https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/2023/10/30/us-biden-israel-gaza-netanyahu/

US policy towards Israel’s war is operating on several different registers.

Israel’s vengeance is terrible indeed. Only the US has any real influence over Israel’s policies. But is Washington trying to restrain Israel – appearances notwithstanding – and if so, will that work?

Readers may dismiss the idea that the Biden administration is doing anything serious to hold Israel back from bombarding Gaza, given its ostentatious bearhug since the October 7 Hamas attacks.

US policy towards Israel’s latest war is, as always, operating on different registers simultaneously. First, there is the President’s personal affection for Israel, which is reflective of his identity as a Democratic elder statesman.

Mr Biden came of political age during the Cold War, when support for Israel among liberals was key, in contrast to Israel-scepticism on the traditionalist right.

For decades, Israel was widely viewed in the US as a plucky young “democracy” in a sea of hostile Arab and Muslim societies with which westerners supposedly couldn’t identify. Until the late 1970s, Israel was ruled by the socialist-lite Labour party, which excelled at cultivating identification with liberal westerners.

Mr Biden’s instinct to identify with Israel whenever it comes under attack is thus both personal and political. Despite false diagnoses from Republicans, and even some conservative Democrats, the Democratic party has not been taken over by left-wing radicals. The mainstream’s willingness to pay lip service to identity politics and catchphrases doesn’t leave the party actually resembling the “woke” caricature of the ultra-left.

So, most Democrats rallied around Mr Biden in his embrace of Israel. Even the Palestinian voices in Congress, such as Michigan Democrat Rashida Tlaib, refused to say much about October 7. There isn’t much Democratic opposition to the Biden administration’s policies towards Israel, except a few groups and people now vowing not to vote for him even if he faces former president Donald Trump in next year’s presidential election.

In addition to being personally consistent for him, and politically useful to a Democratic leader, Mr Biden is also leaving little space for the born-again pro-Israel Republicans, dominated by apocalyptic evangelical Christian fundamentalists, to attack him as insufficiently supportive of Israel. Loud voices on the far left and Maga right are howling, but none of the reactions yet seem likely to impede his election chances.

The most important question is, do these policies make sense for US national interests? As usual, the answer can only be, yes and no.

What galls so many Democrats, liberals, Arab and Muslim Americans and sympathisers with Palestinians and their morally unimpeachable and imperative cause, is that Mr Biden’s strategic positioning is simply not designed to stop the Israeli assault immediately and thereby save countless innocent lives.

He obviously concluded that there is little he can do to secure that in the short term, especially considering the domestic political constraints. Indeed, Mr Biden might not even have wanted to, given the rage that was prevalent among pro-Israel figures, such as himself, in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 attacks.

Nonetheless, Mr Biden has a clear overriding objective and coldly rational policy goal: preventing the conflict from spreading beyond Gaza to involve the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Jordan, Iraq, Syria and, above all, Lebanon and Hezbollah.

From the outset, the administration calculated that Hamas was counting on Hezbollah leaders to fulfil their word, reportedly given to them from last summer, that if they entered into a war with Israel, the Lebanese militia would intervene to support them. But Washington is also convinced that Hezbollah doesn’t want to get involved in a major way, that Iran is not pressuring it to do so, and that Israel also wants to avoid this.

Given the dire Lebanese political and economic situation, in which perforce Hezbollah must operate, the group has very little incentive to enter into a devastating conflict with Israel now. For Iran, Hezbollah primarily serves as a deterrent against Israeli attacks on Iranian nuclear and other installations Tehran would be loath to waste such an invaluable external weapon on anything as strategically, culturally and religiously marginal as Gaza.

But, as Washington is well aware, at least two obvious scenarios could drag Hezbollah into the fray, nonetheless. One would be the spread of the fighting into East Jerusalem and involving Al Aqsa Mosque complex, which would tug powerfully on Muslim heartstrings from Nigeria to Indonesia and back. That could re-orient Iranian and/or Hezbollah cost-benefit perceptions and make getting involved in the “defence of Islam and Al Quds” far more appealing.

Another possibility is that third parties in Lebanon, including Hamas, attack Israel and “get lucky” with a strike that prompts what Hezbollah regards as an unacceptable Israeli response. Once both sides start misinterpreting each other’s actions and intentions and begin attempting to “restore deterrence” against each other, a vicious cycle that no one can control could ensue.

The Biden administration’s bearhug of Israel is designed to place Washington in a position from which it can credibly urge the Israelis in private, from a background of trust, to hold back. It already succeeded in doing so, apparently, first on the grounds that hostages might still be rescued and secondly, reportedly, to bolster missile defences for US troops stationed in Iraq, Syria and various waters around the Middle East, and elsewhere.

Israel may well have fully launched its pledged ground incursion into Gaza. But the Biden administration is obviously hoping to limit what Israel does in Gaza, particularly to Palestinian civilians, precisely in order to reduce the pressure on pro-Iranian militia groups, even Tehran itself, and above all Hezbollah, from joining the fray and creating a regional conflagration that might quickly draw in Washington.

It’s obvious that the Biden administration is focused on trying to prevent that from happening, but unclear if it can. It’s not obvious that Israel will listen to even the US in what the Netanyahu government is inexplicably describing as “the second war of independence”. And there are limits to what the US government can politically defend at home, both among Democrats and in fending off Republicans, in pressuring the Israelis – at least without much more significant atrocities reported in world media than have already visited upon the devastated Palestinian population in Gaza.

Nonetheless, and undoubtedly counter-intuitively to many in the Middle East, perhaps the only person with the means and the ability – and perhaps the willingness – to try to restrain Israel is none other than Mr Biden.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/2023/10/24/instability-in-the-middle-east-brought-on-by-the-israel-gaza-war-is-a-test-for-america/

It could damage US strategic interests and the balance of power in the region.

The American response to the Israel-Gaza war is being shaped by serious anxieties that it could devolve into an all-out assault on the American-dominated order in the Middle East and even international stability writ large. Everything is in place for a potential outcome that represents the victory of revisionist powers over Washington and its partners in the Middle East. Progressive Middle East countries could also be facing a near-term future in which they confront a gravely destabilised regional and, by extension, global order, if the worst-case scenarios are met.

Egypt is most directly threatened by the Gaza-Israel war. Ever since the Camp David peace treaty with Israel in 1979, Cairo has been determined, as a matter of core national security and foreign policy, not to get sucked back into a leadership role in Gaza, under any circumstances.

Egypt knew that Israel was hoping to displace the Palestinians of Gaza into the Sinai Peninsula, and Egypt said absolutely not. So, Egypt has also made it clear that as a core national security and domestic policy it would not allow the problems facing the Palestinians in Gaza to be exported to Egypt. In short, there is no way that Egypt is going to open its borders to allow a flood of Palestinian refugees from Gaza into Egyptian territory and bail the Israelis, and Hamas, out. In fact, no Arab country is willing to help Israel, and Hamas, out of this incredible crisis that both have created for themselves, especially Israel, in Gaza.

Jordan will definitely not allow Palestinians who become displaced from the West Bank, under whatever circumstances, by Israel, under the cover of conflict, to enter into Jordanian territory yet again. Jordan has taken the largest group of Palestinian refugees twice: in 1948 and in 1967. This cannot be repeated, from a Jordanian point of view, because as a consequence of those earlier displacements, and Israel’s adamant refusal to allow any of the Palestinian refugees to ever go home without being gunned down in the process, Jordan has developed a plurality or even a majority of Palestinian citizens.

But annexation-minded and racist Israeli leaders have long insisted that “Jordan is Palestine,” meaning that they ultimately intend to displace the Palestinians in the West Bank and, possibly, Gaza as well, into Jordan, or possibly into Egypt, in order to alleviate Israel from this intolerable burden of non-Jewish indigenous persons living on their own land and in their own homes.

But none of that will do anything significant to alter the fundamental strategic, demographic and political landscape between the two peoples in the area in which they fight for land and power: British Mandatory Palestine.

Instead, such calculations reflect the most visceral and potent aspects of the conflict, the narratives that allowed Hamas to massacre hundreds of Israelis and Israel to so brutally attack the innocent Palestinian population of Gaza.

Hamas sought to provoke an emotional overreaction from Israel, and there is every indication that not only have they succeeded, but they will also succeed beyond their wildest imaginations. Israel appears to be preparing to invade the interior of Gaza with 300,000 conscripts, mostly untrained and unprepared for the requisite house-to-house urban combat, which so greatly favours guerrilla groups over regular militaries. Moreover, Israel is talking about a long-term conflict, with some military leaders using the framework of no less than 10 years, which must be music to the ears of everyone involved in the Hamas leadership and their Iranian sponsors.

Washington is confronting a situation that could spiral out of control and severely damage, if not destroy, the enduring but battered Pax Americana in the Middle East and, above all, the strategically imperative Gulf region. Already there is significant unrest in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem. If that spreads to holy places, above all the Al Aqsa Mosque compound, then it will be much more difficult for Hezbollah and other Iranian clients to sit by and do nothing, and their hesitant calculations may well change.

Both Hezbollah and Iran want Hezbollah to stay out of the fray, and instead remain a crucial deterrent against Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, but if smaller groups in Lebanon keep attacking Israel and raising the stakes, a vicious cycle could spiral out of control, forcing either Israel or Hezbollah to act against each other when both would prefer to avoid a widening conflict.

There are also the Houthis in Yemen, capable of hitting the Israeli port city of Eilat, plus a range of pro-Iranian Shiite militia groups in Iraq who are already operating inside Syria and near the border with Israel, ready to strike. Other groups may be gathering around the occupied Golan Heights and elsewhere, prepared to fire at Israel as well.

If Israel finds itself bogged down in a debilitating multi-front conflict, there is every reason to suspect that it will not be satisfied leaving Iran, which it will correctly insist is effectively the ringmaster, unscathed. If that happens, you can expect direct Israeli strikes on Iran, especially its nuclear facilities. That could unleash a Middle Eastern Pandora’s box.

Washington has deployed two major aircraft carrier groups, a vast amount of additional naval and air force power beyond huge numbers already stationed in the Gulf. That’s because the Americans know they are being tested with the possibility of an all-out war that will destroy their strategic interests and balance of power in the region once and for all.

The good news is that Tehran appears strongly inclined to restrain its regional proxies from going too far and, especially, preventing Hezbollah from being dragged into this conflict. Iran is not going to want to waste its ultimate deterrent against Israel on Gaza, which it regards as strategically, culturally and even religiously of marginal interest. The even better news is that the Biden administration is not going to stand by and let a regional disaster unfold.

https://newrepublic.com/article/176251/israel-hamas-war-spread-hezbollah

If it does, the region—and maybe the world—is on fire. But so far, most signs are that Iran does not want a wider war.

Will the Hamas-Israel conflict turn into a regional conflagration? Is the Gaza war going to spiral out of control? It seems increasingly plausible.

As Israel appears poised to launch a multiphase ground offensive to try to eliminate Hamas as an effective organization, one of the biggest concerns for almost all parties is whether the fighting will spread. There are already numerous instances of other players in the regional network of militia groups and armed gangs supported by Iran in Arab countries taking tentative steps towards engagement in the fighting. Israel has demonstrated its alarm over the prospect by issuing threats and warnings to Iran’s most potent client, Hezbollah in Lebanon. There have been media reports that Defense Minister Yoav Gallant urged a preemptive attack against Hezbollah but was overruled by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu amid strong pressure from the Biden administration not to widen the war.

The deployment of major U.S. naval forces in the eastern Mediterranean is clearly aimed at deterring that powerful organization and its Iranian patrons and giving Israel backing that would also stay its hand. Indeed, Hezbollah and Iran have ample and obvious reasons to want to hold back from all out involvement.

But almost all of the pro-Iranian groups in the region have been poking and pecking at the conflict, including by attempting to attack U.S. forces in the region. Iran has numerous clients and proxies in the Arab world that are capable of joining the fray, and not just against Israel but also the United States. Pro-Iranian “Popular Mobilization Forces” militia groups in Iraq like Kataib Hezbollah have long bedeviled U.S. forces in the region. Last week U.S. troops at the Ain al-Asad airbase in western Iraq were attacked by drones and missiles, as was another base near the Baghdad international airport. There have been several other drone attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq last week. Similar pro-Iranian organizations in Syria launched drone attacks against American forces there, causing injuries to American troops. Another drone apparently aimed at U.S. forces was shot down near the Turkish border. In addition, the USS Carney naval destroyer intercepted several missiles and drones fired from land in Yemen, apparently by the pro-Iranian Houthi rebels.

But by far the biggest concern is that the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah militia will get drawn into the conflict with Israel. Unlike pro-Iranian militia groups in Iraq and even Yemen, and certainly unlike Hamas, Hezbollah is an extremely potent hybrid military organization combining exceptionally effective guerrilla and commando capabilities along with conventional military prowess. Hezbollah has demonstrated the ability to take and hold territory and, in its last major conflict with Israel in 2006, it shocked the Israeli military with its capabilities, including effective use of land-to-sea missiles against Israeli naval forces. Since then, the organization’s capabilities have greatly expanded. It has developed a vast arsenal of missiles and rockets with hyper-precision guidance capable of striking anywhere in Israel. Its ground forces are also now more battle-hardened and experienced than ever due to the Syrian war, in which Hezbollah troops were essential to the coalition with Russia and Iran that intervened in the fall of 2015 to keep Bashar Assad in power.

There has been noteworthy unrest on the Israel-Lebanese border that has, naturally, increased concerns of a wider conflict. In recent days there have been numerous limited skirmishes and exchanges of fire on or near the Israel-Lebanon border, and Hezbollah claims to already be “in the heart of the battle.” 

One Israeli officer and at least six Israeli soldiers, 13 Hezbollah fighters and Lebanon-based Palestinian militants have been killed. Yet, for now, this limited fighting is, essentially, within the understood and tacitly established terms of understanding between Israel and Hezbollah, although patience on both sides is being sorely tested. Their tense relationship is characterized by such occasional flareups, and as long as they are within certain geographical limits, and not too large in scope, they are essentially tolerated by both sides and do not lead to all-out war.

Yet mounting Israeli concern has been clearly expressed in its increasing warnings and threats to Hezbollah that it is capable of fighting a two-front war and is ready to decimate not only that organization but all of Lebanon if it is attacked. The United States has dispatched the USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group to the eastern Mediterranean, soon to be joined by additional U.S. Air Force fighter power, all in a clear warning to Hezbollah and Iran that Washington is also prepared to get involved if need be. It’s the first time in decades, and arguably ever, that American forces have been poised to actively defend Israel. Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder was blunt in saying that the deployment of these forces was designed to deter “groups” from acting recklessly to provoke a wider conflict.

Such deployments will undoubtedly incentivize all the major players, most notably Iran and Hezbollah, not to try to expand the conflict into a wider regional conflagration. But that may not be necessary. Hezbollah still has ample reasons of its own not to want a war with Israel under current circumstances. The Lebanese socioeconomic and political condition in which the group operates is dire. Lebanon’s political system is deadlocked with no president and a state that barely functions. Its economy has collapsed completely, plunging a once relatively prosperous society into penury, with over 80 percent of Lebanese now living in poverty. The country simply cannot afford another experience of being pulverized by the Israeli military. And the IDF is, not surprisingly, threatening reprisals and mayhem.

After the 2006 conflict with Israel, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was compelled to go on Lebanese television several times to apologize for having initiated such devastation. In one such broadcast, he even said that had he anticipated the consequences, he never would have authorized the attack on Israeli soldiers at the border that led to the conflict. Everybody knew he was lying, since no one in Lebanon by 2006 had failed to fully understand Israel’s doctrine of disproportionality and determination to counterattack brutally when provoked. But his claim demonstrates that Hezbollah can be accountable not just to its own Shiite constituency but to the broader Lebanese society and that it must be careful to preserve its ability to function within the Lebanese context.

Hezbollah does not operate in a vacuum. It is completely embedded in its Lebanese environment, and it is in no way immune from the Lebanese economic and political crises that have wracked the country in recent years. Neither Lebanon nor, by extension, Hezbollah, can afford another major war with Israel, particularly under the current parlous circumstances. That doesn’t mean that Hezbollah would refuse a command from the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, which operates the network of Arab militia groups of which Hezbollah is the oldest and most effective member, to go into action. Despite its own considerable incentives not to get involved in the current conflict, an Iranian demand would be extremely hard, and perhaps impossible, to refuse.

But there are ample reasons to think that Iran also will not want Hezbollah to enter into a major conflict with Israel over the Gaza war. Hezbollah is Iran’s greatest asset, to be deployed only when absolutely necessary. The main function of Hezbollah for Iran is to serve as a massive and potent deterrent against Israeli military strikes on Iran itself, and particularly against its nuclear facilities. Tehran is therefore highly unlikely to want to expend such a potent deterrent on Gaza, which is, in truth, of marginal strategic interest to Iran. Deterrents are only effective when poised and in waiting. If they are deployed in action, they no longer serve the deterrent function. Instead, they become combatants that are expended as a deterrent force. Since Iran regards Hezbollah as a crucial defense against Israeli attacks against its key assets at home, it is going to think twice before expending that for any other purpose.

It’s possible that Hezbollah might get drawn into the conflict anyway. There are smaller groups, including Hamas operatives, in Lebanon who are already attacking Israel with drones and missiles. If Israel misinterprets one of these attacks and decides to retaliate in a manner that Hezbollah regards as mandating a strong response, such an exchange could set off a tit-for-tat spiral that neither side can control.

Alternatively, if fighting spreads to the occupied West Bank and, above all, occupied East Jerusalem, calculations could quickly change. Violence in and around the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex in Jerusalem would inflame Arab and Muslim passions around the world in a way that nothing in Gaza could. A conflagration around the third holiest site in Islam could prompt either Hezbollah or Iran, or both, to decide that there is more to gain than to lose by unleashing Hezbollah’s fearsome missile and rocket capabilities in the name of defending the faith and, in effect, God.

Thus far, the skirmishing on the Lebanese-Israeli border and attacks against U.S. forces in Syria and Iraq are limited enough to be manageable. Nothing that has happened yet makes spread of this conflict a broader regional explosion inevitable. But unrest like this does make it more likely, because it raises tensions and puts all parties on the defensive. The good news is that one of the few things that Israel, Iran, and Hezbollah all agree on is that the war should not spread, especially to include the potent Lebanese militia. The bad news is that when tensions and passions rise, parties that rationally do not want a conflict with each other are sometimes drawn into a reactive dynamic that produces one anyway.

World War I is probably the most striking example of how actors that don’t want a conflict can end up in a huge one anyway. The even worse news is that this time the U.S. could well get directly involved as well. As things stand, it’s still more likely than not that the conflict will be contained to Gaza and Israel. Everything is in place for that to change quickly, but so far, it’s a mutual agreement—except for some senior Israeli officials, and, possibly, a few bigwigs in Iran as well—that the Hamas-Israel conflict shouldn’t spread.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2023/10/israel-gaza-conflict-qatar-hamas-muslim-brotherhood/675702/

The Gulf country’s dalliance with Islamist groups such as the Taliban and Hamas has at times made it a diplomatic broker. Now those ties are a liability.

As Israel and Hamas sink deeper into conflict, Doha finds itself in a delicate position. As a long-standing backer of the Muslim Brotherhood, Qatar has huge influence over the movement’s Palestinian affiliate, Hamas. That offers a significant opportunity in the short run. Doha’s deep connections with the Gaza-based Islamist group make Qatar a central player in the current diplomatic game. But for exactly the same reason, Doha faces the looming risk of being called to account over its record of support for such radical Islamist groups, and especially for Hamas.

Doha has a long history of serving as a broker, and in the past, this has often worked well for the Gulf state. By allowing the Taliban to establish a Doha office, Qatar provided the U.S. with a channel for negotiations with the group. Doha thus facilitated the agreement to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan concluded under the Trump administration and carried out by President Joe Biden in 2021.

Qatar hopes to play a similar role now. Doha has provided a home for much of Hamas’s exiled political bureau, including its de facto leader, Ismail Haniyeh. Qatar has also been a major underwriter of Gaza’s economy ever since Hamas seized control of the area, in 2007. With the consent of Hamas’s adversaries—including the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, the United States, and even Israel—Qatar has contributed hundreds of millions of dollars each year to the enclave. Among other things, that cash covered the payroll for government employees, which put food on the table for a crucial number of Gazan families despite a virtual blockade by Israel and Egypt.

At the same time, Qatar has long been a key U.S. partner in the Middle East. And before the Abraham Accords, which normalized Israel’s relations with some of Qatar’s Gulf Arab neighbors, the main Israeli diplomatic presence in the region was a trade office in Doha that operated for several years in the late 1990s. In the present crisis, neither Egypt nor Turkey has displayed enthusiasm for acting as a go-between with Hamas. So Qatar is trying to maintain its privileged position of being a useful interlocutor to both sides.

But that diplomatic advantage may prove short-lived. After the hostage situation concludes—whether it ends in tragedy or with negotiated releases involving possible prisoner swaps—Qatar is likely to face severe pressure and criticism. Because of the brutality of its attack on southern Israel, Hamas has forfeited even the pragmatic acceptance it formerly had among Western countries, which now widely view the group as an extreme terrorist organization akin to al-Qaeda and ISIS.

Qatar’s dalliance with Islamist groups has long been the primary means for Doha to project influence in the Arab world, particularly through state support for Al Jazeera Arabic. After 2011, Qatar came to believe, and Al Jazeera Arabic confidently predicted, that a wave of Islamist governance would sweep in with new Arab democracies. Instead, the elected Brotherhood government in Egypt proved even more unpopular than the Hosni Mubarak dictatorship. Islamists lost elections in Libya and Tunisia. In Syria, the Brotherhood was reduced to the margins.

With the Brotherhood’s decline in prestige and power, Qatar’s bet has yielded precious few returns. And now Hamas’s disastrous rebranding in Western eyes could well force a reckoning with Doha’s irresponsible strategy. The Qataris may be forced to choose between their precious ties to Washington and their long investment in Hamas. American pressure could even push Qatar to expel the Hamas leaders and cadres living in Doha.

But Qatar still holds one trump card: its connection to the Pentagon. During the regional dispute that began in 2017 and resulted in a three-year boycott of Qatar by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt, President Donald Trump initially accused Doha of financing terrorism. But the Department of Defense saw things very differently: Qatar’s Al Udeid Air Base, which is home to the forward headquarters of the U.S. Central Command, was the hub for the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. Eventually, the Pentagon’s perspective prevailed, and the U.S. pressed for an end to the boycott.

Qatar’s leverage is straightforward. The country financed the building of, and largely funds the maintenance of, the base at Al Udeid, yet it agreed to allow the U.S. to operate the facility under de facto extraterritorial jurisdiction—as if Al Udeid were sovereign American territory and not Qatari. Small wonder, then, that the Defense Department regards this as an irreplaceable asset, strategically vital for U.S. interests.

In the probable reckoning, Doha will again rely on this indispensability to avoid accountability. But after Hamas’s horrifying killing spree in southern Israel, even that may not be enough. And it will not help Qatar’s case that its official statement after the October 7 attack on Israel put the whole blame for the bloodshed on Israel and did not criticize Hamas. This was in stark contrast to almost all of the other Gulf Arab countries.

Ultimately, Qatar could actually benefit from being compelled to abandon a failed regional policy of backing religious and populist radicals that, like Hamas, have proved to be reckless allies willing to embrace political violence. Other regional powers—notably Turkey and Iran—have made highly effective use of foreign proxies, but they have done so by exerting far more direct control than Qatar has attempted or could exercise over the Brotherhood-aligned movements. For too long, Doha has danced between its Islamist allies and its Western and Arab partners. The music just stopped.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/2023/10/19/biden-played-partisan-politics-in-israel-this-could-benefit-hamas-in-the-long-run/

The US President’s full-throated support for the Netanyahu government might actually help the extremist forces.

In Washington, most Israeli issues operate at two distinct registers: the political battles over partisan interests and power, and foreign policy involving US national interest and power. Those two registers are frequently at odds, and when it comes to Israeli dealings with Palestinians and Lebanese, in particular, partisan politics generally trumps foreign policy and the national interest.

That’s why President Joe Biden concluded last week that it would be a good idea for him to visit Israel in the midst of the unfolding war against Hamas in Gaza, but only on the assumption that he could also take the opportunity to meet with a range of friendly Arab leaders, including Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Jordan immediately after leaving Israel.

That’s definitely good politics in an America that is currently gripped by tremendous sympathy for Israel and identification with Israelis as fellow victims of Islamist extremism following the gruesome Hamas killing spree in southern Israel two weeks ago. But it’s looking very much like a foreign policy mistake, and possibly a blunder.

It’s true enough that Mr Biden and his officials could not have specifically anticipated the explosion at Al Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza that killed hundreds of Palestinians. But they cannot have been surprised that a mass casualty event suddenly occurred in the midst of this already atrocious conflict.

Israel and Palestinian groups are exchanging blame for the carnage, and western media and intelligence appear united in saying it’s too early to tell exactly who was responsible. Indeed, it may never be fully resolved.

But in most of the Arab world, the operating assumption, which would be extremely difficult to reverse, is that Israel, which has been engaged in huge bombing of any number of targets in Gaza, including many civilian areas, must have been responsible. After all, in its various conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon, Israel has a track record of deliberately or inadvertently bombing hospitals, ambulances, refugee centres, UN camps, and so on.

There really are no safe places when the Israeli military is “restoring deterrence”, which is a euphemism for exacting vengeance.

As a consequence, all of Mr Biden’s meetings scheduled for Jordan with Arab leaders, and not just with Mr Abbas, were abruptly cancelled. This makes him look isolated and somewhat foolish, and his trip seem like a significant miscalculation in terms of US diplomacy, however beneficial it may be in terms of partisan politics at home.

Mr Biden, then, made matters worse by publicly telling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “Based on what I’ve seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you.”

Not only does this further identify the US with Israel at a moment of extreme outrage and anxiety about Israeli treatment of millions of innocent Palestinians in Gaza who are being collectively attacked and deliberately deprived of all of the necessities of daily life including water, food, fuel, medicines and just about anything else.

It also is harmfully vague. It takes Israel’s side but based not on an assertion of clear information but rather “what I’ve seen”, which could simply mean that he was taking Mr Netanyahu’s word for it.

Additionally, referring to the conflict as one between “teams”, as if Hamas really did represent the Palestinians of Gaza or as if this were a matter of sports rather than mass carnage, was exceptionally jarring to the ear of anyone acutely attuned to the ongoing suffering in Gaza and the potential looming deaths of numerous thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians.

If he has any specific information, he needed to say that he does. No one expects him to lay out a case in a news conference with the Israeli Prime Minister, having arrived just hours after the tragedy. But it would have been very different if he had said “according to the information passed along to me by our intelligence services”, or, conversely, “based on what the Israelis tell me”, or something else that made clear what, exactly, he was trying to convey by the extremely and damaging leave vague phrase “what I’ve seen”.

In that case, at least his fundamental meaning would have been clear.

But as it stands, policymakers and ordinary citizens alike throughout the Arab and broader Islamic worlds who are sympathetic with the innocent people of Gaza can take the dimmest possible view of his comment, while Israelis can cite it as the US President confirming their own allegations when it’s entirely possible that he meant nothing of the kind.

Mr Biden has never been a particularly adept speaker, and his age is showing. He’s unlikely to ever match the inanity regularly spouted by Donald Trump. But this remark inflicted additional and unnecessary damage on US interests, exacerbating the unwise gamble of seeking to show rock-solid support for Israel while attempting to have significant and important conversations with America’s Arab partners.

Instead, all that was left was rock-solid support for Israel at a time when Palestinians are dying by the hundreds and appear on the brink of dying by the many thousands. It’s not a good look for Washington.

That’s all the more regrettable because, alone among world leaders, Mr Biden has the ability to conduct two crucial conversations with Middle Eastern leaders. He, alone, can credibly warn Israel about the dangers of going too far in Gaza, and he has already cautioned against what he has called the “mistake” of a sustained reoccupation of the population centres there.

But Mr Biden is also in a unique position to closely confer with Saudi Arabia about if and how Israel can avoid permanently scuppering the potential triangular deal between Washington, Riyadh and Tel Aviv involving Saudi normalisation with Israel and a new US defence commitment to Saudi Arabia.

So he’s a key player if Hamas is to be denied what it really wants (many years of close-quarter urban combat with Israeli conscripts on which it would base a new claim to primacy in the Palestinian national movement), and simultaneously failed to prevent what it is seeking to thwart (a US-Saudi-Israeli agreement). That Mr Biden’s trip might have failed on both fronts, unless he succeeded in persuading Israel to exercise restraint, may be one of the first pieces of “good news” to reach Hamas in recent days.

https://www.newsweek.com/president-biden-right-israel-needs-avoid-americas-9-11-mistakes-opinion-1836114

When Hamas fighters broke through the Israeli border fence on October 7, it was seeking to provoke Israel into miscalculations driven by outrage. When insurgent or terrorist groups engage in spectacular overkill attacks, they typically seek to destabilize the target society and inflame a toxic mixture of shock, outrage, panic and wrath such that the dominant power inflicts much greater blows against itself than insurgents ever could.

Remember the 9/11 attacks? Al Qaeda leaders hoped to goad Washington into something profoundly unwise and self-damaging. Unfortunately, the George W. Bush administration obliged by invading Iraq in 2003, which damaged American credibility and global leadership, undermined public support for U.S. military actions in the Middle East, and greatly empowered Iran. As for terrorism, the misbegotten Iraq war actually produced an even more extreme iteration of Sunni Islamist radicalism in ISIS.

Hamas wants Israel to make the same kind of mistake. Though it may seem counterintuitive, what Hamas really wants is an Israeli ground invasion of the Gaza interior.

Since 2007, when Hamas took over the Gaza Strip, Israel has been controlling the territory from the outside only, retaining a tight grip on coastal waters, the airspace, the electromagnetic spectrum and all points of exit and entrance except for one small crossing controlled by Egypt.

In the past year, Hamas became increasingly uncomfortable. The momentum of the Palestinian confrontation with Israel had shifted strongly to the West Bank, led by unaffiliated ad hoc armed youth groups like the “Lions’ Den.” And they were noticing a subtle erosion of support from Turkey and Qatar.

Since its founding in 1987, Hamas’ primary goal has not actually involved battling Israel. That’s a means to the real goal, which is to marginalize secular Palestinians in Fatah and take over the national movement. Hamas wants to dominate all territories under Palestinian control, impose ultraconservative religious social policies, and, above all, take over the Palestine Liberation Organization and its priceless global diplomatic profile, including UN observer state status and over 100 embassies around the world.

From 1987 to 2000, Hamas was distinctly secondary within the Palestinian national movement, which was dominated by Fatah. But the Second Intifada that began in the fall of 2000 following the failed Camp David summit radicalized both sides. The Israeli “peace camp” collapsed and Ariel Sharon became prime minister. Among Palestinians, Hamas finally became a contender for national leadership.

After two elections in which Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas overwhelmingly won the presidency but Hamas-backed candidates twice emerged as the biggest legislative bloc, Hamas violently expelled Fatah from Gaza. The Palestinian split continues to this day, but compared to the West Bank, Gaza is far less culturally and historically significant.

Hamas obviously thinks that if it wants to take over the Palestinian movement, it needs another sustained insurgency against Israeli occupation. Hamas is hoping to lure the Israeli military back into the interior of Gaza for the urban combat that favors insurgent groups. Hamas hopes a sustained insurgency can eventually result in a steady drip of killed and captured Israeli conscripts, allowing Hamas to claim that it alone is actively fighting for Palestine.

What this means is that in trying to fulfill the pledge to “eliminate Hamas,” Israel could well deliver everything Hamas is counting on.

Instead, it would behoove Israel to think carefully about how to deny Hamas what it seeks from a prolonged insurgency in Gaza.

It’s not just a matter of restraint. Israel must rethink its whole approach to the Palestinians. Israeli governments have gone out of their way since the Oslo Accords in 1993 to make Fatah and the PLO look like feckless failures as they pursue a fruitless campaign to obtain statehood through negotiations. Israel has frequently promoted Hamas over Fatah, not just inadvertently but quite deliberately.

No one is guiltier of this than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In March 2019, he patiently explained to his Likud Party’s Knesset members that, “Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas.” In case anyone didn’t fully understand, he added, “This is part of our strategy—to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”

Many Israeli governments have pitted Hamas against Fatah since its founding in 1987, hoping to split and thereby cripple the Palestinian movement.

If Israelis finally realize how catastrophically misguided this policy is, then there are three obvious correctives. First, Israel does not actually benefit from promoting a potent Palestinian radical Islamist party. Second, Israel should do its utmost not to fall into the trap Hamas has set in Gaza. And, third and most crucially different from long-standing Israeli policies towards the Palestinians, if it wants to defeat and marginalize Hamas, Israel must begin treating Fatah and the Palestinian Authority with respect and seriousness.

Anyone truly appalled by the terrorist attacks must actively reward those Palestinians who are committed to talking to Israel as opposed to those who are committed to shooting Israelis.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-hamas-wants-to-lure-israel-into-a-prolonged-and-brutal-conflict

Israel appears to be walking right into a trap. In the wake of the bloodthirsty killing spree in southern Israel by Hamas, Israel says it is determined to wipe out the group. The Israeli military appears to be preparing a massive ground assault in Gaza. But, perhaps counterintuitively to many, this is precisely what Hamas was hoping to provoke through its recent terrorist rampage.

Spectacular violence is almost invariably designed to provoke an emotional response from the dominant power. Rage tinged with panic and confusion can goad the stronger party into strategic blunders that inflict much more damage upon itself then the guerrillas themselves ever could.

One of the most spectacular examples of this dynamic in recent history is the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Al-Qaeda calculated the response would be, at least in part, highly detrimental to U.S. interests. By invading Iraq in 2003, Washington empowered Iran, damaged its own credibility and global leadership, and instilled a lasting aversion among many Americans to military actions, especially in the Islamic world.

Hamas’s fortunes had been declining, with a subtle erosion of support from Turkey and Qatar, and a shift in momentum to the West Bank, particularly by unaffiliated armed youth groups like the Lions’ Den militia. Hamas leaders clearly decided to act dramatically to ensure that Israel would destroy the status quo ante.

Israel began occupying Gaza in 1967. In 2007, Hamas violently expelled their secular Fatah rivals and took control of Gaza. Having already withdrawn Jewish settlements and pulled back its troops in 2005, Israel imposed a de facto siege on Gaza in 2007. Hamas dominated the interior, but Israel retained a tight grip on the coastline, the airspace, the electromagnetic spectrum and all places of ingress and egress, except a small crossing controlled by Egypt.

Hamas wants to break out of this “open-air prison.” They hope Israeli troops return to the Gaza interior for close-quarter urban combat, fighting better suited to guerrillas than regular militaries. They even hope Israel reinstitutes a prolonged reoccupation of Gaza which, they believe over time, will result in weekly, if not daily, Israeli military casualties.

Hamas is counting on a disproportionate Israeli response, already under way, that targets the 2 million Gaza civilians, to prompt the violence to spread to the West Bank and, especially, occupied East Jerusalem. Fighting around or even in the Al-Aqsa mosque will tug at global Muslim heartstrings. It could also prompt others to get involved.

Hamas is certainly hoping Hezbollah from Lebanon, with its vast precision missile arsenal, joins the fray. There are possible additional fronts in southern Syria near the Golan Heights, from pro-Iranian Iraqi militias and the Houthi rebels in Yemen who are within rocket striking distance of the Israeli port city of Eilat. For now, Iran appears to want to reserve its most potent threat, Hezbollah, as a deterrent against Israeli attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities. But those calculations could change if the fighting spreads.

Israel needs to calculate its enemies’ goals and deny them. Hamas is relying on an Israeli overreaction that creates an enormous spectacle of civilian devastation in Gaza and provides targets for a prolonged insurgency.

The ultimate goal is to use the new conflict with Israel to utterly eclipse its Fatah secular rivals in the West Bank, to at last secure dominance within the Palestinian national movement and, eventually, seize control of the Palestine Liberation Organization, with its invaluable global diplomatic presence that includes observer states status at the UN General Assembly and over 100 embassies and missions around the world.

They are counting on Israel to make all this possible by charging into Gaza for a prolonged battle on the ground. Months of ingenious and meticulous planning clearly went into the murderous rampage in southern Israel. It is inconceivable that Hamas did not put at least as much effort and planning into preparing for the very Israeli offensive they were seeking to provoke. The Israeli national security establishment has acknowledged and apologized for being unprepared for the Hamas attack. There may be many additional unpleasant surprises awaiting them if they decide to take and hold the urban streets in Gaza.

Intelligent Israelis must know they are being lured into a trap. Yet many apparently feel that both politically and strategically, they have no choice but to fall into it. That’s precisely the kind of irrationality Hamas was hoping to inflame. Restraint, cunning and potent but limited military responses are the only ways to deny Hamas the emotional and irrational response they seek to provoke and, crucially, to keep the door open to a potential normalization agreement with Saudi Arabia. Yet Israel may be preparing to deliver itself a blow far more devastating than Gaza militants could ever inflict.

www.agsiw.org/the-hamas-israel-conflict-may-upend-saudi-and-u-s-calculations/

Washington and Riyadh will be watching the next steps before reassessing the potential for a triangular agreement with Israel.

Hamas’ ruthless and audacious killing spree in southern Israel, which is provoking the Israeli wrath it sought, has frozen Washington’s efforts to craft a triangular deal with Saudi Arabia and Israel predicated on the two states normalizing diplomatic relations. From a Saudi perspective, negotiations cannot proceed because this upheaval involves too many open-ended questions. It is not surprising, therefore, that Saudi Arabia has publicly said that it has frozen negotiationsover a potential triangular agreement with the United States and Israel. How long and deep that freeze will be depends entirely on events that will be played out in the coming days and weeks.

Strategic calculations will depend on an understanding of the regional diplomatic, strategic, and military equation and the impact of recent events on public opinion in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab countries, the broader Arab world, and even Muslim-majority countries globally. So, likely nothing will be done until Riyadh has a sense of the fundamental contours of the conflict and its probable implications. Saudi, and even U.S., calculations and policy adjustments will be shaped by what happens next. There are three main potential scenarios that can be extrapolated now, although other developments may emerge over time.

Scenario 1: Limited Conflict in Gaza

By engaging in spectacular terrorist overreach, Hamas intended to outrage Israel and provoke it into an emotional overreaction. Historically, this is the strategic intention behind such spectacular overkill by guerrilla organizations that seek to unnerve and destabilize the dominant power and goad it into irrational acts that amount to far worse self-harm than the insurgency could possibly inflict. One example painfully familiar to Americans is the al-Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001, which culminated in the colossal miscalculation of invading Iraq in 2003. Al-Qaeda could not be sure what the U.S. overreaction might be, but Osama bin Laden and his cohorts were confident that the United States would lash out in rage and severely damage its own interests.

There is no doubt that Hamas was seeking to lure Israel into a trap by compelling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israel Defense Forces into a ground attack inside the city, towns, and refugee camps of Gaza. Hamas, with its foreign backers, would not have so meticulously planned the attack on southern Israel without also assiduously preparing to meet the Israeli counterattack on the ground in Gaza. Israeli forces are undoubtedly going to encounter stiff defenses, although how effective both sides will prove remains to be seen.

Hamas was also counting on Israel to act with disregard to civilian suffering and deaths. Israel has already obliged, attacking many civilian targets and killing more than 2,700 Palestinians, most of them civilians. Israel has also ordered over one million Palestinian civilians to evacuate northern Gaza, even though these masses of impoverished people have nowhere to go. The stage appears set for a massive Israeli retaliation involving incredible damage to the infrastructure that makes life possible in Gaza and could involve tens of thousands of civilian deaths. If Israel is serious about preventing the return of Hamas rule in Gaza, then it also must be contemplating a prolonged occupation of the territory, because there is no obvious alternative. This will undoubtedly be met with an organized insurgency that will gain potency and steam over time. It is also not clear when Israel would allow these northern Gaza residents, ordered to evacuate to the south, to return to their homes.

This “limited” scenario, in which the fighting is contained to Gaza and possibly parts of southern Israel, still poses serious challenges to Saudi strategic planning. Saudi leaders will carefully consider domestic political and regional reputational questions, and decision making will therefore depend on Saudi and other Arab perceptions of Israel and Hamas as well as other Palestinians. If the fighting is contained, Israel acts with relative restraint and avoids a prolonged direct occupation of Gaza, and the evacuated Palestinians in Gaza are eventually allowed to return to their homes in the north, it’s possible that progress could resume on the triangular agreement Washington was seeking.

That depends on many factors, but the Palestinian Authority and Palestine Liberation Organization could play a significant role in facilitating a quiet resumption of that process, although it might have to be delayed into a second term of President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s administration, assuming he is reelected. Contrary to much public opinion, Saudi Arabia is not negotiating with Israel about Palestine or the Palestinians, although Saudi support for Palestinian statehood and human rights persists.

Instead, Saudi Arabia is negotiating with Washington over bilateral issues, especially a new defense agreement. Washington is negotiating with Israel over what has been dubbed the “significant Palestinian component,” which will have to satisfy Saudi Arabia and should be minimally acceptable to the Palestinian Authority and Palestine Liberation Organization. But one of the domestic political aims of the Hamas attack on southern Israel was to prevent a political and financial windfall, no matter how insufficient from a national perspective, to Hamas’ arch rivals in the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority and Palestine Liberation Organization by making the triangular agreement impossible.

Israeli restraint and a relatively quick withdrawal from Gaza, even involving swallowing the bitter pill of Hamas emerging from the rubble to declare victory, is almost certainly in the interests of Saudi Arabia and the United States. It’s also in Israel’s interest, because the alternative is a prolonged and bloody direct occupation of the streets of Gaza, precisely what Hamas hopes to provoke. Ironically, Hamas’ killing spree in southern Israel may raise the price of the Palestinian component for Israel, since strengthening Fatah would be an obvious response by Saudi Arabia, the United States, and even Israel to the attack.

Moreover, Saudi policymakers may feel that Hamas and its Iranian backers were attempting to assert a kind of veto over their own decision making and national security policy, in particular the possible three-way deal being pursued by the Biden administration. There may be a real desire in Riyadh, especially if the conflict can be limited, to decline to accept such a veto and instead to act independent of these pressures. That could limit Palestinian gains through any significant Palestinian component to a deal, although both Riyadh and Washington would still have incentives to push for significant gains for Hamas’ Palestinian rivals in the West Bank. Saudi analyst Mohammed Alyahya noted in a conversation that the significant Palestinian component “is part and parcel of the Saudi national security component of any agreement with Israel and the United States.”

Scenario 2: Conflict Spreads to the West Bank and East Jerusalem

One of the primary immediate goals of the Hamas attack is for the violence to spread into the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem and the holy places there. The Al-Aqsa Mosque, in particular, is a religious icon that tugs at the heartstrings of Muslims worldwide in a way that nothing in Gaza can. From the outset, Hamas branded the attack “The Al-Aqsa Deluge,” marketing the violence against southern Israel as somehow connected to the protection of the mosque and Haram al-Sharif, or Temple Mount. Hamas called for a “day of rage” the Friday after the attack, urging Palestinians and other Muslims to express anger over Israeli provocations regarding Muslim holy places. In the event, the day passed relatively quietly, but Fridays to come are another matter.

Nothing discomfits and complicates matters for Gulf Arab countries seeking to deal with Israel more than emotive and religiously resonant violence in and around the Al-Aqsa Mosque or anywhere in Jerusalem. Saudi concern over these highly emotive issues is demonstrated by the most recent Friday sermon, on the “day of rage,” at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, where the preacher emotionally begged God to “liberate the Al-Aqsa mosque” and “support our brothers in Palestine.”

None of that means that what has already occurred or is yet to come in Gaza has precluded Saudi Arabia’s ability to make a triangular deal with the United States and Israel. But if there is significant fighting in and around Jerusalem’s holy places, especially the Al-Aqsa Mosque, that is likely to constrict Saudi wiggle room and throw negotiations into a deep freeze that will be difficult to thaw.

Scenario 3: The Conflict Spreads to Hezbollah and Lebanon

The most dangerous scenario involves the potential entry of Hezbollah into the conflict. At the moment, this does not seem imminent or likely. Given the parlous socioeconomic and political circumstances in Lebanon, Hezbollah presently has much more to lose than to gain from a war with Israel. And Iran probably wishes to retain Hezbollah as a potent deterrent against Israeli strikes aimed at its nuclear facilities or other targets inside Iran. It appears to make little sense for Tehran to risk wasting such a powerful deterrent force on an ultimately marginal theater and strategic consideration such as Gaza.

Yet there are numerous scenarios in which Hezbollah may feel compelled to act or Iran may pressure its dependent client in Lebanon to bring its potent military and missile arsenal into play. If unrest spreads into occupied East Jerusalem and involves the Al-Aqsa Mosque, for example, Hezbollah may feel that acting in the name of “Al-Quds al-Sharif” (Holy Jerusalem) suddenly offers more benefits than costs. Iran may reach the same conclusion and may well have the leverage over Hezbollah to compel it into action despite its own potential doubts. Alternatively, smaller groups in Lebanon may act against Israel, prompting Israeli retaliation inside Lebanon, which could then force Hezbollah’s hand. There are a number of other scenarios, none of them particularly far-fetched, that could bring Hezbollah into the current conflict.

This is potentially explosive. Hezbollah has developed into a far more potent nonstate fighting force than Hamas. Hezbollah has been battle hardened by decades of insurgency against Israeli occupation and, more recently, deep engagement in the brutal war in Syria in which the group was one of the main forces that came to the rescue of the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. It has a vast missile and rocket arsenal capable of striking anywhere inside Israel with potentially devastating effects. Israeli military and intelligence leaders do not underestimate the potency of Hezbollah as they did that of Hamas. Hezbollah, Iran, and Israel all have ample reasons to wish to avoid adding the Lebanese militant group to the fray. Yet it’s not hard to see how those calculations could change, and Hezbollah could open a second front to Israel’s north.

Israel also potentially faces another front in Syria adjacent to the Golan Heights, which it annexed with apparent U.S. acquiescence during the administration of former President Donald J. Trump, and additional ones in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, and even from pro-Iranian militia groups in Iraq. The Wall Street Journal, followed by The New York Times, reported that Iranian expeditionary commanders and Hezbollah officials met with Hamas leaders in Beirut several times over the past year to plan and approve the attack on southern Israel, echoing much earlier reports about such cooperation in the Arabic-language Lebanese media. U.S. and Israeli senior military commanders and civilian officials have stated they do not have intelligence demonstrating this link, although most believe years of Iranian support for Hamas make Tehran generally complicit.

Should Israel find itself in a protracted multifront war with nonstate pro-Iranian groups on all sides, or even simply to the north and south, Israel’s calculations may change dramatically. Israel might decide that it is foolish to combat Iranian client groups in the Arab world while the government it is convinced is the author of this predicament sits safely in Tehran. In short, if the cascading series of events Hamas was hoping to set in motion with its attack against Israel is taken to its logical conclusion, Israel might end up striking Iran, possibly at its nuclear facilities or other sensitive targets.

At that point, Iran can be expected to retaliate not merely through its already engaged proxies but directly itself, and it might not stop at Israeli targets but hit U.S. ones or even those of Gulf Arab countries. If the Gaza conflict cannot be contained and instead spirals out of the control of all parties, it has within it the seeds of unparalleled regional conflagration. It is a Saudi, and indeed U.S., imperative to prevent anything like this from taking place, but there may not be much that Riyadh and Washington can do if the combatants submit to a process of continuous escalation with little or no restraint.

This scenario is so dramatic that it would have highly unpredictable effects on Saudi calculations regarding ties with Israel. It may raise the stakes to the extent that the very idea of such open cooperation would become untenable. Or, conversely, it may render regional circumstances so dangerous that Saudi Arabia concludes that it needs closer ties not only to Washington but also even Israel. At that point, negotiations could proceed very quickly, albeit in a highly volatile and unpredictable regional landscape.

From the Saudi point of view, with the situation as it exists now, a triangular agreement with Washington and Israel is still possible. Predicated on the normalization of ties with Israel, a new defense agreement with Washington would be ratified by the Senate and therefore protected from foreign policy shifts created by electoral changes in the White House. On the other hand, volatile circumstances are in place for potential dramatic developments that could make progress on such an agreement politically untenable, diplomatically too costly, and strategically unwise.

Both Riyadh and Washington will be watching with bated breath to see what Israel chooses to do following Hamas’ extreme provocation in southern Israel and the responses of various neighboring powers, especially Iran’s network of potent substate actors. The fate of the potential triangular agreement hangs delicately in the balance, most profoundly threatened by a potential wider regional conflict.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2023/10/israel-hamas-war-iran-trap/675628/

Storming into Gaza will fulfill Hamas’s wish.

It’s a trap. Hamas’s ruthless and spectacular attack on southern Israel last Saturday was many things: an atrocity, a display of militant ingenuity, and a demonstration of the weakness of Israeli intelligence and defenses. Israel and the Palestinians have a long history of brutality against each other, but the Hamas killing spree outdoes anything since Israeli-controlled Christian militias massacred unarmed Palestinian refugees in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps outside of Beirut in 1982. It may even have been the single most brutal act by either side in the 100-year-old conflict. But above all, it was intended as a trap—one that Israel appears about to fall into.

Hamas’s leaders and their Iranian backers have a conscious strategy. Like almost all other acts of spectacularly bloodthirsty terrorism, Hamas’s assault on southern Israel was designed to provoke an emotional and equally or even more outrageous response by the targeted society. Hamas and Iran are attempting to goad the Israelis into Gaza for a prolonged confrontation—which is to say that the intended effect is precisely the ground assault Israel is now preparing in order to root out and destroy Hamas as an organization, kill its cadres and leadership, and destroy as much of its infrastructure and equipment as possible.

Hamas surely would not have meticulously planned its audacious assault without also extensively planning a response to the hoped-for Israeli counterattack on the ground. The Israeli military will likely encounter a determined insurgency in Gaza. After all, Israel has had control of the land strip from the outside, but not on the inside. Israeli dominion over Gaza’s coastal waters, airspace, electromagnetic spectrum, and all but one of its crossings, including the only one capable of handling goods, has made Gaza a virtual open-air prison—run by particularly vicious inmates but surrounded and contained on all sides by the guards.

Hamas evidently decided to destroy that status quo, which was no longer serving its interests. The Islamist group also hopes to seize control of the Palestinian national movement from its secular Fatah rivals, who dominate the Palestinian Authority and, more important, the Palestine Liberation Organization, which is the internationally recognized representative of the Palestinian people. Hamas has never been a part of the PLO, in large measure because it is unwilling to accept the PLO’s treaty agreements with Israel. The most notable among these is the Oslo Accords, which included recognition of Israel by Palestinians but no Israeli recognition of a Palestinian state or a Palestinian right to statehood.

Hamas is attempting to seal the fate of Fatah, and maneuver to eventually take over the PLO and its international diplomatic presence, including UN observer-state status and embassies around the world. By taking the battle directly into Israel, claiming to be defending Muslim holy places in Jerusalem by branding the attack the “Al-Aqsa Deluge,” and hopefully breaking the Israeli siege of Gaza, Hamas seeks to belittle Fatah and demonstrate the primacy of its policy of unrestrained armed struggle over the PLO’s careful diplomacy.

Moreover, Hamas and its Iranian patrons want to block the diplomatic-normalization agreement that the United States has been brokering between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Such a deal poses a danger to Hamas because the benefits of its “significant Palestinian component” would have accrued to Fatah in the West Bank, at Hamas’s expense. For Iran, the agreement would be a major strategic setback. Should Israel, the most potent U.S. military partner in the region, and Saudi Arabia, Washington’s most financially powerful and religiously influential one, normalize and build cooperation, Tehran would face an integrated pro-American camp. American partners, including the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, and Jordan, would effectively ring the Arabian Peninsula, securing control of the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea, and the Persian Gulf through their three crucial maritime choke points: the Suez Canal, the Bab el-Mandab Strait, and the Straits of Hormuz. Saudi-Israeli normalization would largely block Iran’s regional aspirations in the short run and Chinese ambitions in the more distant future.

So, Hamas for domestic Palestinian reasons and Iran for regional strategic ones decided to set off an earthquake that would at least postpone such a reckoning. Iran and Hamas are counting on Israel to attack Gaza with such ferocity that the international sympathy of the past week toward Israel, even in the Arab world, evaporates quickly and is replaced by outrage at the suffering inflicted on the 2 million residents of Gaza. Those civilians have already been cut off from electricity, water, food, and medicine, all of which are controlled by Israel. Existing supplies will quickly dwindle as Gaza and its inhabitants are pounded from the air. Israel appears prepared to inflict many thousands of civilian casualties, if not more. It has adhered to a doctrine of disproportionality for deterrence predating the founding of the state: Jewish militias embraced it when dealing with the Arabs in Mandatory Palestine, and at no stage since have more Jewish civilians been killed than Palestinian ones, with the ratio usually closer to 10 to 1 than 2 to 1.

Israel appears poised to fulfill Hamas’s intentions. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed retaliation that will “reverberate for generations” among Israel’s adversaries. The Israeli general Ghassan Aliyan warned, “You wanted hell—you will get hell.” Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared, “We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.” None of these speakers made any effort to distinguish between Hamas militants and the 2 million Palestinian civilians in Gaza. The “human animals” comment is telling. For decades, and especially in recent years, the people of Gaza have indeed been treated like animals. Perhaps not surprisingly, guerrillas emerging from their ranks indeed acted like animals when they attacked southern Israel. So now Israel will triple-down on the dehumanization and collective punishment of all of these “human animals.” Tehran couldn’t ask for more.

Hamas and Iran hope that Israel will refuse to return to the status quo ante and will instead institute a prolonged ground occupation of Gaza, declaring that Hamas can no longer be allowed to pose such a threat. But Gaza, they trust, will be a slaughterhouse for Israeli soldiers, both during the immediate incursion and over time as the anticipated insurgency gains its footing.

Israel’s apparent eagerness to fall into this trap is understandable, and indeed predictable, which is why Hamas was confident in laying it. Outrageous overreach by terrorists typically aims to provoke overreach. Washington and other friends of Israel who are now seized with sympathy should immediately caution Israel not to make this blunder. If Israel instead exercises restraint, however difficult doing so might be both politically and emotionally, it can thwart the goals of Hamas and its Iranian sponsors. Restraint would go a long way toward ensuring that the diplomatic opening with Saudi Arabia continues to move forward, dealing a major blow to local revisionist powers, such as Iran, and global ones, such as China and Russia, that wish to supplant a rules-based order with one based on “Might makes right.”

Unfortunately, in the efforts to eliminate Hamas, which cannot be done by force, and to ensure that such a threat can never be allowed to reemerge, which is equally impossible so long as the occupation continues, Israel seems ready to jump right into the briar patch.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/does-hamas-care-what-happens-to-palestinians-in-gaza?preview=true

After the group stormed southern Israel in a brutal assault last week, what impact does it have on its popularity among Palestinians?

On Friday, October 6, the Palestinian militant group Hamas launched a daring, brutal and highly effective attack on southern Israel. Easily breaching supposedly impenetrable Israeli defenses and encountering little Israeli military resistance, Hamas beseiged numerous communities and killed at least 800 Israelis, most of them civilians. They spirited dozens of military prisoners and civilian hostages into Gaza on motorcycles, in golf carts and even on foot. It was the most devastating surprise assault in Israel in over 50 years and unprecedented in its impact on its sense of stability and security.

Hamas is the paramilitary wing of the Muslim Brotherhood among Palestinians, formed in 1987 as grassroots Palestinian organizations led a spontaneous uprising against Israeli occupation that focused on protests and stone-throwing. In contrast to that grassroots uprising and the diplomatic strategy of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) that had already decided to seek a two-state peace agreement with Israel, the Brotherhood in Gaza created Hamas to pursue a religiously-sanctioned armed struggle against Israel.

Hamas proved popular in Gaza, which had been highly influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood during Egypt’s rule of the Strip between 1948-1967. Cairo had allowed some Egyptian Muslim Brothers to operate in the Palestinian territory it controlled as a kind of safety valve while cracking down on it inside Egypt itself. So, the cultural groundwork for Hamas’ militancy and socially reactionary political agenda already existed inside Gaza. But it proved a harder sell among Palestinians more broadly.

Hamas quickly discovered that it could strengthen its political foothold among Palestinians by yoking its non-compelling social agenda with an uncompromising armed struggle against Israel. As the PLO’s diplomatic agenda appeared to bear fruit with the 1993 Oslo Accords and with the establishment of Palestinian self-rule in populated enclaves of the West Bank and in Gaza, Hamas increasingly turned to violence. But the Islamists continued to play second fiddle to the secular party Fatah which dominates the PLO and came to control the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Hamas’ big break came with the brutal second intifada–or uprising–which began after the failure of the 2000 Camp David peace talks summit. By the fall of 2000, although PLO negotiations with Israel were continuing, Hamas began introducing both religious themes into the “Al-Aqsa intifada,” forcing Palestinian President Yasser Arafat to use such religious terminology that was very foreign to the PLO. Hamas began a series of brutally effective suicide bombings against Israeli targets that proved the main means through which Palestinians were able to take the conflict into Israel and remind ordinary Israelis that they were at war with their subject populations

The second intifada radicalized both Israelis and Palestinians to an unprecedented degree, destroying the Israeli “peace camp” and its Palestinian equivalent. While Israelis turned to the extreme right, electing Ariel Sharon, Hamas rose in popularity and became a real competitor, for the first time, against their secular rivals. In the two Palestinian elections following the death of Arafat, Hamas lost the presidency decisively both times, but they and their allied candidates performed well in both parliamentary votes.

In 2007, Hamas brutally expelled Fatah cadres from Gaza and the PA drove Hamas members either underground or out of the West Bank. That split between Palestinians continues to this day, hobbling the national movement, and no election has been held since. Both groups have appeared content to rule in their respective fiefdoms, at least until last Friday.

Hamas’ popularity is hard to gauge. Like other Arab Islamist groups, they tend to do better in legislative elections than all-or-nothing presidential balloting. It’s likely that something like 25-35% of Palestinians are sympathetic to their Islamist social agenda. In parliamentary elections, they been able to add another 10% or so that seems to sympathize with their “armed struggle until victory” rhetoric or wanted to protest Fatah corruption and mismanagement.

It’s hard to speculate about the impact of Friday’s assault on southern Israel for Hamas’ popularity; they have clearly grabbed for the mantle of national leadership. While Palestinians brace themselves for Israel’s doctrinally disproportionate retaliation, there is also a good deal of rallying around the flag.

There is no way of discerning how many Palestinians approve of Hamas’ brutality, but there is no doubt many will agree that Israel brought the calamity upon itself. Israelis lulled themselves into a false sense of security, believing that while unaffiliated armed youth groups like the “lion’s den” gang in the West Bank posed a limited new security headache, the situation in both Gaza and the West Bank was basically under control. Israelis assumed they were capable of casually denying millions of Palestinians both citizenship and a state of their own, keeping them stateless, disenfranchised and under military occupation for the past 60 years with no end in sight.

Israelis are now awakened to the fact that they are still in a brutal and existential conflict with the Palestinians. The Palestinians living under occupation in Gaza, which Israel rules from the outside, controlling the coastal waters, the airspace, the electromagnetic spectrum and all of the crossings, except one small crossing controlled by Egypt, have been living in a kind of open-air prison run by especially vicious inmates for two decades. Palestinians in the West Bank also live daily lives in which they can never avoid the rule of a hostile foreign military. The occupation is its own form of grinding violence, and the extreme ethnic discrimination Israel practices in the West Bank has no analog anywhere in the contemporary world.

Yet most Israelis have been able to ignore the occupation as it intensifies, setting the stage for potential large-scale annexation in the West Bank, and likely mass expulsions. They’ve had numerous recent elections in which the occupation went effectively unmentioned while the price of cottage cheese was a hot button issue.

Even in the recent brouhaha over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “judicial overhaul” self-coup against Israel’s “Jewish democracy,” the inspiring protest movement similarly ignored the occupation. For many Palestinians, the harsh authoritarianism Israel has imposed on them in the occupied territories was coming home. How could Israel’s “Jewish democracy” remain untainted by its remarkably repressive regime against a captive people?

With bodies littering the streets of southern Israel and dozens spirited off to Gaza to serve as bargaining chips or human shields (two atrocious practices routinely employed in recent decades by the Israeli military), Israelis have been brutally jolted awake. Their self-induced slumber is over.

This awakening will be welcomed by Palestinians, even if they disapprove heartily of the tactics Hamas employed in the butchery. And despite anxiety about Israel’s response, Hamas’ popularity has probably soared. There is a typical rally-around-the-flag effect on both sides. But it’s by no means guaranteed that Hamas will emerge with greater popularity.

After its last major war with Israel in 2006, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah felt compelled to apologize on Lebanese TV and claim he had not anticipated the intensity of Israel’s response. He even said he wouldn’t have authorized the July 11 attack on Israeli soldiers at the Israel-Lebanon border if he had understood the likely outcome. It was absurd, given the Israeli military’s deep attachment to the doctrine of disproportionate retaliation (which even predates the state of Israel), but it was a measure of how damaging the outcome of the war had been to Hezbollah’s reputation in Lebanon.

Hamas is unlikely to ever apologize, but it might suffer a similar backlash depending on what happens. The biggest mistake Israel could make would be directly re-occupying the Gaza Strip. That might be tempting under the rubric of not allowing Hamas to continue to run the territory and pose the threat of a repetition of the attack. But it would create a virtual abattoir for Israeli conscripts, who would be picked off by guerrilla forces in Gaza, most notably a resurgent Hamas.

It might be galling for Israel to see Hamas emerge from the rubble and proclaim victory. But as long as there is an occupation, Hamas and more extreme groups will continue to find a constituency for their extremism. The only entity that can possibly control such militancy is a Palestinian state.

Yet not only has Israel never recognized the Palestinian right to a state, let alone Palestinian statehood, since the failure of the Camp David summit in 2000 it has been moving steadily to lay the groundwork for annexation. The annexation movement will undoubtedly point to the recent attacks as necessitating annexation plus the expulsion of Palestinians from key areas in the West Bank, all as a “sad necessity.”

While Israel goes to war with Hamas in Gaza, it’s working overtime to strengthen it politically. Israel’s actions in the coming days will determine whether the attack on southern Israel increases Hamas’ popularity. Unfortunately, Israel appears to be preparing to fall into the trap that has been set for it by preparing a land invasion of Gaza that will probably be followed by a resumed direct occupation, at least for the time.

That will almost certainly prove a tragedy for all parties–except Hamas and Iran.