Netanyahu’s Israel Is Looking for a Fight in Every Direction

The Israeli leader, facing a tough re-election contest, may need a security crisis to rally voters behind him and hold on to his job. For weeks, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has presided over the shelling of Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon, the targeted killings of more than 20 people in Gaza and the bombing of an air base in northern Syria, a warning to Turkey. He has also failed to crack down on settler violence in the West Bank that his own generals have warned risks igniting a new Palestinian uprising. The ratcheting-up of tensions in every direction is straining an army that was already overstretched after nearly three years of war, not to mention a citizenry that remains frazzled and exhausted by it. However valid the national-security rationale for Israel’s actions, though, Mr.

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