The Time-Buying Game

Important signals came from the United Nations General Assembly when it adopted two resolutions affirming the legitimate and inalienable rights of the Palestinian people. The first resolution concerns the permanent sovereignty of the Palestinian people over the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem. The second resolution confirms the Palestinian people's right to self-determination, reflecting the broadening international consensus on the justice of the Palestinian cause and the necessity to respect the rules and principles of international law.

Notably, these two resolutions consolidate the Palestinian legal status and, on the other hand, encircle Benjamin Netanyahu, whose chessboard has shrunk, his maneuvering space has diminished, and he has exhausted all the pieces on the vast board, becoming a worn-out knight with only traditional maneuvers left to escape the nightmare of history. He is besieged by numerous crises, including internal criminal trials in which he appears likely to be convicted.

Evidence of this is that U.S. President Donald Trump openly intervened with Israeli President Isaac Herzog, requesting a comprehensive pardon for Netanyahu. There are semi-secret communications between the White House and the Israeli presidency to resolve this matter, but the Israeli elite reject pardoning Netanyahu and demand his trial and removal from any future power. Moreover, he is pursued by the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice on charges of genocide against Palestinians—charges that do not expire with time. He is well aware of this, especially since global public opinion opposes the massacres committed by Netanyahu's government.

There are no longer justifications for him to hold on or use excuses. Consequently, he faces losses in the present and major threats ahead, especially since he is like someone who studied mathematics but made a calculation error. He has lost internally and is threatened with losing elections and the extremist groups that supported him in forming his government and backing his decisions to expand the war.

These forces still bet on the idea of a Greater Israel, which he teased them with in a moment of euphoria, believing that the ideas of David Ben-Gurion and the Polish thinker Jabotinsky are applicable in this era. However, he misread modern strategies. He will meet Trump at the end of this month in Florida and has cards, including attempts to obstruct the second phase of the ceasefire in Gaza and to back out of the peace plan approved by the international community. However, the United States, which initiated the plan, does not see things as Netanyahu does and does not want to save his political career. This administration continues to reject the attacks he carries out in Gaza.

Although the fighting stopped in the first phase, he has not abandoned his dream of expanding the war by violating the ceasefire in Gaza, attacking southern Lebanon, and invading southern Syria. He wants to ignite and exacerbate the maps to achieve his ideas, which have proven to be practically impossible. Additionally, he wants to save himself from official and popular trials. Whenever he feels threatened, he is afflicted by the war fever and the concept of fortification by shedding more blood.

All evidence indicates that time is not on Netanyahu's side. The more he tries to buy time by entering a military and political attrition, the more he finds himself in a cocoon from which he cannot escape. Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, expressed Netanyahu's suffocating crisis when he said that they want a government without Netanyahu or Arabs. Lieberman is known as one of the hawks who reject the inclusion of Palestinian Arabs in Israeli governments.

Therefore, his allies and critics agree that Netanyahu's maneuvers no longer deceive the global will, signed by his ally, the United States, which ignored the Middle East issue, including Israel in the old sense, in its new 2025 National Security document.

This means that the traditional era of the close historical relationship between Washington and Tel Aviv will no longer be the sole governing factor in those relations. Certainly, Netanyahu, an avid reader of history and aspiring to position himself as the king of Israel, finds himself stripped of his closest ally since the establishment of the Israeli state in 1948. The Mar-a-Lago summit in Florida, where Trump’s resort is located, will not open its arms as usual to "Bibi." There is now a slogan that has become the most important: "America First."