After a long period of time in which it seemed that all of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s dreams were coming true, the winds have shifted in recent weeks. Netanyahu’s magic touch has eroded, and clouds are starting to darken the prime minister’s horizons on almost all sides. These include his relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, freedom of action on the Syrian front, the stinging crisis with Jordan and the Khashoggi affair. To all of this, we add the first sounds of discord from the Washington-Jerusalem axis and an additional heating up of Israel’s southern front; the latter has elicited sharp criticism from Netanyahu’s right-wing base, criticizing his seemingly restrained approach to Gaza.
Netanyahu’s life had been on easy street ever since President Donald Trump entered the White House in January 2017. Whatever he dreamed of at night came true the next morning. Despite all the talk about a peace program, Trump put the Palestinians into freezer-mode, recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and caused Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to slam the door on US negotiators Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt. On the northern front, the Israeli air force enjoyed absolute freedom in Syrian skies and carried out more than 200 assaults on Iranian bases and other Iranian strongholds in Syria. Israel’s Mossad smuggled out Iran’s nuclear archives to Tel Aviv, Trump abandoned the nuclear agreement with Iran, relations with Egypt went up another notch and Netanyahu’s popularity in the polls went sky high.
However, sometimes dreams come to an end and waking up to reality is difficult. We have the impression that an imposing flock of black swans is making its way past the blue skies above Netanyahu.
It all began with the downing of a Russian plane over the Mediterranean Sea by Syrian anti-aircraft batteries that targeted Israeli air force activity on Sept. 17. Moscow blamed Jerusalem for the incident. Today we know for sure that this incident was what changed the rules of the game — rules that had tilted toward Israel. No more. Now the Russians have changed the rules: They quickly transferred three S-300 air defense missile systems to Syria. These missiles are operated by Russian teams in a way that will not allow Israel to attack them, even if they should try to knock out Israel’s planes.
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