If you think reports of Netanyahu rejecting an Israeli proposal are bizarre, think again. After all, this isn’t so much George Orwell’s 1984 but Benjamin Netanyahu’s 2024. The moment the Israeli leader stipulated that Israel would “reserve the right to return to war”, it was clear that the “Israeli proposal” presented by the US president, Joe Biden, last Friday, to end hostilities with a three-part hostage release and ceasefire deal, was dead in the water. Netanyahu wasn’t just placating his extreme rightwing coalition but reneging on an agreement that he had never wanted in the first place.

The proposal, which Biden said had emerged from negotiations with “leaders of Israel, Qatar, and Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries”, offered a “roadmap to an enduring ceasefire and the release of all hostages”. The plan included a temporary ceasefire in Gaza as part of its first phase and would also have seen the exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners, along with, in the latter stages, the brokering of a permanent ceasefire. That’s where Netanyahu’s stipulations, conditions and interpretation of the conflict makes any deal that obfuscates his goal to “destroy Hamas” unattainable, even if technically it is Hamas that seems to have rejected it.

For many years, Netanyahu had the reputation of being risk-averse. Apologists said that, notwithstanding the bluster, demagoguery and sanctimony he exuded, he was fundamentally cautious and balanced. His detractors, on the other hand, claimed that he was spurious by nature, that........

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