Netanyahu is stuck as he battles Hamas: he can’t afford to lose, yet can’t find a way to win | Alon Pinkas

Paralysed by the demands of the Israeli public and the US, the PM is struggling to offer solutions or a vision of the future

• Alon Pinkas served as Israel's consul general in New York from 2000 to 2004

Benjamin Netanyahu should have resigned after an hour, then a day, then a week and a month after the 7 October debacle, the most horrific day in Israel's history. He did not, because he isn't wired that way. Accountability and integrity are alien concepts reserved for the weak and feeble - not for him. He sees himself as a historic figure, responsibility as beneath him. He is not merely defiant, but terrified that his trial for corruption and bribery would proceed if he was to resign, and paralysed by the thought that he and the state will no longer be one.

Ever since 6:29am on 7 October, he has been on the defensive; trying to salvage himself by deflecting responsibility on to the military and the Shabak (Israel's internal security service), blaming faulty intelligence and devising a parallel narrative in which he is now leading Israel in a second formative war of independence to try to save western civilisation from Islamo-fascism. A man who likens himself to Winston Churchill has fallen short of the example set by Neville Chamberlain, who resigned in 1940 after the German conquest of Norway.