لحظة ادراك

Between the Words… Opportunities and Threats

Benjamin Netanyahu’s letter to the President of the State was not merely a legal brief; it was an attempt to write a new chapter in his personal narrative — the narrative of a man seeking to cross the final bridge before the guillotine of justice descends upon him. It was an admission without admission, a plea for pardon unspoken outright, seeping between the lines like a toxic gas that needs no visibility to be smelled. It is a re-engineering of the very craft of fear and crises: seven fronts — no, eight, or say ten — expandable, never reducible, to prolong his political shelf-life, so he may argue that saving the leader has become the lifeline to saving the state. It is a translation of opportunities now within reach, lacking only the pardon required to confront the greatest and most significant threat: the structural fractures in the body of the state — in its law and its judiciary. For the pardon, as he frames it, is not a favor granted to an individual but an “investment” in the stability of the state and the restoration of its internal unity — the very unity that he first broke and last destroyed.

He who once presented himself not only to Israelis, but to Jews worldwide as the foremost man of security and economic prosperity, now seeks a security of a different kind and an economy of a different kind. He realizes fully that times have changed. The fronts over which he once sang songs of victory — for all the death and destruction he inflicted — remain quagmires in which he still flounders, deepening without any convincing answers about their outcomes. For dealing with cohesive blocks, as they existed before the war, is one thing, while dealing with the shards of those blocks is governed by a wholly different logic — one that an ultraright government is incapable of managing under any circumstances, other than the total chaos the world now sees. They attempt to mold this chaos into frames to make it appear deliberate, but the facts on the ground decisively contradict that.

The state he speaks of exists now only in his imagination. He tries in vain to stop the wheel of time at a single moment, to write — with cold ink — a plea for pardon and a shaky memorandum, both of which Donald Trump had already dictated publicly on multiple occasions. Netanyahu, better than anyone, knows that this raises far more questions than answers about his political future and the future of the state. With every comma and every period, he attempts to revive his old slogan: “I am the state and the state is me” — now an unsellable product, nothing more than a last refuge to escape the judicial guillotine before the guillotine of politics and politicians falls upon him. He is the first and last to blame for everything that has transpired, no matter his claims to the contrary. And it has now become certain that this narrative finds resonance only within the ultraright, which may itself abandon him at the first political crossroad.

As a repayment of favors, or a retirement gift in Trump’s style, the “crowned king of Israel without a throne” staggers between a dramatic fall and a merciful death. He refuses both, risking survival without claws, without fangs, and atop a state stripped of substance — a state which, in the new world, has become inhospitable to life itself. What permanence, then, can one wager on? The citizens of the once-dominant state, the one that roamed the land and skies, discovered — in a moment of unintended clarity — that power, no matter its reach, has its possible and its impossible, and even its nearly unimaginable limits. The choice of running forward and building walls will not halt the vertical and horizontal fissures embedded at the core of the ideas of existence and survival. Nor will any invocation of history’s language or myths rescue it: neither the power of Sparta and its wars, nor Gideon’s chariots, nor David’s stones — even if the garments of killing have shifted between cast lead and iron swords.

A Tour Through Opportunities and Threats

Between one opportunity and another, one threat and another, Donald Trump summons Benjamin Netanyahu urgently to Florida — far from political oversight and global media cameras. In their seclusion, things will be said that were never spoken in the White House. Netanyahu will explain what he intends to do — none of which includes closing any front. Political survival in an election year demands this logic. If resuming the Gaza war in its old form is no longer feasible, then reasons must be accumulated to justify an American green light for restarting the machine — especially the heavy-caliber item at the top of the list: disarming Hamas. That is the core of the entire equation, the only headline capable of manufacturing the desired image of victory, with or without an international mechanism.

All indicators suggest that Netanyahu’s logic dictates a single option: Israel must carry out this mission itself. He is convinced that no one else can do so — except through Israeli military force. It is a seemingly “ideal” approach, especially given Hamas’s publicly declared positions. Between Phase One and Phase Two lie mounting obstacles, deepening by the day, leaving stagnation as the ruling reality — a stagnation imprinted on Netanyahu’s mind and on the government of the ultraright he heads.

As for the northern fronts with Lebanon and Syria, they do not stray far from the Gaza paradigm. Disarming Hezbollah in a way that crafts an image of victory is the only available solution to prevent the return of war to its previous form. If an unusual opportunity arises for direct Lebanese-Israeli talks, it would merely serve to keep the front on hot coals. Israel does not expect — at least Netanyahu does not — a genuine security agreement with Lebanon; he knows the Lebanese state will never enter a confrontation with Hezbollah. This is unacceptable to Netanyahu. And the Syrian front is no better: the 1974 ceasefire agreement is no longer viable as a basis for security and calm. According to Netanyahu, extending into Syrian depth is the optimal option — creating a buffer zone between the old and new borders, exploiting the weakness of Syria’s new governing order. This offers Israel’s army unrestricted freedom of movement. Yet this contradicts Washington’s interest in creating a stable environment for dealing with Syria and its new rulers.

Iran — with the complications emerging after the Twelve-Day War — has returned as a renewed threat. The danger that had briefly receded is now re-forming amid Iranian rearmament and reconstruction of its capabilities. The signal is unmistakable: Iran is preparing for a possible future confrontation. Any window for reviving nuclear negotiations appears fully sealed, while Tehran insists on giving unwavering support to all its regional proxies.

Yemen remains an open front, ripe with possibilities. The account remains unsettled, the anticipation ongoing, awaiting ignition at any moment — triggered by the first spark on any of the fronts allied with the Houthis: from Gaza to Lebanon to Tehran. They will find a way to engage at any level — from logistical support to direct involvement — whether requested or not.

The West Bank is the perfect model for an ultraright government. It is the central front, directly tied to the project of the biblical dream. It is likely — given the escalation in military and settlement activity — that we will witness violence in the form of individual attacks across the West Bank. This forms the ideal environment for the “government of myths” and its election campaigns in the coming year — even if the visit must be preceded by some cosmetic measures, such as symbolic actions against seventy extremist settlers roaming the West Bank hills.

Conclusion

The request for pardon is not just another move in a legal battle; it is a marker of a historic moment of weakness for a man who long appeared invulnerable. He attempted to hide his fear behind formal language, but revealed it when he wrapped it in talk of opportunities and threats. It is as if he begs for continued conflict without explicitly admitting the need to stop expanding. The major fronts are not his only fears; the internal front — with its deep fractures — weighs heavily as well, alongside the rising hostility across the world caused by the death, destruction, and catastrophe he has created. Add to that the shifting support within his closest ally, the emerging alliances of Arab parties poised to become a powerful third bloc in the next elections, and the Arab resistance to any normalization agreements with his current government — or any future government he might lead.

Whether he obtains the pardon or not, the man who mastered the art of manufacturing crises and running forward now finds himself facing a chain of crises from which there is no escape — in a time no longer his, and with fronts surrounding him from all sides. In none of them, under any circumstance, does opportunity truly exist.