Nournews: In a rare move, Israel’s public broadcaster, citing Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, reported: “If the Palestinian Authority’s readiness for an attack like October 7 is confirmed, we will launch an all-out war against the Palestinian Authority.”
On the surface, the threat is yet another display of power and an invocation of the “iron fist” approach in the name of security. But beneath the surface, it points to a significant shift in Israel’s security narrative. A regime that once spoke of destroying Iran and the resistance is now narrowing the alleged scope of the threat to the Palestinian Authority—a body that has historically been known not as a threat to Israel, but as one of the region’s key actors committed to the so-called peace process.
Manufacturing a Threat from a Non-Threatening Actor
A look at the Palestinian Authority’s record, particularly under Mahmoud Abbas, shows that it has not only failed to emerge as a security threat to Israel, but has repeatedly operated within the framework of the so-called peace process in coordination with the United States and Israel, and has even condemned Palestinian martyrdom operations.
Against this backdrop, attributing plans for another “October 7” to the Palestinian Authority appears less consistent with realities on the ground than with a deeper political and electoral agenda.
The claim could, of course, also serve as a pretext for justifying occupation, expanding settlements and intensifying pressure on Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem. By securitizing settlements, Israel seeks to place settlers under its security umbrella while using the threat narrative to legitimize its settlement policy in the face of international criticism, particularly from Europe.
But the more important issue is the shrinking scope of “security-building” for a regime that once claimed to be confronting threats simultaneously from Lebanon and Syria all the way to Iran. Now, after setbacks on the larger fronts, Netanyahu is turning toward manufacturing achievements on a smaller battlefield—one that does not fundamentally constitute a strategic threat to Israel.
This is the manufacture of achievements in an imaginary and empty battlefield: an attempt to draw a curtain over deeper cracks.
West Bank: A Mirror of Israel’s Security Failure
Despite Israel’s efforts to put the Palestinian Authority in the spotlight, the real message coming from the West Bank is different: resistance has not been contained in Gaza; it is also expanding across the occupied territories. Extensive settlement construction and settler extremism have failed to stop that trend.
At the same time, the occurrence of resistance operations within Israel’s first security ring is itself a strategic failure. A regime that claims to be capable of identifying and containing regional threats has been unable to prevent such operations from taking shape and being carried out in the territory closest to its own security perimeter.
Against this backdrop, Katz’s claims about the Palestinian Authority, along with large-scale Israeli military exercises aimed at preparing for a multi-front war, may represent a frantic effort to conceal a larger reality: the expansion of resistance and the exposure of Israel’s security and military vulnerabilities.
Gaza: The Nightmare Beneath the Rubble
Israel is facing growing international isolation at a time when clearing the rubble in Gaza is revealing new layers of the crimes committed over the past two years. Recovering the bodies of those killed from beneath the ruins—many of them women and children—is not merely a humanitarian operation. It is also the opening of a case file on alleged war crimes and the possible dimensions of the genocide of Palestinians.
In devastated Gaza, the rubble is more than the remains of destroyed buildings. It is part of a crime scene, a mass grave and a living record of two years of bombardment. That is why Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur, has stressed the need for Palestinians themselves to carry out the rubble-clearing process, so that evidence of crimes is not destroyed and the remains of victims can be identified.
It appears that distractions such as threats against the Palestinian Authority, intensified attacks in Lebanon and Syria, and Washington’s efforts to build pressure against Iran, alongside plans to expel Palestinians from Gaza, are intended to divert public attention from this growing scandal.
Elections: Where Netanyahu and Trump Converge
Many of Netanyahu’s and Trump’s current moves should now be viewed through a common lens: elections. From threats against the Palestinian Authority and military exercises to plans to expel Gaza’s residents, claims of control over new positions and verbal confrontations with European countries, they collectively form a series of security and political spectacles.
Netanyahu’s precarious position vis-à-vis rivals such as Gadi Eisenkot has only intensified this sense of urgency. Even Jared Kushner has acknowledged that the upcoming Knesset election has pushed Israel toward taking “somewhat irrational” positions on Gaza. Nabih Berri, meanwhile, has described the continuation of Israeli attacks on southern Lebanon as part of an electoral exploitation of security concerns and the fate of the people in the region.
The reality is that Netanyahu’s and Trump’s warmongering is less a record of victories than a rewritten version of a chain of defeats—defeats that are now being concealed behind small-scale achievements, imaginary threats and security theatrics.
But sooner or later, elections will come calling for the bill for these manufactured achievements.
NOURNEWS