The Day After Netanyahu | Turkey Faces an Inflection Point | Taiwan’s Upcoming 2024 Presidential Election, and more

It is not a bad assumption that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s days are numbered. He presided over the single greatest security failure in Israel’s history, which undermined the entire logic of his long tenure as the country’s leader. Netanyahu told Israelis that he was uniquely capable of providing them with the security and normalcy that they so desperately craved. It would be an extraordinary demonstration of political skills for him to survive this crisis.
But his likely political demise does not portend the resurrection of the Israeli peace camp. Even before Hamas murdered around 1,400 Israelis on Oct. 7, the standard-bearers of the two-state solution had become marginal political actors. Israel’s left-wing Meretz party, which commanded as many as 12 (out of 120) seats in the Knesset in the mid-1990s and most recently was a member of Naftali Bennett’s anti-Netanyahu government coalition in 2021, failed to win a single mandate in the Israeli parliament in the November 2022 elections—a loss of six seats. The Labor Party—the party of Israel’s founders and builders—sits in the Knesset with a mere four seats.
Elections will not happen until after hostilities in Gaza come to an end. But it seems likely that after Hamas wrought so much death and destruction on Israel, Israelis will again rebuff those peddling a peaceful coexistence with Palestinians. A postwar government could very well end up being a Netanyahu-less center-right-right coalition.

The Day After Netanyahu  (Yair Rosenberg, The Atlantic)
Netanyahu has long been dubbed “the magician” for his feats of political survival, but his audience now sees through his tricks. For years, the prime minister told Israelis that their success and security were the result of his extraordinary abilities. He was, according to his own campaign posters, “in another league.” Love him or hate him, Netanyahu implied, the country couldn’t thrive without him. He was Israel’s indispensable man.
But the truth is, Israel has long succeeded in spite of its leaders, not because of them. Levi Eshkol, the prime minister during the 1967 Six-Day War, was no military mastermind but rather a dithering bureaucrat and agricultural enthusiast. Golda Meir resigned in disrepute after being caught unawares by the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Similarly, Netanyahu was less a geopolitical savant who single-handedly secured his country’s standing and more a public-relations genius who took credit for the accomplishments of its people. As Israel’s population steps up where its prime minister and his hard-right allies have failed, the real source of the state’s strength has never been more obvious.

Analysts Warn That Pakistan’s Anti-Migrant Crackdown Risks Radicalizing Deported Afghans  (Riazat Butt, AP)
The Pakistani government’s crackdown on undocumented migrants and mass deportations to Afghanistan risk radicalizing those who have been forced out of the country — often returning to deplorable conditions back home, analysts and experts said Thursday. More than 250,000 Afghans have left Pakistan in recent weeks as the government rounded up, arrested and kicked out foreign nationals without papers. The drive mostly affects Afghans who make up the majority of foreigners living in Pakistan, although authorities say that all who are in the country illegally are targeted. Thousands are crossing the border every day into Afghanistan with few or no belongings, enduring harsh conditions until they are relocated within a country they left to seek a better life. The mistreatment could lead to their radicalization by fueling hatred for Pakistan, said Zahid Hussain, an analyst of militancy and author of several books, including “Frontline Pakistan: The Struggle with Militant Islam.” There should have been an agreement between Islamabad and the Taliban-led government in Kabul to avoid a backlash, added Hussain. Instead, Pakistan is detaining and crowding Afghans in holding centers. “It creates hate … and some of them can be radicalized against Pakistan when they return home,” Hussain told The Associated Press. The forced expulsions will further strain relations between the two sides, and a new “wave of hate” arising from the deportations will be the result of the government’s flawed policy, he added.

Turkey Faces an Inflection Point  (Robert Ellis, National Interest)
On October 29, Turkey celebrated the centenary of the Turkish republic, but there was not much celebration as far as the ruling AKP (Justice and Development Party) was concerned. The AKP, which came to power twenty-one years ago, was more concerned with burnishing its own credentials almost without reference to the republic’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Of the nine posters produced by the Directorate of Communications, only one, “From the Past to the Future,” referred to Atatürk, where he figured on the left side of the poster with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the right. However, what Erdogan chose to prioritize was the war between Hamas and Israel. Four days earlier, the president addressed his parliamentary group and declared Hamas was not a terrorist organization but a liberation and mujahideen group fighting to protect its territory and citizens. Furthermore, he stated that the Turkish nation was the only nation in the world that had not practiced or committed racism.
Erdogan canceled his planned visit to Israel and instead called on all citizens to take part in a massive rally the day before the centenary in support of Palestine. In the event, this came to overshadow the official commemoration. However, in Turkey, the local elections in March loom large, when the AKP hopes to retake Istanbul and Ankara. As The Times correspondent Hannah Lucinda Smith has explained, Erdogan has made Palestine his personal cause.

Taiwan’s Upcoming 2024 Presidential Election and the Biden-Xi Summit in San Francisco  (Dean P. Chen, National Interest)
The United States may have some reservations about the KMT and the other opposition parties in Taiwan since their more conciliatory positions on China may place Taiwan at odds, from a national security perspective, with the strategic interests of Washington and other like-minded Indo-Pacific allies and partners.