The open commitment of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s regime to engage in “ethnic cleansing” against Palestinians is feeding a growing backlash against him and his murderous attacks on Palestinians following the October 7, 2023 Hamas assault on Israel. The growing size of crowds in Israel protesting his policies is creating openings for Israeli opposition figures to speak against his decision to renew attacks on Gaza, while starving the residents there. The opposition is focusing on his continuing rejection of transparency regarding negotiations with Hamas for the release of the remaining hostages and an end to fighting. They are accusing him of putting his personal future ahead of security concerns for the nation, as embodied by his corrupt efforts to reorganize the judiciary and remove opposition to him in the intelligence services. Often cited are his firing of Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar and subsequent attempt to remove Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, who opposed the firing of Bar on constitutional grounds.
The opposition is emerging due to what might be called “facts on the ground.” While the defenders of Netanyahu’s insistence that Operation Gideons’ Chariots will continue until Hamas is obliterated are hiding behind a “legal” argument that the killing does not meet a “legal definition” of genocide, the death toll mounts, and horrific images of death and destruction proliferate on social media.
One of the more extreme examples of this defense was provided May 28 on Piers Morgan Uncensored, when the ambassador of Israel to London, Tzipi Hotovely, repeatedly claimed that “children are not targeted” by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), blaming the increasing number of children killed on Hamas. She has been the target of a petition campaign in the UK demanding her expulsion, a reaction to her past statements that she has “no empathy” for the people of Gaza, and arguing that Israel’s scorched earth policy in Gaza is no different than the firebombing of Dresden by the British in February 1945!
The regime is increasingly isolated following the warning by the leaders of the UK, France and Canada, who belatedly declared they will take “concrete actions” against Israel if the “egregious” expansion of military operations in Gaza is not ended. This warning followed a statement from U.S. President Donald Trump, at the end of his trip to the Persian Gulf. He said that “A lot of people are starving. A lot of people. There’s a lot of bad things going on.” His pledge that he will “do something” about it has likely provoked panic from Netanyahu, who has denounced such statements as “providing support for Hamas.”
The hope for a “political settlement,” which some cling to, is not possible, as the Zionist extremists continue to refuse to negotiate, sticking instead to their utopian belief that peace depends on the success of an “Iron Wall,” of relying on military superiority to pound the Palestinians into either total submission or abandoning their homeland.
Israeli Officials Speak Out
Cracks are emerging in the “Iron Wall,” which is a doctrine first propounded by the Zionist polemicist Vladimir Jabotinsky in 1923. Jabotinsky was the godfather of the Greater Israel concept and the inspiration for Netanyahu and the extremist settlers backing his government. The refusal to engage in serious negotiations with the Palestinians—including rejection of the “trading land for peace” formula underlying the Oslo Accords, and adopted by the Arab League—reflects that Jabotinsky’s Iron Wall policy has remained the de facto security doctrine of Israel since 1948.
The cracks include the statement by Yair Golan, former deputy chief of the general staff of the IDF and leader of the Democrats Party in the Knesset. In a radio interview on May 20, Golan stated that “Israel is on the path to becoming a pariah state, like South Africa once was, if it does not return to acting like a sane country.” He elaborated, saying “A sane country does not wage war against civilians, does not kill babies as a hobby, and does not set goals for itself like the expulsion of a population.”
He continued, charging that the present government is “full of vengeful, unintelligent, and immoral individuals who lack the ability to run a country in a time of emergency—people who have nothing whatsoever to do with Judaism.” Golan called for the government to be replaced “as soon as possible, so that the war can come to an end.”
This stinging rebuke drew a typical “vengeful” and “unintelligent” response from Netanyahu. He accused Golan of making “disgraceful anti-Semitic blood libels” in an “outrageous incitement against our heroic soldiers and against the State of Israel.” Golan did not back down, saying only that he “misspoke” in saying that killing babies has become a “hobby” of IDF soldiers.
Golan’s criticism was followed within a week by a May 27 op-ed in Haaretz, written by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (2006-09), who issued a powerful denunciation of the regime’s Gaza policy. Under the title “Enough Is Enough. Israel Is Committing War Crimes,” Olmert acknowledges what is obvious to much of the world, that Netanyahu’s policy of total devastation of Gaza and killing civilians is not a justified war.
“The government of Israel,” he charges, “is currently waging a war without purpose, without goals or clear planning and with no chances of success. Never since its establishment has the State of Israel waged such a war. The criminal gang headed by Benjamin Netanyahu has set a precedent without equal in Israel’s history in this area, too.” Acknowledging that he refrained from calling this a “genocide” in the past, he has come to see the renewal of a full-scale assault on Gaza as having “nothing to do with legitimate war goals.” Instead, he charges it has become a “private political war.”
He describes the present operations in Gaza as “a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians.” This is not the result of decisions made by IDF units, but the result of “government policy—knowingly, evilly, malicious, irresponsibly dictated. Yes. Israel is committing war crimes.”
Threat of Civil War
As the sharpening of the line of opposition is revealed by the statements of Golan, Olmert and others—including from former Prime Minister Ehud Barak—the “moderate liberals” have embraced the settler extremists. An ominous sign of this increasing polarization was an event on May 6 in the settlement of Ofra, a historic center of settler zealotry, dating back to the 1980s, when the “Jewish underground” was recruiting settlers to launch attacks of Palestinian civilians.
At that event, Israel’s President Isaac Herzog and the National Unity Party chair Benny Gantz, leaders of what passes for the “center-left bloc” in Israel, embraced the push from Greater Israel fanatics in the cabinet, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Belazel Smotrich, for annexation of growing swathes of the West Bank. Both Herzog and Gantz defended the expansion of the settlements as necessary to protect against Palestinian terrorists.
Ben-Gvir, as Minister of National Security, has turned over “policing” of some areas of the West Bank to settler gangs, replacing the Shin Bet security forces and IDF in that role, with bloody results. Smotrich, who has repeatedly endorsed the murder and starvation of Palestinians as necessary to convince them to accept “transfer” from Palestine, took the point in the campaign to remove Ronen Bar as Shin Bet chief, describing the respected official as a “dangerous man,” who has put Israel on a “slippery and dangerous slope.”
The ‘LaRouche Solution’
In this climate of extreme polarization, from which a “political solution” remains impossible, the Schiller Institute called for a renewal of Lyndon LaRouche’s approach, centered on an economic development architecture which would benefit all parties. First initiated in 1975 by LaRouche, aspects of his “Oasis Plan” were incorporated in the one serious attempt at reaching a negotiated agreement, the Oslo Accords of 1993 signed by Yitzhak Rabin and Yassir Arafat.
The Oasis Plan, a major water and power infrastructure project to provide clean water and energy for Israel and Palestine and their Arab neighbors, was the focus of the Third Panel of last weekend’s Schiller Institute conference, which identified it as based on the idea of mutual economic benefit in the image of the Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years’ War in 1648.
LaRouche emphasized how joint economic development projects offer a physical incentive for peace, as the only way to overcome the geopolitical divide-and-conquer strategy, which was the basis of the British empire’s domination of Southwest Asia from the end of World War I. To implement such major regional development programs as the Oasis Plan requires a rejection of the Malthusian looting mechanisms of the modern British imperial system, and its replacement by a Hamiltonian credit system, to channel investments into the new technologies which will increase productivity for all nations involved.
How to do this was a major topic of discussion at the Schiller Institute conference. While the bureaucrats of the EU and the neocon war hawks in both U.S. parties are demanding more war, a real peace process is being organized by the Schiller Institute, the outlines of which were visible at the conference, which included prominent officials from many countries, and in-depth discussion of overcoming the disease of geopolitics. As opposition grows to the war crimes committed by Netanyahu’s regime, the LaRouche Plan represents the unique solution.
With the announcement on May 29 from the White House, that a 60-day ceasefire agreement has been accepted by Israel and is under review by Hamas, it is urgent that the LaRouche Oasis Plan be included in the agenda. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt stated today: “Israel signed off on this proposal before it was sent to Hamas. I can also confirm that those discussions are continuing, and we hope that a ceasefire in Gaza will take place so we can return all the hostages home.”
While the fulfillment of this proposal relies upon the Trump-Witkoff team applying muscle to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, its ultimate success will depend on incorporating in the agreement the physical incentives for mutual benefit from LaRouche’s “Oasis Plan.”
