Brothers and Sisters in Arms was set up in January by Israeli military reservists in protest against the sweeping judicial overhaul unveiled by the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his newly elected coalition of far-right and ultra-religious parties.
During the year, as the demonstrations grew into the biggest protest movement in Israeli history, the organisation increased to more than 60,000 members. All of them understood that refusing to show up for reservist duty was a serious step to take, but said the threat to Israel’s democratic health superseded other worries for now.
Israel Defence Forces (IDF) chiefs said that the army was coping, while repeatedly warning the domestic schism would begin to affect operational readiness very soon.
But since Hamas launched its devastating attack across southern Israel just over a week ago, slaughtering at least 1,300 Israelis, the political chaos that had engulfed the country all year now feels like the concern of another lifetime.
The group has been renamed Brothers and Sisters for Israel, and its website now reads: “On the morning of 7 October our world changed. Brothers and Sisters for Israel is currently the largest civilian aid organisation at the forefront providing immediate support to civilians and soldiers, in full coordination with the Israeli military… United, we are invincible and will triumph.”
The judicial overhaul, and all other non-emergency legislation and policy, has been indefinitely suspended. On Wednesday, Netanyahu forged an emergency unity government to direct the new war against Hamas in the blockaded Gaza Strip, headed by the prime minister, his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, and former defence minister and strident Netanyahu critic Benny Gantz, the centrist opposition party leader.
Under any other circumstances, it is unthinkable that Netanyahu could still form a successful political partnership with anyone within the normal parameters of Israel’s political spectrum: over the years he has burned every coalition partner that has ever trusted him and sidelined rivals within his Likud party. That was a large part of why in last year’s elections he turned to the far-right Religious Zionist movement, which helped propel the scandal-plagued leader back into office last year.
Netanyahu said in televised remarks that he and Gantz had put aside their differences “because the fate of our state is on the line”. Gantz, too, said it was time to join together against a bigger enemy. “There is a time for peace and a time for war. Now is a time for war,” he said.
There is, however, a deep and furious anger among the Israeli public directed towards their leaders. Idit Silman, a Likud politician and member of Netanyahu’s cabinet, was recently chased out of a hospital after healthcare workers and members of the public shouted: “You ruined this country … get out of here.”
On Saturday afternoon, spontaneously, protesters began to gather in central Tel Aviv to demonstrate against the government’s handling of the crisis and the lack of information on the dead and the dozens of missing, who are believed to be held hostage in Gaza.
Polling from Israeli company Dialog Center released last week found that four in five people blame the government and Netanyahu for a lack of security preparedness that allowed the massacres to happen, as well as the poor operational response to it.
More than half of those surveyed – 56% – said once the new war in Gaza is over, Netanyahu must resign. While it is too early to predict what will happen now in Israel’s fractious political arena, a slide to the right is likely.
“Israel’s new wounds will never heal. It’s too soon to know all the political ramifications. But based on experience, the unity of crisis is only a pause from the profound divisions in Israeli society,” said Dahlia Scheindlin, a political strategist and policy fellow at the US-based Century Foundation thinktank, writing in the Guardian last week.
Netanyahu’s fate is far from certain. “If elections were held today, Likud cards wouldn’t be the best ones. There is a huge question mark over how this was allowed to happen,” said Yuli Edelstein, a Likud member of the Knesset and former parliamentary speaker, who has been touted as an alternative party leader in the past.
“On the other hand, if there is a real victory against Hamas … If Bibi can turn this crisis into an opportunity and manage to finish off Hamas once and for all after so many years, there could be a different outcome,” he said, using Netanyahu’s well-known moniker. Edelstein added: “This is a national emergency government and maybe he will rise to the challenge. But right now, your guess is as good as mine.”
Such an assessment is optimistic. After pounding the tiny Gaza Strip, home to 2.3 million people, with more firepower than Israel has used in the four previous wars there since Hamas took over the area in 2007, more than 2,200 Palestinians have already been killed, and Israel is on the verge of launching its first ground offensive into the enclave for years.
A bloody quagmire is likely. Even if Israel manages to comprehensively destroy Hamas’s ability to function in Gaza, the question remains: who will control it afterwards? Israel does not want to reoccupy the strip with ground forces, battling an insurgency, and the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority in the West Bank is weak, corrupt, and unwelcome. No one, including Netanyahu, has an answer yet to that question.
