The paradoxical phrase “running away forward” is one of the most apt descriptions that illustrates the state of affairs in Israel right now. It seems that everything that the Zionist state has done in the past year or so is a mere attempt to deny, distract from or escape imminent future scenarios, all of which are bleak. Indeed, the past year has proven repeatedly that Israel’s military supremacy is no longer able to win wars or decide political outcomes.

Moreover, the genocide in Gaza and the rapid theft of Palestinian land in the West Bank have exposed, like never before, the ugly face of Zionist settler-colonialism. Only those who are wholly indoctrinated or are paying no attention still argue that Israel stands for any kind of moral ideals or is a “light unto the nations”.

On top of that, incessant attempts by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to marginalise, if not entirely erase, the Palestinian cause have failed completely. The suffering, resistance and pride of the Palestinian people have made their cause a global one and, this time around, irreversibly so.

Yet, despite all of this, Israeli leaders continue to drag their people into endless quests towards arbitrary destinations, making promises of “total victory” and the like. Monitoring statements by Israeli leaders and media conversations in right-wing Israeli outlets is bewildering.

More than 55,000 Israeli soldiers have tried and failed over the course of several weeks to subdue northern Gaza.

Meanwhile, settler leaders are busy making plans to auction real estate, envisaging new settlements and beach resorts inside the devastated Palestinian territory.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on 21 October that Israel wants to build several settlement blocs inside Gaza. How, though, are such illegal settlements going to be protected over the course of months and years when the occupation regime could not protect southern Israel itself just one year ago?

In the occupied West Bank, where an armed rebellion has been brewing, but is yet to happen on a mass scale due to the “security coordination” between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, Netanyahu’s right-wing government is speaking about full annexation.

“The year 2025 will, with God’s help, be the year of [Israeli] sovereignty in Judea and Samaria,” said far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, referring to the West Bank. Whether Israel turns its de facto annexation of the West Bank into a de jure annexation or not, it will alter little of the legal status of the West Bank under international law; it is illegally occupied Palestinian territory. The same applies to the Palestinian city of East Jerusalem, which was officially — and illegally — annexed by the Israeli Knesset in 1980, under the so-called “Jerusalem Law”.

Not many members of the international community are willing to accept Israel’s scheme in the West Bank in any case, as they — with the ignoble exception of Washington and a few of its minor allies — still refuse to recognise Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem. In fact, the opposite is true, as determined by the International Court of Justice on 19 July. The ICJ ruling, which was backed by international consensus, resolved that “the State of Israel is under the obligation to bring an end to its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible”. On 17 September, the UN fully embraced the ruling.

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That aside, in annexing the West Bank Israel would administer the coup de grâce to the PA, thus turning the entire West Bank into a platform for Palestinian popular resistance. How could Israel withstand that new war front, when it is already struggling, if not failing outright, to secure any victories in Gaza and South Lebanon?

In a recent article, Israeli historian Ilan Pappe wrote about “Fantasy Israel”, a decades-long political construct which believed that the “West supports Israel because it adheres to a Western ‘value system’ based on democracy and liberalism.”

That fictional Israel has been collapsing for years, long before the current war on Gaza, although the genocidal war has accelerated the process.

The collapse of Fantasy Israel “has exposed cracks in the social cohesion, and in the readiness of many Israelis to devote as much time and energy to military service as they did in the past,” argues Pappe.

Israel is now under the control of a different breed of politicians, who are armed with a massive and growing superstructure of an equally close-minded and extremist intellectual base. This group is struggling with a whole different set of illusions, as they continue to convince themselves that they are winning, when they are not; that they can impose their will on the Palestinians, and the rest of the world, when they cannot; and that the continuation of the war will allow them to finish a job which, in their minds, should have been finished a long time ago — the total destruction of the Palestinian people — but will not.

Since this far-right crowd is motivated by extremist religious ideologies, they are unable to abide by any form of rational thinking, even that emanating from well-regarded Zionist figures inside Israel itself. “This war lacks a clear objective, and it’s evident that we’re unequivocally losing it,” former Mossad deputy head Ram Ben-Barak told Israeli public radio on 18 May.

None of this matters to Netanyahu and his right-wing ministers. They continue to reference and recycle dated religious dogmas, while praying fervently for miracles. In doing so, they insist on reconstructing a new “Fantasy Israel”, which, of course, is set to collapse, as fantasies often do.

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