LATIKA M BOURKE: Netanyahu is blind if he cannot see world order is up for grabs, including support for Israel

Benjamin Netanyahu wants to fully occupy Gaza; he is either blind to or wilfully negligent about the generational support he is losing for Israel.

He persists because he can. The Israeli prime minister chose his audience carefully to announce that Israel was planning to occupy the entire Gaza Strip, Fox News, the Murdoch-owned news channel preferred by US President Donald Trump.

Asked if Israel wanted to take control of all of Gaza, Mr Netanyahu was blunt.

“We intend to, in order to a) ensure our security, remove Hamas there, enable the population to be free of Gaza and to pass it to civilian governance,” Mr Netanyahu said, with a notable Freudian slip.

“We don’t want to keep it,” he insisted.

“We don’t want to govern it.

“We want to hand it over to Arab Forces.”

By announcing this to Fox viewers, the implication is clear: he does so with Mr Trump’s blessing.

Earlier, Mr Trump essentially washed his hands of the plan, saying: “That’s going to be pretty much up to Israel.”

For all of Mr Trump’s pacifist bluster and “obviously sarcastic” claims that he would end the Ukraine war in 24 hours, he has not yet brought peace to Eastern Europe or the Middle East.

And while he appears to be making genuine attempts to try and end the killing of Russian soldiers and Ukrainian defenders and citizens, he has murmured his unhappiness at the horrific images stemming from Gaza, but has not used his kingmaker influence over Mr Netanyahu to order an end to that war.

Mr Netanyahu’s stated goal has been the total elimination of the terrorist organisation Hamas following the barbaric raids of October 7.

But it has always been a vague goal that has allowed him to continue the military campaign open-ended and keep his beleaguered premiership afloat.

The stated end-game — for as much as there is one for the occupation of Gaza — is even more vague.

Mr Netanyahu says he wants to hand Gaza over. To who? He speaks of an “Arab Force” taking control, but who is forming this Arab Force and by when?

It will be hard to find anyone who believes the Israeli occupation of Gaza will be swift, or end the suffering of the Palestinian people, who are suffering and starving at the hands of both Hamas and Israel.

Given the bombardment they have endured for years, conditions are ripe for guerrilla warfare and the sacrifice of more hostages.

A best-case scenario is that the announcement is a tactic to force Hamas to hand over the remaining hostages to prevent an Israeli takeover.

This could form the “all or nothing” strategy being pushed by White House envoy Steve Witkoff, who was recorded in a tape leaked to Israeli news site Ynet that said he wanted to end the drip-release of hostages and have them all freed, possibly in an exchange for a number of Palestinians in jail in Israel and an end to the fighting.

But a worst-case scenario is that this starts the process of enabling to become true the prediction made by the sanctioned Cabinet minister Bezalel Smotrich, who said earlier this year that “Gaza will be entirely destroyed” and that despairing Palestinians would “leave in great numbers to third countries.”

“When they say they want to go all the way, they really mean it and in the worst possible way,” Professor Yossi Mekelberg, senior consulting fellow on the Middle East at Chatham House, told The Nightly.

Mr Trump’s “Riviera of the Middle East” has largely died off from the public debate, but it didn’t come from nowhere.

Because if the goal of occupying Gaza is only to extract the remaining 50 hostages, around 20 of whom are believed to be alive, then this is not supported by many of the hostages’ families and Israel’s military chief Eyal Zamir.

“Occupying the Strip would drag Israel into a black hole — taking responsibility for two million Palestinians, requiring a yearslong clearing operation, exposing soldiers to guerrilla warfare and, most dangerously, jeopardising the hostages,” Mr Zamir said, according to the Times of Israel, citing Hebrew media.

As Mr Netanyahu convened his Cabinet, protesters gathered outside, including Anat Angrest, whose son is one of the hostages still captive in Gaza and had called for the demonstration.

Twenty years after the Israelis left Gaza, they will be going back in, and under international law, as the Red Cross notes, will be obliged to ensure the humane treatment of the local population. Mr Netanyahu will find it harder to say with credibility that it is all Hamas’ fault if images of starving Palestinians emerge while Israel has total control of the enclave.

Trust is critical here. And it is in short supply given the conditions in Gaza, which are close to being declared a famine.

From March to mid-May 2025, Israel blocked all aid into Gaza until international pressure forced a reversal.

What did it achieve? If it was a tactical military measure, it failed and only added to the diplomatic costs piling up for Israel in the way it is conducting its war.

Israel’s support is tanking around the world. And there’s a growing silence from many of Israel’s staunchest defenders around the world who, faced with having to defend Mr Netanyahu, choose to say as little as possible or nothing at all.

And the damage is also domestic with incumbent governments, mostly unfairly, tarnished with Mr Netanyahu’s brush, as the growth in the Gaza vote in last year’s election, which cost five Labour MPs, in a landslide win, their seats.

According to Pew Research, 20 of the 24 countries whose citizens they surveyed in June had unfavourable views of Mr Netanyahu and, crucially, also of Israel.

In the court of public opinion, it is now much harder to cleave the actions of the Mr Netanyahu government from the state of Israel, rightly or wrongly. Hence why it is surely only a matter of time until Australia joins the chorus of left-wing like-minded governments rushing to announce they will recognise a state of Palestine.

The strongest sentiments were recorded in Australia, Greece, Indonesia, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Turkey, where more than three-quarters of those surveyed held unfavourable views of Israel.

Worryingly, the younger those surveyed, the more likely they were to express dissatisfaction with Israel and Mr Netanyahu.

This is a generation for whom the Holocaust will not be the frame in which they interpret the region.

And it is why what Mr Netanyahu is doing, despite so much opposition from countries Israel calls friends, is so reckless for Israel’s long-term future.

“Now you have a generation, and what they see is Gaza and the Israelis, the soldiers are the oppressor,” Professor Mekelberg said.

“And there is also the risk that now, October 7, is also forgotten.

“And gradually, because of the magnitude of Gaza, this will be the lasting image — of people starving.

“That’s what this generation will remember; it will shape their view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

Mr Netanyahu may well win his war against Hamas in Gaza. But in an environment where the world order is up for grabs, he may lose Israel a generation’s support.