5 Signs That Benjamin Netanyahu's Split With Israel Security Chiefs Is a Crisis

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies have clashed with Israel’s defenders repeatedly — on Iran, the Palestinians, the Obama administration — since Netanyahu took office in 2009. What’s different now is the sheer number of disputes erupting simultaneously, in broad daylight, across an array of issues, at a moment of dangerous chaos at home and regionally. The current disputes point to a collapsing Israeli national consensus and the beginnings of an existential battle to choose the future. Israel has been guided for two generations by a notion that the status quo in the West Bank was sustainable, that Israel could indefinitely defer a decision on its relationship with the Palestinians, that the country was safer holding the territory than relinquishing it, that the strong arm of the military could keep it secure.