq, they would have not tolerated such an Israeli behavior. There’s no doubt about it, with all the risk of saying what would have happened if in history this can be certain, with some certainty be stated.
Chris Hedges
So let’s talk about the state of Judea, what that means, and how that is distinct from the state of Israel.
Ilan Pappé
Yeah, the state of Judea is the kind of political structure that began to emerge in the Jewish settlements, colonies in the West Bank after the June ’67 war. And at first, this was…
Chris Hedges
Let me just interrupt for people that is when Israel occupied Gaza and the West Bank including East Jerusalem.
Ilan Pappé
And the West Bank, absolutely. Yeah, what we call the Six-Day War and Israel occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip alongside the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula. And within the West Bank, which a group of right-wing Israeli ideologues and political groups regarded as the ancient land of Israel, a certain ideological infrastructure was developed.
At first, it was very marginal. It had very little impact on Israeli politics. But once the Likud, under Menachem Begin in 1977, ended the Labor Zionist domination or dominance in Israeli and Zionist politics, these ideologues became far more influential and began to develop through learning centers, through the writings of their rabbis, their gurus, a kind of literature that was very ideological in its nature and interpreted the reality of the 1970s and the 1980s and later of the 21st century as a monumental historical moment in the life of the Jewish people, where the old ancient biblical Israel is going to return and the days of the golden period, the glorious period of the past would be re-enacted.
And for that matter, the ideologue said, two things have to happen. One, you need to have sovereignty all over ancient Israel, that is, all over historical Palestine, Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. And you need to maintain a theocratic regime.
And therefore, the problem was not just the presence of so many Palestinians in that coveted new kingdom, but also the presence of secular Jews who have served a certain purpose in history in their eyes, but have already exhausted their historical role and therefore, they were also an impediment for the recreation of the glorious biblical kingdom that they read about in the Old Testament.
Now, from a marginal group in the 70s and the 80s, they became a powerful political force because they succeeded in paving the way into the more impoverished parts of the Israeli Jewish society, especially among the second and third generation of North African Jews who lived in the slums of the big cities, in the infamous development towns of Israel, which lacked proper economic, educational and professional infrastructures.
And they were quite easily recruited to this ideology and their way of living anyway was already quite traditional and far more religious than that of the secular Jews. So they became a formidable power and we already saw it in the elections during the time of the Corona[virus] pandemic. But their moment of peak came in November 2022 when Netanyahu, with all his problems, decided to align himself with that coalition of the State of Judea and was willing to give them anything they wanted in order to remain in power.
And that meant giving them the Ministry of Homeland, what would be in America, the Homeland Security, a powerful position within the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Finance, but even more important, I think, allowing them to occupy senior and important positions in the police, in the army, and in the Secret Service.
So now they have a very strong grip over the Israeli state altogether, and by that I mean that the state that they are looking at, which I call the State of Judea, is swallowing, gradually, the State of Israel.
Chris Hedges
These are the Mizrahi, they’re called in Israel, and they always had, there was always tension with the Ashkenazi, the European-born Jews who dominated Israel, let’s say up until the 80s. Although, of course, Netanyahu’s family comes out of Poland. And what you saw was a kind of, Avi Shlam writes about it quite well in his memoirs, what is it, Three Worlds I think it’s called, that tension, that inherent kind of racism.
I mean, you mentioned this in your book, and it’s fascinating that those groups, many of whom came, they were Arab Jews, or as you said, they came from Morocco or Ethiopia, wherever, who were, they were poorly treated by the Ashkenazi. And it’s fascinating that they become the new power base because, of course, they were the — I don’t want to call them second-class citizens — but they certainly, among many Ashkenazi leaders, were kind of embarrassment.
Ilan Pappé
Absolutely. This is a tragic history and you’re right, my friend Avi writes about it very well in his book Three Worlds. They were brought, I mean not they, their grandparents, so to speak, were brought to Israel in the early 1950s because the Zionist movement or the new state of Israel failed to convince millions of Jews who lived in the United States and in the United Kingdom and parts of Europe to immigrate to Israel.
And quite reluctantly, the Zionist leadership decided to bring people that they regarded as Arab Jews, namely, they were not only Jews, they were also Arabs. But with the help of their own academic advisors, they embarked on what one of them called a process of de-Arabizing the Arab Jews, namely making them European Jews.
And one of the best ways for an Arab Jew to be accepted as an equal to a European Jew is to display hatred and racism towards the Arab and in fact towards his or her own identity. And that creates quite a very troubled mental infrastructure, as well as difficult social and economic condition that they found themselves in because they were pushed into the geographical and social margins of the society.
Now, something else happened because the governments did not deal with social welfare and economic problems. The religious groups entered instead of the government and had a lot of influence of the younger generation. So it’s not only Mizrahi versus Ashkenazi, it’s also a whole generation of young Israelis that went through what one can call national religious, rather than a secular democratic, through national religious educational system that produces graduates who are racist, theocratic in their way of looking at democracy, human rights and civil rights and quite committed to the Zionist dream.
Some of those youngsters we have seen in the selfies that they themselves filmed during the genocide of Gaza and it’s very easy to recognize the language that they use, the hatred, the racism and unfortunately this is not a marginal phenomenon. This is a very widespread phenomenon and is part of the power base of what I call the state of Judea.
Chris Hedges
Like the Christian right in the United States, they view politics through the lens of the Bible and talk about what that means, especially this campaign to raze the Al-Aqsa Mosque, I think [Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar] Ben-Gvir is one of the leaders of this, and rebuild the second temple.
It’s all, of course, mythology. I don’t know. Do we really know exactly where Judea and Samaria were? I don’t know. But, like the Christian right, suddenly the politics is filtered through this biblical mythology.
Ilan Pappé
Absolutely, it has, like in the case of the Christian Zionists, it has a pseudo-scientific side to it. Near the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, that is near Haram al-Sharif where the Al-Aqsa Mosque exists, there is something called the Institute for Building the Third Temple, supposedly an academic institute that researches the history of the temples in ancient times and builds models for the third temple in the future. This is a part of…
Chris Hedges
Let me just stop you. This was, the Romans razed the Jewish temple. Was it 70 AD? Is that date correct?
Ilan Pappé
70 AD, yeah.
Chris Hedges
And then of course, expelled Jews from Jerusalem. This was after the, was it the Bar Kokhba revolt? And then it’s always been, among the religious Zionists, and now we have the Al-Aqsa Mosque. I think that’s where the prophet Muhammad supposedly ascended to heaven. It’s one of the major holy sites in Islam that people rated as the third most important but extremely important and the idea is really to tear it down which would, of course, ignite much of the Muslim world.
Ilan Pappé
Yes, so one feature of this messianic vision is indeed to replace the two mosques on the mount with the third temple. But there is another aspect to this missionary, this vision which is to create or recreate the kingdom of David and Solomon. Not that there is a clear map in the Bible, there are no maps, but they have a certain cartography in mind which stretches far beyond historical Palestine, that is Israel and the occupied territories, into Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.
Now, right now, that looks totally insane and not a very practical or even possible or probable scenario. But what I would say is that although I don’t think they will ever be able to achieve that geographical kind of extension or expansion rather, I’m not sure they would not attempt it. That by itself, is a kind of irrational strategic and future behavior that I think will also contribute to the disintegration of Israel in the more distant future.
Chris Hedges
Can we argue that that’s what they’re doing now? They are essentially expanding greater Israel into Gaza. They’ve already expanded, let’s call it Greater Israel, into southern Lebanon. They’ve moved almost up to Damascus in Syria. Is that what is driving this expansion? Then, of course, these strikes being carried out in Iran, in Qatar.
Ilan Pappé
Absolutely, this is the model that they are building. The model is of the center of gravity. The power base of the Middle East is in Jewish Zionist Jerusalem. And the whole region is run from there with vassals, with allies, and with enemies that are constantly being punished. And in the meantime, the space of the state extends over the borders of what used to be mandatory or historical Palestine. Absolutely right.
There’s already military presence in South Lebanon, in the south of Syria, and I don’t think they’re going to stop there. And what I think very difficult for your viewers, Chris, to realize is that there is a difference between their internal discourse in Hebrew and what seeps out or makes itself out in English or is being translated into English because if you visit their centers of learning, if you read their own websites, if you kind of make a more profound effort to look at what they write and take it seriously and talk about, then you can see that the ambition is far more, is more than just having the military presence in South Lebanon or South Syria.
That the ambition is to really rebuild that ancient biblical Israel and regarding many of the areas west of the River Jordan, such as Jordan, as part of that biblical kingdom that by right or by God’s will belongs actually to the Hebrew people, namely the current Jewish people.
Chris Hedges
So let’s talk about how that contributes to disintegration. You write,
“So a potential fall of Israel could either be like the end of South Vietnam, the total erasure of a state, or like South Africa, the fall of a particular ideological regime and its replacement by another. I believe that in the case of Israel, elements of both scenarios will unfold sooner than many of us can comprehend or prepare for.”
So you have the internal divisions. We’ve seen it with the protests against Netanyahu. There doesn’t seem to be much internal dispute over the genocide, but certainly over this clash between these religious Zionists, the state of Judea and the old state of Israel, if you want to define it as that kind of clash.
So you have the internal divisions. You have the expansion of Greater Israel. How do those forces contribute to the disintegration of the state of Judea, the state of Israel?
Ilan Pappé
All these actions and strategies when they are being implemented on the ground have a dialectical kind of connection with other processes. Namely, they are influencing almost like on a billiard pool table other processes.
For instance, the more aggressive is the Israeli territorial expansion. The more cruel is the Israeli punitive action and adventurous, namely, taking part all over the Arab world, the more the Arab world itself would undergo a process of change from within that hasn’t happened yet until now.
The so-called Arab Spring did not produce dramatic regime changes in the Arab world, but such a situation, such an escalation of Israeli territorial expansion and punitive actions, can lead to a continued revolution. The one that started in 2012 and one of the manifestations, I think, of any new political order in the Arab world will be regimes, rulers, governments, whatever they will be, political elites, that will reflect more faithfully what their societies want their states to do with regard to Palestine.
And then Israel would not face two small guerrilla armies that it can relatively easily defeat, although even that they haven’t been able to do. But they would face conventional armies. The second is economic. Expansion like this, lunatic behavior, if you want, like this typical to populist governments, wherever they are, comes at a price.
The United States is the one that would ask to finance most of it because up to 2023, the United States provided Israel with $3 billion annual support. Since 2023, they’ve already paid into the Israeli bank account, so to speak, about $15 to $16 billion and the demand on the American taxpayer to finance these ambitions would increase and that would, I’m not sure, even if a Republican administration would go along with this.
So they are facing also a serious economic crisis despite the fact that, of course, still people buy from the Israelis military security and securitization products and services. Nonetheless, that would not be enough to sustain a proper economy. To that you can add the isolation in the world which, the more extreme the behavior is, it might not be contained in the boycott and divestment campaigns and might move into the realm of sanctions.
We’re already beginning to see indications of this, that some governments are willing, at least to talk about sanctions, we’ll wait and see whether they’re willing to impose them. To that, you can add also the change in the young generation of Jews, especially in the United States, who with such an Israeli, such a state of Judea would probably associate themselves from Zionism and Israel and who knows, many of them might be even activists in the solidarity movement with the Palestinians.
And finally, I do think that we have to pay attention to the younger Palestinian generation. There’s not much to write home about the present political leadership of the Palestinians in terms of their unity, vision, vision and effectiveness. But if you listen and view and talk to the younger Palestinians, there is a human capital there that would be able, I do believe, to restructure the Palestinian liberation movement, to orient it towards a far more effective pathway in the future and actually having them in the driver’s seat, not only in the struggle to dismantle Zionism, but far more importantly in leading the way in the conversation what should replace a decolonized Israel, or if I’m right, disintegrated Israel in which the Zionist project will collapse in front of our eyes.
Chris Hedges
Before I ask you about what that collapse looks like, the roadmap to that collapse in terms of the actual steps, let’s talk about Egypt. Clearly, the Palestinians in Gaza, two million of whom are being pushed right up to the border with Rafah, that’s a nine mile border that it shares with Egypt.
Egypt has moved military armaments up along the border because they fear the security barrier being breached. Do you see that as a real possibility? Because when you talk about a confrontation, really the one military power that has the ability in the Middle East to do, well, other than Saudi Arabia maybe, but that really has the ability to do any kind of damage to Israel is Egypt.
Ilan Pappé
Well, I’m sure the Egyptian president and government are not thrilled about a scenario in which the Egyptian army enters a confrontation, military confrontation with Israel. They might, as you’re absolutely right, Chris, they might find themselves in a position where they have very little options. It’s very difficult to predict exactly what would happen in the near future, but one can kind of detect a few possible scenarios which are quite probable.
One is that the Egyptians would continue to the very end to reject the transfer of two million Palestinians into their territory, which would force the Israelis to try, and they’re already talking about it, to build what they call the big refugee city on the border between the Gaza Strip and the Sinai and Egypt. Right now the Israelis don’t have the money, by the way, to build it. They are relying on the United States to build that city.
However, I think quite a lot of Palestinians would resist, in the Gaza Strip, being transferred to such a ghetto. The carnage will continue. The genocide might even escalate, if it’s not bad enough already. And it would not be just a matter of the Egyptian military being now in close proximity to the Israeli army, something that was avoided for many years because of the peace treaty.
It is also the pressure from within the Egyptian society when Egypt would be so clearly involved in something that’s happening a few meters from the Egyptian-Israeli border. This is something that unfortunately I could not promise anyone who lives in Gaza that immediately it would lead to the end of the genocide. But I do think that this is the last stage of this particular carnage which will not end in the total disposition of the Palestinians. I don’t think so. It will include an attempt to do this with horrific consequences.
And much depends on the international community, not just the Arab world. On the international community that now has to be loyal to something most of the leading countries, apart from the United States of course, in the West have said that if this is going to unfold, they would move to impose severe sanctions on Israel. This could tame Israel. This could stop even the state of Judea.
The question is, do the European governments have the will to impose the severe sanctions that would include the end of trade connections with Israel, the ousting of Israel from the UEFA, the football association, from the Eurovision, and creating at least the same atmosphere that they have tried to create for Russia after the Russian invasion into the Ukraine.
Chris Hedges
So talk a little bit about how you foresee how that disintegration taking place. What would it look like on the ground?
Ilan Pappé
Yes, as you know in this book that we are talking about, Israel on the Brink, this was the most difficult part of course. It was not difficult for me to imagine what I would have liked historical Palestine to look like in 2048.
The big question we all ask ourselves, those of us, especially those of us who support the One Democratic State solution is how do we get there? How do we get there? And what I was trying to do in the second part in the book in a rather fictional way, by diary, of an old man that looks back…
Chris Hedges
Right, this has you in a very old man, I think. [Laughing]
Ilan Pappé
A very old man. It had to be a very old man. Otherwise, I could not fit in, what is it, at least 20 years, right, from now. And I’m 70 now, so that would be a very old man. But what I was trying to do is to avoid, first of all, a rosy picture of decolonization. Decolonization is a messy, a messy affair.
There is not one decolonization in history that was nonviolent at all and went smoothly. So I was trying to be, on one hand, also realistic. So I include setbacks, violence, unfortunately, with a deep hope that these are limited affairs and not the rule rather than the exception in the process. The second thing I was trying to show is that there is an accumulative effect to certain dramatic actions that people on different parts of this equation can take in order to influence the reality.
I will give one few examples. For instance, I do believe that there will be a change in the Palestinian Liberation Organization. I don’t know if it will be a new PLO, it will be a new organization, but I think there will be clearer Palestinian voice that would abandon the two-state solution and would unite as many Palestinians as possible around a vision and a platform that would force the world to say this is the Palestinian position, not the position of an extreme group or that or other faction, but the official vision of the Palestinian liberation movement.
This would become more realistic if Israel annexes and Israel will, I think, try to annex, illegally annex the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and make it part of Israel. I also, I’m not an expert on American politics, I bow to your knowledge, but I refuse to take teleological determinist views on the future.
History is cyclic and not linear and therefore I do believe and not just hope that there is a chance for a different kind of politics emerging in America not tomorrow and not the day after and mainly because populist leaders like Trump are also not very competent in running economies and societies or international relations for that matter and therefore I think any particular change, positive change, in American politics not, as I say, not in the very near future, but in more distant future, would play a very important role in closing the options for the regime in Israel to continue to sustain an apartheid system, expansion, ethnic cleansing, and hopefully not more genocide.
And this is also something that I think one has to pay attention to, that although Israel has militarily defeated Hezbollah and probably has defeated or at least limited the options of Iran and Hamas, continuing to control millions of Palestinians in the West Bank, in the Gaza Strip, inside Israel against their will, facing the millions of Palestinians who live in refugee camps on the borders of Israel with their own connections with local militias and resistance movement is not going away. This reality is not going to change.
And this would add to the military pressure on Israel from the outside. So I do hope that all these pressures eventually would create two kinds of internal dynamics, which are the final act, if you want, in this scenario and a necessary act. Otherwise it would not happen. One is the change eventually, but that would be the last thing that would happen, a change in the Israeli Jewish society similar to the one that took place among the white community in South Africa, willing to concede that there is no other option but to renegotiate the reality.
I know it sounds totally unrealistic now, but I’m talking about a different future with different events that happened until that moment, including all the pressures I was talking about. That’s one thing. And secondly, I have no doubt that there will be two population movements here that will be in the final act.
One, and I think that happened also to some people in the white community in South Africa, Israelis who would not want to live in a non-apartheid state and would have dual nationality or jobs that they can ignite outside of Israel would leave, and they can leave. And the beginning of the movement of Palestinians coming back from refugees and exilic communities, changing the demographics, changing the political options, and, maybe this would be surprising for some people, my experience of 70 years with the Palestinians makes me, I’m totally confident that the basic impulse of the Palestinians, if at all we’re coming to that moment where they’re beginning to liberate themselves from more than a century of oppression, colonialism, and ethnic cleansing, my sense is that the basic impulse is not revenge, not retribution, but rather restitution, rather wishing to rebuild their normal life that were theirs before the arrival of Zionism.
And I do believe that actually the inspiring model will not come from political models in Europe, but rather from the pre-1948 past, where Muslim Christians and Jews genuinely coexisted, not only in historical Palestine, but in the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa as well.
Chris Hedges
I just want to close by asking about the IDF [Israel Defense Forces], the pressures on the IDF. There are all sorts of reports that significant numbers of reservists are not showing up for this new campaign in Gaza, that casualty rates are far higher than we know. And then of course, there are all these estimates of how many Israelis have left the country since October 2023 or even putting the numbers as high as half a million.
But you have, there appears to be a kind of exhaustion. The IDF is not created, has never been created to fight a war of attrition. Israel is a small country, it has a population of seven million or something. So just just talk about the pressure, the internal military pressures that may contribute to this.
Ilan Pappé
Yeah, Chris, I’m glad you brought it up because it’s one factor that I do write about in the book, but I forgot to bring it as an additional indicator for possible disintegration. So I’m happy you brought it up. There are two kinds of exhaustion here. One is the human exhaustion. Definitely, it’s very clear that the reserve soldiers have become the regular army because they serve so much since 2023 that they are serving almost the same days in a year as does a constrict, a young regular constrict.
And these are people that are not just exhausted by being engaged all the time by the army, they are losing their jobs, their businesses, and of course it has an immense negative effect on their families and their life. The second exhaustion is of the equipment, as Haaretz exposed quite recently, there is a problem with the equipment that Israel has because the Israeli strategy, and that was reflected in the equipment that it produces and purchases, is meant to win wars on three conditions.
One is that Israel initiates the war, and this didn’t happen in 2023. Secondly, that it is fought in the enemy’s territory, which has not happened all the time. And thirdly, and most importantly, that wars are very short. Otherwise, as you rightly said, they become wars of attrition.
All these three elements were not fulfilled. And that also is reflected in the quality of the equipment, its ability to serve the purposes of the political objectives of the government. It’s still a very formidable military power. I don’t want anyone to think that tomorrow Palestinians or anyone else can defeat the Israeli army. We’re not there. But there is an exhaustion that also reflects the lack of social cohesion between those who serve and those who do not serve.
And the option, the most attractive option, is of course to leave Israel if you can, if you don’t want your children to serve in the army and that happens in large numbers. Now all this does not mean that there are still no Israeli youngsters who still are enthusiastic in volunteering not just to the army but even to the elite units of the army. So the military has still the power to police a civilian population to destroy it, to genocide it, to terrorize it as they do in the West Bank and inside Israel.
The question is, judging from our historical precedence, can this go on forever? History answers back, no. There is a limit to such rogue behavior. There’s a limit for keeping millions of people under a military rule against the will for such a long time, especially in the region where the colonizers, if you want, are a minority and not the majority, despite the balance of power that now keeps them intact. But I don’t believe this is something that would hold on in the near, in the more distant future.
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