Netanyahu’s UN speech and the Hezbollah strike: A turning point for Israel? - opinion

Until Friday morning, I, like many other observers of the political and military scene, thought that Benjamin Netanyahu’s UN speech was superfluous – another ego trip by our prime minister, for whom this speech was his 12th in the UN General Assembly.

After tuning into the speech at 4:30 on Friday afternoon, my feeling remained that this was an unnecessary and rather humiliating event, which brought neither Israel nor Netanyahu any tangible benefit. It was humiliating because the General Assembly chamber was quite empty, after many representatives either didn’t bother to show up or walked out demonstratively, and because a large audience of cheerleaders, invited by Netanyahu to attend the speech, kept cheering every second sentence he uttered, which seemed to me to emphasize our relative isolation.

On Netanyahu’s side he was clearly not at ease, and every once in a while even faltered over words. I also couldn’t understand the sense of Netanyahu’s direct attack on the UN and its members, going so far as to accuse them en bloc of antisemitism. It is not that the accusation is not frequently true, but simply that I could not see the benefit of repeating the accusation in the General Assembly.

However, several hours after the speech ended, this first impression appeared to be a little off-course. It transpired that at the time he delivered his speech, Netanyahu was aware of the fact that the Israel Air Force was about to perform a massive attack on Hezbollah headquarters in the Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh – an attack designed to kill Hezbollah’s secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah.

Op approved before speech 

The operation had been approved by Netanyahu before he delivered his speech, and he must have had it in his mind when he spoke. In other words, even though it was only at the last moment that the exact timing of the operation was set, the speech was apparently designed to distract Nasrallah’s attention from Israel’s true intentions.

There is no doubt that the operation was brilliant in its planning and immaculately implemented, following several other IDF attacks on Hezbollah in the previous two weeks, which got rid of most of the organization’s leadership and destroyed its internal communications system. It has been said that the latter operation had been planned for over 10 years.

For months there had been complaints – from all sections of Israeli society – that the IDF was containing Hezbollah rocket and drone attacks on northern Israel rather than initiating an escalation in order to remove the threat. Now the escalation finally arrived, and for the first time in many months the Israeli public appears to be united in its pride in the IDF’s performance, and in its agreement that this was a proper prelude for a serious operation – preferably one involving a ground operation in southern Lebanon.

At the time of writing, the feeling is that what happened on Friday is a game changer. The coming weeks will show whether this impression is correct.

A new head will soon arrive

It is probably too much to ask that the temporarily leaderless Hezbollah will vanish, though hopefully the state of Lebanon might finally manage to once again start functioning as an independent, sovereign state, rather than as the vassal of an extreme Shi’ite terrorist organization, subject to instructions from Iran. It is doubtful whether Lebanon will manage to achieve this on its own. Will external assistance be forthcoming?

Hopefully, the new situation will also manage to break the close links between the much weakened Hezbollah in Lebanon and the equally weakened Hamas in the Gaza Strip, which are both still fighting Israel simultaneously to its north and southwest. It is hoped by almost everyone in Israel that if the Gordian knot between the two Iranian proxies is cut as a result of Israel’s successful maneuvers in the Gaza Strip, and now its brilliant achievements in Lebanon, it will be much easier for us to reach a deal with Hamas for the release of all 101 hostages, and to reach a viable agreement with Lebanon to keep Hezbollah away from our common border – an improved version of Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the second Lebanon War in 2006, but soon turned into a dead letter.

Of course, none of this will happen independently from how Iran, the United States, and Israel will decide to act. It is not clear how Iran will react to the new situation in Lebanon and the lingering situation in the Gaza Strip. Iran has so far failed to retaliate the assassination (allegedly by Israel) of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on July 31, when he attended the inauguration of Iran’s new president. It is also unclear whether and when it will decide to retaliate Israel’s attack on Dahiyeh on September 27, in which not only Nasrallah and several other senior Hezbollah members were killed, but also an Iranian general.

Most experts on Iran seem to agree that Iran is not eager to get involved in a regional war in which the US might also participate, in which its nuclear installations are liable to be attacked, as is the island of Kharg in the northern Persian Gulf, from which Iran exports most of its oil. However, it is also not yet clear how Iran will react to the weakening of its most prominent proxy, in which it has invested vast sums of money.

The Biden administration in the US continues to profess its commitment to Israel’s survival and its right to defend itself, despite the fact that Israel did not consult with it, or even inform it, in advance of its planned assassination of Nasrallah. In fact, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant informed US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin of the operation only after Israel’s fighter planes were already on their way to Beirut.

What are the next steps?

Though the US has already fortified its forces in the Middle East toward a possible escalation of the security situation, it has also warned Israel not to enter ground forces into Lebanon, while Israel has not ruled out entering southern Lebanon, in order to create a buffer zone that will enable the return of the Israeli inhabitants who were forced to leave Israel’s border zones in the north in October 2023.

The situation, as far as the US is concerned, is further complicated by the fact that it faces general elections on November 5, and whoever is elected as its next president – Kamala Harris or Donald Trump – might well change its policy toward the Middle East in general, and Israel in particular.

And finally, at the moment, Netanyahu’s next steps in the war are not clear – whether he will seek to translate Israel’s current successes into immediate political agreements, or decide to prolong the war.

The writer worked in the Knesset for many years as a researcher, and has published extensively both journalistic and academic articles on current affairs and Israeli politics. Her most recent book, Israel’s Knesset Members – A Comparative Study of an Undefined Job, was published by Routledge.