Netanyahu won't back down: 'Govern with me to settle accounts with Iran'

"A national unity government" (with him in it) touted as "the only solution to guarantee Israel's security" and to relaunch the war against Iran, promising to settle accounts with Tehran "once and for all." This is the warlike mantra that Benjamin Netanyahu dusts off again at the conclusion of this Saturday, clinging to power, in yet another message to the nation. A declaration of defiance to the world and to internal opponents that, for now, does not seem to dent the wall-to-wall standoff with his number one rival, the designated prime ministerial candidate Gadi Eisenkot. He was, among other things, kept in the dark, according to Israeli media, about the lightning mission that Mossad chief Roman Gofman has just completed in Washington to meet his American counterpart at the CIA, John Ratcliffe: in an attempt — apparently futile so far — to push him to convince President Donald Trump to support the resumption of the war against Iran. An objective more indigestible than ever on the American domestic scene, after the defeat suffered by the Republicans in the Midterm elections; and opposed by the entirety of Western allies, who are instead calling for an urgent diplomatic solution, one that would favor the full reopening of the Strait of Hormuz so as to ease the disastrous fallout of that conflict on their economies. But above all, it intersects with the tug-of-war triggered by the results of the recent vote in Israel, in the shadow of the confrontation-clash between the far-right coalition led by Netanyahu — prime minister on paper, outgoing but not yet ousted — and the alternative bloc of the so-called Change Bloc led by General Eisenkot, leader of the Yashar party and former IDF chief of staff. A stalemate that the face-to-face briefing on "national security" held between the two rivals, surprisingly, before the shabbat break does not appear to have resolved. Still less on the horizon of that hypothetical restart of the Iranian conflict, on which 'Bibi' — proclamations aside — does not seem to have convinced not only Eisenkot but not even the country's current military leadership, according to indiscretions leaked to Channel 12. The same Israeli television that also revealed how the Yashar leader was kept unaware both of Gofman's visit to Washington and of the subsequent stop in Miami: where — according to sources cited by Axios — the Mossad chief reportedly went to see Steve Witkoff, the White House special envoy, in the hope of inducing him to press Trump to put the helmet back on. A strategy that Eisenkot and the Change Bloc suspect hides not carefully considered military aims, but rather a hasty political scheme by Netanyahu to remain barricaded in the palace. With the alibi of another war emergency. All this while the general, having received the mandate to try to form a new government from President Isaac Herzog in the absence of predefined majorities in the Knesset, is preparing to face a week of thorny consultations. Squeezed between the option of attempting a "Zionist coalition" (to form which he would need openings within the Netanyahu bloc) and that of some opening to the strengthened Arab parties, a potential kingmaker. The latter outcome, moreover, is difficult to reconcile with the massive presence in the 'Change Bloc' of nationalist right-wing allies such as Avigdor Liberman or Naftali Bennett: all the more so against the backdrop of the distances separating them from one another on the Gaza issue, which in the eyes of the world has been reduced to a veritable hell for the Palestinian population. As acknowledged by a statement from Brussels by the EU High Representative on behalf of the 27: who find a thread of voice to direct their warning to the Jewish state, whoever is destined to govern it in the near future, regarding the "persistent and devastating humanitarian crisis" in the Strip. With the "call" to finally guarantee "immediate and unimpeded access to aid" and "the reopening of all border crossings." Reproduction reserved © Copyright ANSA