NETANYAHU’S LEBANON GAMBIT

The second front has restored the prime minister’s political standing

Smoke billows from a site targeted by Israeli shelling in Zaita, in the southern Lebanon, on September 23. / Photo by Mahmoud Zayyat / AFP via Getty Images.

One way to understand the dramatic events of the past week, and the restitution of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political standing in Israel, is to recall a famous statement of Admiral Ernest King, the US chief of naval operations throughout the Second World War. As the war neared its end, so the story goes, King was told by an aide that a group of reporters wanted an interview with him. “When it’s over,” he replied, “tell them who won.”

It could be Netanyahu’s motto today. I was surprised to be told recently by a well-informed official in Washington that things had changed dramatically in the war in Gaza—in Israel’s favor. There is no longer a possibility or a need for a ceasefire in Gaza, the official said. I further learned that ceasefire talk had been muted because, obviously, there is now a renewed Israeli war against the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon. Amid the continuing carnage, Bibi’s standing inside Israel has soared as the death toll in Lebanon has risen.