The Key To Understanding Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu? He’s Gambling For Resurrection

The noise from all sides couldn’t be louder.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed last week to invade Rafah, Gaza, to release the remaining hostages taken by Hamas on October 7, 2023 and to achieve “total victory” over Hamas operatives and infrastructure. In response, the Biden Administration has, for the first time, put a hold on weapons shipments to Israel, fearing that they will be used in a military operation it has made clear it strongly opposes.

With over one million displaced Palestinians seeking refuge in the city, concerns over civilian casualties and Gaza’s worsening humanitarian situation are prompting international calls to scale back the offensive. Egypt is attempting to negotiate a ceasefire deal. Turkey has halted all trade with Israel. And in a phone call with Prime Minister Netanyahu on April 28th, President Biden “reiterated his clear position,” explicitly stated by Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in March (and repeated in Blinken’s visit to Israel just last week): The Rafah military campaign would exacerbate the humanitarian crisis.

But the noise also comes from Netanyahu’s own cabinet, who has said, in no uncertain terms, that agreeing to a cease-fire deal would be “a humiliating surrender.”

I believe that a hostage release, cease-fire, and ultimate two-state solution is the right outcome from the American perspective. In my opinion, it’s also the right outcome from the Israeli perspective and from a Palestinian one. As the foreign affairs columnist Tom Friedman wrote after Senator Chuck Schumer’s shocking call for Israelis to hold an election, “The short answer is that America’s entire Middle East strategy right now—and, I would argue, Israel’s long-term interests—depends on Israel partnering with the non-Hamas Palestinian Authority based in Ramallah, in the West Bank, on the long-term development needs of Palestinians and, ultimately, on a two-state solution.” It is the best and only path to peace.

For months now, a popular refrain was that the Israeli public would not support this vision—that they would want to finish the war no matter what. But recent polling shows otherwise—the plurality of the Israeli population is saying they don’t just want a hostage exchange and a ceasefire—they want elections. And on the Palestinian side, the internationally-recognized representative of the Palestinian people, the Palestinian Authority (which governs the West Bank), has long recognized Israel’s right to exist and expressed its desire for two independent states.

So of the major players in the war in Gaza, the two most important opponents of a ceasefire and moves towards some kind of two-state solution are Hamas … and Netanyahu.

We know why Hamas doesn’t want a ceasefire or a two-state solution. Hamas is a genocidal terrorist organization dedicated to the destruction of Israel and the Jews who live in it. Its leadership has proven, over and over again, that it sees the Palestinian people as pawns it’s happy to sacrifice in pursuit of any perceived advantage. Hamas rejects a ceasefire because every innocent death on either side is a victory for Hamas. Every Israeli death is a victory because killing Israelis—killing Jews—is Hamas’s primary reason for existence. And every Palestinian death at Israeli hands is a victory because it increases Palestinian hatred for Israel and, at least potentially, their support for Hamas. Hamas’s position does not require explanation. It requires condemnation.

How, though, do we explain the choices of Benjamin Netanyahu—the democratically elected leader of Israel — who is continuing on a course of action opposed by his own people, his nation’s most important ally, and, of course, most of the rest of the world? His choices may seem intractable, or illogical. They are not. They are, from a certain point of view, perfectly rational. They are, in fact, an excellent example of a phenomenon that political scientists have long studied, and that is a problem in areas far removed from the Middle East. It’s called “gambling for resurrection.”

When international relations theorists first theorized about it, gambling for resurrection was usually about dictators. Imagine you’re the leader of an autocracy. You’re fighting a war, and you’re losing—by a lot. The best outcome for your country is for you to negotiate a settlement where you’ll lose, but you won’t get destroyed.

For you, though, admitting defeat might actually be the worst-case scenario. Dictators who lose wars usually don’t hold onto power for very long. So if you do admit defeat, at best, you’ll be overthrown and exiled. At worst, you’ll be overthrown and executed. What do you do? You gamble for resurrection. With a 10% chance of winning the war and a 90% chance of catastrophe, you’re naturally going to gamble on the 10% so you don’t get overthrown (or worse).

The best historical example may be Napoleon’s final campaigns. Facing the combined armies of Austria, Prussia, Russia, and the United Kingdom, all of which had made his overthrow a central war aim, he fought on long after defeat was virtually certain. Napoleon was perhaps the greatest military genius who ever lived. These final battles were among his greatest masterstrokes. But he still lost, and tens of thousands of French soldiers died for no reason other than to extend his hold on power by a few weeks. Then, in 1815, he returned from his exile on the island of Elba and took over France once again, before his final defeat at Waterloo. Facing such tremendous odds, even Napoleon could not win. But he considered overthrow and exile to be such an awful fate that he had to try.

Democracies are less prone to this problem for a few reasons. The most obvious one is that we don’t execute our leaders. No one wants to lose a presidential election, but if you do, the results for you personally really aren’t that bad. If you lose a presidential bid, all that happens is you get a pension and usually get to sit on a lot of boards. Soon after Al Gore lost the presidency, he stepped onto the board of Apple. So while he lost the presidency, he became a billionaire. I’m sure he’d rather have been President. But that’s not a bad consolation prize.

Usually, in a democracy, gambling for resurrection isn’t a problem. Al Gore didn’t need to gamble for the 10%. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does.

Netanyahu’s essential problem is that when he leaves office, he is likely going to jail. He’s under indictment for corruption charges, and nobody really thinks—as far as I can tell—that he’s innocent. The only reason he isn’t in prison is because he is currently Prime Minister and the country is currently at war.

Everything will change the day the war is over in Gaza, and this is not some theoretical concern for Netanyahu. It’s worth noting that the Israelis have done this before. Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was imprisoned in 2016 on corruption charges. Former President Moshe Katsav was convicted of rape (amongst other charges) in 2011 and served five of seven years in prison before he secured an early release. For Netanyahu, the writing is on the wall, and that’s the reason pressure on him from all quarters doesn’t seem to be having much effect at all: All of his incentives push him to gamble for resurrection. He can only steer clear of his fate if he pulls a rabbit out of his hat and turns his fortunes around before he is forced to call the next Israeli elections, which aren’t mandated to occur until October 2026.

I have profound disagreements with the way Netanyahu has chosen to conduct this war—ones I share with the Biden Administration and, according to the most recent polling, a plurality of Israelis. But changing his behavior requires understanding the incentives that drive it. And what those incentives tell me is that his behavior cannot be changed by outside pressure, even from the United States. What pressure could Biden possibly exert that’s more threatening than “You will probably go to prison?”

If Biden wants to change Netanyahu’s course, the only avenue is to threaten his hold on power. Netanyahu’s majority in the Knesset is only 5 seats, and Netanyahu himself is extremely unpopular in Israel. Pressure from an American President who has established himself in the last few months as perhaps the best ally Israel has ever had might well threaten that narrow margin. That would change his incentives—and likely his behavior—in a way that nothing else could.

If Biden intends to shape Israeli policy in the war in Gaza, it is likely his only path.