Extract from ABC News
In an increasingly troubled world, two men have a clear incentive to keep their wars going – Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin.
Netanyahu and Israel are becoming increasingly isolated, with even some traditional political, media and academic supporters turning against them as the situation in Gaza descends into one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes of modern times.
US vice-president Kamala Harris has bluntly said that too many innocent Palestinians are being killed in Gaza, while CNN, traditionally a strong supporter of Israel, this week is calling for urgent action after the US was the only member of the UN Security Council to block a ceasefire in Gaza. It ran a headline: Global Outrage After US Vetoes UN Ceasefire Resolution.
And former US ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk labelled Mr Netanyahu "a clear and present danger" to Israel, saying he should resign immediately.
Indyk argued that Netanyahu was causing a rift with US President Joe Biden, who he described as "Israel's only friend in this crisis".
And then there's that "other war" which has been relegated in the news cycle by the Israel-Hamas war – Ukraine.
The day Ukraine's fate was sealed
In July this year, I attended the NATO summit in Lithuania. The decision of that summit that Ukraine could not enter NATO until its war with Russia was over may well have sealed the fate of Ukraine, along with the fact that Ukraine has not been supplied with what it most needs – fighter jets.
NATO's communique in Vilnius had some fighting words: "There can be no impunity for Russian war crimes and other atrocities, such as attacks against civilians and the destruction of civilian infrastructure that deprives millions of Ukrainians of basic human services."
The communique said NATO fully supported Ukraine's right to choose its own security arrangements. "Ukraine's future is in NATO," the communique said.
But then the qualifier. "We will be in a position to extend an invitation to Ukraine to join the Alliance when Allies agree and conditions are met."
Conditions are met. NATO then made it clear what that meant: Ukraine could join NATO when the war was over.
In my assessment it was on that day – July 11, 2023 – that Ukraine's fate was largely sealed.
No-one would have taken more joy from that qualifier than Vladimir Putin: Ukraine had to get through its war with Russia before it could do something that Russia had launched its war to prevent – joining NATO.
Stringing out the gridlock
The single biggest driver of Putin's invasion of Ukraine was to try to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO. But NATO was saying that this would happen the moment the war stopped.
Putin now was fully incentivised to string this war out. Even if it continued in a gridlock of sorts, as it is now, Putin would not see NATO on his doorstep.
Putin knows that should the war stop and suddenly Ukraine join NATO, that Russians would see him as having failed.
Putin also knows that if he can get through to next year's US elections in November, he will be in an even stronger position if Donald Trump is re-elected.
Trump and the Republicans are tapping into the US public, which is increasingly asking: why are we spending all this money on yet another distant war?
The US/Russia relationship has changed
The traditional US hatred of Russia and communism is melting away in the face of America's own problems, including its border with Mexico, which is too porous for many Americans.
Add to that the closeness Putin and Trump have enjoyed over many years and the omens are bad for Ukraine.
From the time I spent in Ukraine earlier this year, the concern about a Trump re-election is desperate: many Ukrainians fear Trump will insist that Russia and Ukraine immediately sit down to negotiate. And of course, Ukraine would be joining the negotiations from a position of weakness – with Russia occupying 20 per cent of their land.
Ukrainians had hoped that by the time of any possible re-election of Trump, their much-touted counter-offensive would have forced Russia from many areas it had occupied.
Ukraine has made some small gains but nowhere near as many as they hoped.
Ukraine in deep trouble
In military terms, what has thwarted Ukraine — and possibly lost them this war — is the lack of air power. The slowness of the US and other NATO countries in getting F-16s or other jets to Ukraine has been almost fatal.
You can't win a war in this day and age without air power. Just as Ukraine spent six months preparing for a counter-offensive, so did Russia spend six months preparing to defend one.
Russia reinforced its positions with wave after wave of trenches and mines. This made any ground invasion by Ukraine virtually impossible, which meant the counter-offensive needed to take the form of attacks from the air. But Ukraine had virtually nothing with which to attack from the air.
And so Ukraine faces defeat — both on the battlefield and possibly in Washington. Ukraine cannot win this war without serious US support and if the Republicans win next year, Ukraine is in deep trouble.
And now back to the war that has eclipsed Ukraine: Israel and Hamas.
Netanyahu's tenuous position
As with Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu has an incentive to continue a war.
The anger against the Israeli prime minister is everywhere here. Before this new war in Gaza, Netanyahu had already lost the support of the centre and centre-left over his attempts to end the independence of the Supreme Court.
Thousands of angry Israelis had taken to the streets against his move to give politicians authority over the Supreme Court.
And then came the atrocities of October 7 when as many as 2,000 Hamas militants stormed into Israel. It was an all-out assault, something which should never have happened.
In terms of the security of the Israeli public, this happened on Benjamin Netanyahu’s watch.
Many Israelis, such as former prime minister and the country's most decorated soldier Ehud Barak, believe Netanyahu should have resigned immediately.
It was on his watch that 1,200 people were butchered and shot in cold blood and 240 people taken hostage.
Barak's argument — supported by many Israelis to whom I speak — is that the number one priority of a leader is to keep their citizens safe. And that on this criterion, Netanyahu failed.
But while the hostility towards Netanyahu is red hot, there's also a sense that he should not be removed during a war. This would be seen by Hamas, many say, as some sort of victory.
So a strong body of opinion in Israel is that while the war continues, Netanyahu should remain as prime minister and that the moment the war is over, he should do the dignified thing and resign. Politically, Netanyahu is on death row.
And herein lies the problem. Just as Putin knows that he can delay Ukraine joining NATO by keeping his war going, so does Netanyahu know that he can stay his political execution by keeping his war going.
Can Hamas be destroyed?
This is all the more problematic given that the main basis for the war — to "destroy Hamas" — may well not be achievable.
How do you destroy Hamas? Do you need to kill all its 30,000 or 40,000 militants? How many of its commanders do you need to kill? Hamas is an ideology — how do you destroy an idea?
After eight weeks of war, Israel says it has killed about 5,000 Hamas militants. And while it has claimed to have killed some Hamas commanders, it has not killed the heavyweight commanders that it wants to kill, particularly Yahya Sinwar.
If one accepts the lower estimate of Hamas's fighting force — 30,000 — by Israel's own figure of 5,000 it has only killed one-sixth of Hamas militants. At this rate, it would take Israel one year to kill all Hamas militants.
Gaza's Ministry of Health estimates that more than 18,000 people have been killed, including more than 7,000 children and 4,000 women.
Some agencies, such as the Euro-Med human rights monitoring group, say the death toll is closer to 23,000, with more than 10,000 infants and children. Euro-Med's figures include the number of people missing — buried under rubble — while the Ministry of Health only uses the number of dead people sighted.
The US won't look on forever
The blunt political reality for Netanyahu is that the US will not let this war go on for 12 months. The damage the civilian death toll is doing not just to Israel's international reputation but also Washington's is palpable across the Arab world, including in traditional US allies such as Jordan.
It is possible now that an Israeli leader could argue that Hamas has been so seriously degraded simply by the fact that so much of Gaza is now rubble that it has essentially been defeated.
Sixty per cent of Gaza's accommodation is damaged or destroyed, its hospital system is devastated, its sewage system is ruined, its water system is ruined, its roads have been largely destroyed, its phone system is barely functioning and it has a generation of young people either physically injured or traumatised by saturation bombing.
Euro-Med estimated at the start of November that Israel had already dropped more than 25,000 tons of explosives onto Gaza — more than the amount of explosive power contained in each of the two nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
A strong leader in Israel could convince their public that this is more than enough and that Hamas – as the ruler of Gaza – has been left living in rubble and that Israel will keep hunting and killing the Hamas commanders but call an end to reducing 2.3 million people to rubble, homelessness and disease.
But a leader fighting for political survival feels he cannot do this.
As long as this tragic war continues, Netanyahu's leadership survives.
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