Monthly Archives: May 2024

Biden’s mapping a different route to the White House this time

This op-ed was published by The National on May 30, 2024

In a huge change from his strategy in 2020, US President Joe Biden is running to hold the political center and even attempt to pick off disaffected parts of the political right.

He is seeking a strikingly different winning coalition than four years ago. Then, as now, he presented himself as the “normal” and “sane” candidate running against an opponent he depicted as distinctly outside of the normative spectrum of all American political traditions and as of questionable emotional stability. He may find it easier to depict former president Donald Trump as eccentric and, in his own words, a would be dictator, if only, as he vowed, “on the first day.”

In 2020, Mr. Biden ran on uniting the Democratic Party, working hard to court the progressive left. This time he’s casting himself as preventing the Democratic Party from falling into the grip of the far left, which may have overplayed its hand with much of the US electorate.

He isn’t repudiating the left, but appears to be essentially telling them to take it or leave it, relying on a dramatic contrast with Mr. Trump. That’s likely to become clearer and starker as the campaign progresses.

Mr. Trump and his backers are proposing a range of extraordinarily radical new policies, including the unprecedented mass deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants and asylum-seekers.

Right-wing think tanks are planning radical policy shifts, including a thoroughgoing purge of the federal administrative workforce, replacing tens of thousands of civil servants with handpicked ideological replacements.

The purpose would not merely be to seize control of the apparatus of government into the indefinite future, but more immediately to conduct a vast rollback of regulatory administration by the federal government that has insured compliance with environmental, health and safety, diversity and inclusion, and other public interest standards developed over the past half century.

Mr. Trump has reportedly been courting millions in de facto campaign contributions from super wealthy donors, promising additional tax cuts and de-regulation. He has even been asking donors to specify precisely what regulations they find most irksome to their business interests, linking major donations to specific attempted administrative rollbacks.

Mr. Trump will counter attack against a left-wing cultural agenda that has alienated many ordinary white Americans, though Mr. Biden will cast himself as an effective force of attenuation and containment. Even more important will be the Republican emphasis on immigration and the economic, ethnic and racial anxieties it often represents.

Mr. Biden will counter that, to the chagrin of many progressives, under his leadership Democrats in Congress voted for immigration legislation that amounted to a Republican wish list but that was rejected, at Mr. Trump’s insistence, by House Republicans who refused to take yes for an answer. The legislation contained no aspect of the liberal immigration agenda.

Mr. Biden will certainly argue that Mr. Trump cherishes the crisis at the southern border as a political issue, but wants nothing to do with a solution.

And Mr. Biden has been handed a tremendously powerful issue by the US Supreme Court. The wholesale attack on reproductive freedom, in vitro fertilization and even contraception in Republican-dominated states, even extending to efforts to limit free speech and the freedom of movement within the country, could prove to be Mr. Biden’s most powerful issue.

Realizing this, Mr. Trump has moderated his own stance on the matter and now backs a nationwide 15-week standard, after which states would be free to impose strict and even total restrictions. But Mr. Biden is far closer to the national mood, which opposes the Republican commitment to draconian limitations.

The issue of reproductive rights has not proved a short-lived source of backlash. To the contrary, in every election in which it has been a major feature, even in the most right-wing constituencies, anti-abortion candidates have lost to those favoring protecting reproductive rights.

Mr. Biden will be hoping for a massive turnout by Americans, especially women, appalled at the once-Trump-inspired turn towards totalizing restrictions and the drive among many Republicans for a national ban on all pregnancy terminations, often with no restrictions for rape and incest, even among children.

Unlike in the past where a Democratic push for greater reproductive freedom was essentially a liberal or even left-wing agenda, in this case Mr. Biden will be appealing to the broad center he is targeting.

Should Mr. Trump be convicted, as seems entirely plausible, of a major felony in the adult film star hush money case, Mr. Biden would have further opportunities to make inroads beyond the center and into the political right. He could at least persuade Republicans who cannot countenance voting for a convicted felon to stay home if not hold their noses and vote for the Democrat.

Mr Biden may feel that much of the progressive left simply cannot be won over on the merits. His strong support for Israel‘s war of vengeance in Gaza, only recently involving clear limitations and sharp, albeit limited, criticism, is an obvious example. Nonetheless, the President can point to an impressive record of liberal legislative and executive order domestic accomplishments.

Americans will ultimately have to choose between two candidates representing very different visions. Mr. Biden will be running as the embodiment of the Constitution and traditional political order, whereas Mr. Trump has displayed an open hostility to national norms and traditions, particularly with his vow to be a dictator, albeit only, he says, for the first day. But many Americans will realize that this authoritarian first day can extend itself indefinitely if the goals it is supposed to accomplish are not secured in 24 hours, as seems virtually inevitable.

So the President is gambling that many otherwise alienated progressives will, eventually, feel impelled to support him no matter how reluctantly, and that he has a real shot of not only holding the political center but also convincing many disenchanted Republicans to break ranks for once in order to preserve the constitutional order, or at least stay home rather than voting for a convicted felon.

That’s a very different course of action from 2020. Given the increasingly radical politics and unstable personality of his opponent, it may yet prove to be a wise gamble.

 

 

The US is in a bind over the ICC seeking arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas officials

This op-ed was published by The National on May 21, 2024

The application by International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan for major indictments against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant could constitute a significant step in international jurisdiction over war crimes and crimes against humanity.

But it has also drawn the ire of the Joe Biden administration in Washington, for two reasons. First, the US has always rejected the very concept of the ICC (fearing the potential prosecution of its own military and civilian officials); and second, it exposes significant weaknesses and contradictions in the President’s policies. The Prosecutor’s brief was remarkably well-balanced, fact-based, compelling and impartial.

It laid out clear grounds for the international criminal indictment of both Hamas and Israeli leaders. Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas would be charged with authoring, organizing and overseeing murder and kidnapping against Israeli civilians. Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Gallant would be accused of using starvation of civilians as a matter of policy and, therefore, a weapon of war.

All five appear manifestly guilty of these transgressions, and the key point of Mr Khan is that it makes absolutely no moral or legal sense to hold one party accountable for its lawless brutality, but not the other. Through this symmetry, or balance, Mr Khan has revealed precisely the bleeding heart of the tragedy.

Hamas led an attack into southern Israel that involved hunting down, killing and kidnapping innocent civilians in kibbutzim and a nearby music festival. It was a bloodthirsty killing spree. Armed struggle against military occupation does not exempt insurgent groups from the laws of war. Fighting occupation doesn’t allow anyone to murder and kidnap civilians.

Israel responded with what Mr Netanyahu promised on October 7 “a mighty vengeance”. That’s practically the only thing that’s happened. Israel hasn’t achieved any other stated aims, such as eradicating Hamas, freeing hostages or restoring security for its public.

Instead, it has killed more than 35,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, in addition to an untold number still buried under the rubble. Several entities – including South Africa in an application to the International Court of Justice (which has jurisdiction over states, while the ICC has jurisdiction over individuals) – have accused Israel of genocide for this mind-boggling death toll.

Yet genocide charges will take years to adjudicate and hang on a difficult claim to prove, namely intent.

Where Israeli leaders are most vulnerable is the systematic denial of food, water, medicine and other essentials to the Palestinian population, which it has driven from one part of the Gaza Strip to another, willy-nilly, as its military has rampaged through the territory often shooting anything that moves, including escaping Israeli hostages, journalists and humanitarian aid workers. Israel’s de facto blockade has strangled Gaza, creating a man-made famine in the north, and a dire situation everywhere.

The biggest problem for Mr Biden is the manifest truth of the accusation. He dismisses it at his peril, especially because he implicitly made the same point about Israel using food as a weapon of war during his own State of the Union address in January. His professed outrage is both a reflection of traditional, yet indefensible, US policies and entirely political.

The problem for Mr Biden is not just that he knows about the horrendous impact of Israel’s blockade. It is also that his own government has documented it and has, therefore, built a maritime port to try to get aid to the Palestinians despite Israel’s vicious recalcitrance. The killing of the World Central Kitchen’s aid workers was almost certainly another manifestation of Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon of war, and a clear message not to interfere with that too brazenly.

The Biden administration is further aware that every time Israel negotiates indirectly with Hamas, the question of humanitarian aid – including food and medicine – is on the table. Indeed, humanitarian supplies to Palestinian civilians are a counterpart to the issue of Israeli hostages held in Gaza, in the negotiations between belligerents. Yet Mr Biden cannot acknowledge this without breaking long-standing American traditions of opposing any ICC charges against allies, taking a huge political risk, and betraying his own sentimental pro-Israel instincts.

It’s much easier just to denounce the whole thing. At the same time, his administration doesn’t seem to have any objection to potential charges against equally manifestly guilty Hamas leaders. That suggests the ICC can reasonably assert jurisdiction over some belligerents but not others.

Worse, the proposed ICC action is based on the fact that all of this has occurred in, or coming out of, “the state of Palestine”, in its capacity as a non-member observer state in the UN General Assembly. Israel, like the US, isn’t a party to the ICC, but the state of Palestine is, and that should certainly give the court jurisdiction over everything that has happened in Gaza and coming out of it.

The greatest complication is that the Biden administration has based its Middle East foreign policy strategy and vision on securing Israeli acquiescence to the right of Palestinians to a state (which Israel has never formally acknowledged), and on Israeli agreement to enter into a process to eventually establish and recognise that state. Insisting that Israelis cannot be held responsible for what they do in the nascent Palestinian state effectively negates the principle of the two-state solution, even if that state now operates mainly as a prototype in multilateral institutions.

Holding Hamas leaders accountable for their brutality is just fine, apparently, but Palestinians must wait until they get their state from Israel before they can be protected from Israeli war crimes in areas that would undoubtedly become a key part of that indispensable and necessary state? That’s the preposterous moral and legal position implicit in the Biden administration’s harsh derision of Mr Khan’s arrest warrant request.

That’s too convoluted, contradictory and contorted a position to hold up in anything but empty campaign rhetoric and as miserable humbug. It won’t do, because it only adds to the humiliation and degradation already inflicted by excessive support for Israel’s intentional yet apparently aimless rampage of vengeance in Gaza upon Washington’s international standing and strategic position globally, and especially in the Middle East.

It’s a moral low point in an already sorry American saga.

Does Trump’s candidacy hinge on the verdict of his hush money trial?

This op-ed was published by The National on May 8, 2024

The Manhattan trial of former president Donald Trump in the hush-money case is probably the most significant political drama currently playing out in the US, with both sides hoping that it will have a significant impact on the November presidential election in their favor.

It’s a high-risk, high-benefit scenario for Democrats and Republicans alike. The outcome of the election isn’t riding on the verdict of the trial, or even its overall impact on the national atmosphere, but, by the time the judgment is rendered, one side or the other is likely to sustain a serious political hit.

Standing trial for alleged criminally unlawful campaign contributions in the form of hush money payments to an adult film star who claims to have had a sexual relationship with him would sink any normal candidate instantly. But Mr. Trump is no normal candidate. Among his adoring base and within the broader Republican Party, in which they have enormous and outsize influence, he is practically beyond criticism.

But not quite. The future of Mr. Trump’s candidacy could well hinge upon the verdict, because a significant percentage of Republicans have reported to pollsters that they would not be prepared to vote for him or any other candidate who has been convicted of a serious felony. Many of these are no doubt among the 20-40 per cent of Republican primary voters who favored former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, even after she formally dropped out of the race.

So, if Mr. Trump is convicted of cooking the books to conceal politically motivated payments to Stormy Daniels, as she is known in the adult film industry, that alone could sink Mr. Trump’s chances. There are fewer Republicans than there are Democrats in the US, although Democrats are inefficiently concentrated in high-population cities and coastal states, whereas Republicans are efficiently spread out across lower-density suburban and rural areas, thereby considerably strengthening the power of their votes in the US federal system.

In the 2016 US election, Mr. Trump was soundly defeated by Hillary Clinton, who had three million more of the popular vote, but he won a clear victory based on the demographic diffusion of his supporters in the electoral college. Mr. Biden scored a relatively narrow victory in the electoral college in 2020, despite a decisive seven-million margin in the popular vote. Nobody believes Mr. Trump has any chance of winning a popular majority in November, but many hope or fear that this quirk of the US system could nonetheless return him to the White House.

But obviously he cannot afford to lose many Republicans by being convicted. And despite his protestations that he’s being persecuted, being on trial for corruption due to an alleged affair, which Mr. Trump still denies but almost everyone else has accepted almost certainly took place, is not a good look among the relatively small group of swing voters – disproportionately women – who could determine the election result.

Worse, the evidence against him presented thus far is far stronger than many anticipated. The prosecution appears to have been able to demonstrate the depth of the plot to interfere with the election by ensuring voters never heard Ms Daniels’ story and to then unlawfully conceal the payment.

Many witnesses have testified that Mr Trump was clearly focused on the election rather than his broader reputation or the feelings of his wife and family. Indeed, several of those who were paid to sign non-disclosure agreements regarding such accusations were released from their obligations a mere two months after the 2016 election was concluded, which is only one of many established facts that seem to demonstrate this was indeed all about deceiving the voters.

But there are several potential silver linings for the former president. All he needs to do is to convince a single juror that the prosecution has not proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt to achieve a hung jury. If he’s not convicted, even with just one juror being a holdout, Mr. Trump will complain endlessly about a supposedly corrupt prosecution having been exposed as a tissue of lies and so on. Such an outcome could be sufficient vindication to give his candidacy a real boost and call the other, much stronger, cases against him into doubt in the public mind.

Mr. Trump has been enjoying bating Judge Juan Merchan by blatantly and provocatively disregarding a gag order that prevents him from publicly threatening or attacking those involved in the trial, including prosecutors, court staff, jurors and the judge himself – or their relatives. Mr. Trump has persisted in making statements that deliberately taunt the judge to enforce his order.

Judge Merchan has imposed $1,000 fines per violation, now amounting to 10 instances, but observed that “the $1,000 fines are not serving as a deterrent” and that he “will have to consider a jail sanction”. Yet, Mr. Trump might relish a brief stint behind bars, which he would use to reinforce his assumed martyrdom and raise money.

The judge is now trapped between handing Mr Trump such a publicity coup or allowing him to, as the judge phrased it, “interfere with the fair administration of justice” and “attack the rule of law”.

It may be politically irrelevant, but even though Mr Trump stands a good chance of being convicted, since the facts appear to greatly favour the prosecution, at least thus far, and even if he’s convicted, he may never serve a day behind bars for these charges. As a first offender, he would likely get probation unless his provocations are so severe the judge deems it necessary to sentence him to a few months of incarceration.

More importantly, Mr. Trump’s case on appeal may be as strong on the law as it is now weak on the facts. There are numerous grounds for challenging the novel and complex prosecution interpretation of the relevant statutes and serious issues about federal and state jurisdiction. So, the case may well eventually get thrown out on appeal even if Mr. Trump is convicted.

But that would come long after the election. The main questions are whether he gets to play the martyr in his game of chicken with the judge or becomes a convicted felon for the rest of the campaign. If he’s found guilty, Mr. Trump’s quest to regain the presidency may be doomed.

Student protests will shape a generation of Americans’ thinking on social justice

This op-ed was published by The National on May 3, 2024 

The sustained student unrest over the Gaza war may have reached a crescendo. Yet US student activism against Israeli policies may be just starting.

This semester is ending. Israel’s rampage in Gaza appears to have one major target left in Rafah. And the astoundingly self-defeating behavior of the Columbia University administration will shortly be studied by others as an object lesson in exactly what not to do unless you want protests galvanized and empowered.

But perhaps the biggest reason is that the opportunism on the political left and, especially, the right over this issue is probably approaching points of diminishing return on both sides.

The confrontation began over a peaceful student encampment of about 100 students on one lawn out of at least a dozen on the Columbia campus.

The students were demanding a ceasefire, an end to US support for Israel and, crucially, that the university divest from holdings that operate in, or work closely with, Israel.

The university had the option of simply ignoring the students, or even trying to meet some of their demands. But the political right sensed an election-year opportunity to argue that liberal-dominated colleges had created the groundwork for supposedly “anti-Semitic” protests just by being too liberal.

When Columbia’s president, Nemat Shafik, was summoned by a congressional right-wingers, one radical fundamentalist Congressman asked her if she was worried about Columbia being “cursed by God” because of anti-Israel protests. Unfortunately, that absurd question probably played well in his district.

Feeling the political pressure from powerful national right-wingers, some parents and wealthy donors, Dr Shafik asked police to intervene, arresting 100 students who, police attested, may have been technically trespassing but who were not doing anything but calmly expressing their opinions.

This craven action may have been sufficient to placate pro-Israel parents and donors, and indemnify Columbia’s administration from further right-wing attacks, but it was a massive blunder in terms of limiting the protest movement.

The students were zip-tied, arrested and processed, but quickly released on misdemeanour trespassing charges. Most immediately returned to their encampment, which they of course then vowed to maintain indefinitely. Similar protests spread around the country.

Columbia students began negotiating with administrators over the encampment, but talks broke down, particularly on divestment. Suspecting the university was planning more mass arrests, some students took over an administration building. The university once again decided to send in the police.

These students in some cases are now being charged with burglary and other excessive charges that probably won’t stick. But between its “get tough approach, the end of the semester, and the final stages of Israel’s major operations in Gaza, this batch of protests may have largely run its course.

Yet the Palestinian cause has almost certainly emerged decisively as international social justice cause for the current generation of American students. Unfortunately for campus administrators, the issue is highly unlikely to go away in the short or medium terms, and could potentially flare up even more dramatically in the future.

For all the rhetoric about the appalling war, Israel’s brutality and the virtually unimaginable number of Palestinian civilians, particularly children, who have been wantonly killed in Gaza, the divestment movement will probably emerge as the next phase of a protracted campaign on US campuses. When anti-apartheid fervour gripped campuses in the 1980s, many universities adopted rules prohibiting their own investment in entities that do business with those practicing apartheid, without limiting the ban to South Africa only.

The opportunity for student activists, and the nightmare universities will struggle to manage in coming years even without the Gaza war, is built-into those policies. After all, it is difficult to look at the social, economic and political system enforced by Israel’s occupation army, particularly in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and argue with a straight face that it cannot accurately be described as “apartheid”.

The only effective means of doing so would be to claim that this is a temporary military occupation to be resolved by forthcoming negotiations. But given that it has been ongoing since 1967, and that the policy of the current Israeli government is to eventually annex large chunks of the West Bank and never allow the establishment of a Palestinian state, that claim of a “temporary” status is intellectually, factually and legally baseless.

That could all change if Israel suddenly recognises the Palestinian right to a state and enters into a process to eventually create one. But that would be a total repudiation of the stated policies of the current government, and unlikely to be embraced by any viable alternative coalition

Students may find themselves on rock solid ground in coming years in asking why their universities persist with investments in such a system, or companies with any sort of presence in, or business with, the Israeli settlement project in the West Bank. The pro-Israel and right-wing backlash will be hysterical and reflective of great power, but counterarguments at the universities themselves will be factually hamstrung and intellectually weak.

The rhetoric of the anti-Gaza war protests has been shaped and informed almost entirely by the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, and these protests in turn have galvanised and breathed new life into the BDS project on American universities.

But BDS proponents will be on much shakier ground whenever it insists on breaking ties with Israeli universities and especially refusing to deal with Jewish Israeli faculty. Suddenly, they will find, the moral and intellectual equation flips against them, as they will be painting with far too broad a brush and playing into the hands of those would accuse them of anti-Semitism.

But, especially insofar as they avoid academic and intellectual boycotts and stick to divestment from Israel, and especially anything to do with the occupation and settlements, this coming student movement should prove enduring and potent. It has been operating on the margins of US campuses for the past two decades, meeting with limited success among student structures but virtually none institutionally.

The main legacy of the current organising against the Gaza war is very likely to be a greatly empowered campus divestment movement regarding Israel that, despite pressure from the same pro-Israel parents, donors and politicians, university administrations will find increasingly unmanageable, effective and possibly irresistible.

Unable to ‘win’ in Gaza, Israel sets its sights elsewhere

This op-ed was published by CNN on May 2, 2024

An eerie relative calm has descended on the Middle East — Gaza obviously excluded — since a highly alarming exchange of missile, rocket and drone attacks by Israel and Iran in recent weeks. Fears of an imminent regional war have subsided, with both sides suggesting that, for now at any rate, they believe they have restored deterrence strategically and bolstered national morale enough to offset criticism from hawks and hardliners.

For the meanwhile, it appears that neither Israel nor Iran wants a direct war with each other, and both appear ready to consider the recent exchange of attacks, although not their underlying causes, resolved. It certainly helps that no one appears to have been killed in either country, and that was undoubtedly intentional, since both sides have the clear ability to inflict far more destruction and deaths in each other’s territories if that was what they wanted.

But that doesn’t mean the confrontation is over by any means. To the contrary, just as the October 7 Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel from Gaza sparked the tensions that ultimately led to the first-ever direct Iranian attacks against Israel and Israel’s retaliation against Iran, the struggle between the two powers appears set to move to the next stage and, more ominously still, the next level.

All eyes on Lebanon

The clock may be ticking for Lebanon, with a possible Israeli offensive looming in the coming weeks that would cause massive destruction in both countries and devastation to the Biden administration’s policy of conflict containment in the Middle East.

Israel was already threatening, and appeared to be preparing for, a major offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon later this spring or in the early summer, according to American administration and intelligence officials. Now, the recent exchange of direct military attacks with Iran might have sealed Lebanon’s fate, unless team Biden can restrain Israel.

It’s important here to recall how the recent Israeli–Iranian exchange of fire originated. On April 1, Israel struck an Iranian diplomatic facility in Damascus, killing a number of senior Iranian officials including Brig. Gen. Mohammad Reza Zahedi; his deputy, Gen. Haji Rahimi; and, perhaps most significantly, Brig. Gen. Hossein Amirollah, chief of staff in Syria and Lebanon for Iran’s expeditionary Quds Force.

The Israelis insisted that these senior commanders were directing efforts by Iran’s extensive network of militia groups and armed gangs in the Arab world, led by Hezbollah, in helping Hamas fend off Israel in Gaza and the group Hezbollah to prepare for the long-threatened Israeli offensive in Lebanon.

That the accusation is almost certainly correct only underscores why Tehran felt deeply wounded by the attack on its consulate in Damascus, which it considered to be on part of its own territory, given international conventions and norms regarding extraterritorial jurisdiction in diplomatic facilities in other countries.

Laying the groundwork

Washington’s overriding prime directive regarding the post-October 7 crises has been conflict containment, preventing major fighting from spreading beyond Gaza, particularly into Lebanon.

The fear is that such an expansion could easily drag in the United States and/or Iran, leading to the first regional war in modern Middle Eastern history and potential direct conflict between Washington and Tehran. There are, of course, numerous hardliners in Israel, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who have long sought US strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities and who might be tempted to escalate simply in hopes of finally realizing that perennially frustrated aspiration. 

But that wouldn’t be the main reason for an Israeli offensive in Lebanon, which wouldn’t guarantee any such eventuality. Instead, October 7 led many Israeli hardliners into a new and much more uncompromising attitude towards national security, especially regarding Iranian-sponsored groups directly on Israel’s borders.

As early as a few days after October 7, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant was pressing for a major preemptive strike against Hezbollah because the Lebanese militia constitutes Israel’s most potent immediate threat. The Biden administration made American opposition crystal clear, at least postponing any such operation.

As Israel’s forces moved south through Gaza, obliterating Hamas brigades with relative ease, its thinking relatively quickly turned north again. Hezbollah’s major threat against Israel is its massive arsenal of over 150,000 missiles and rockets, many with precision guidance, that are capable of striking anywhere in Israel and possibly overwhelming Iron Dome and other Israeli antimissile defense systems.

Acting on its post-October 7 sensitivity to border-area threats — including Hezbollah rocket attacks that have persisted since then​ — Israel evacuated about 80,000 citizens from its northern communities (a similar number of Lebanese relocated themselves from southern towns and villages), and the government began insisting that they could not return to their homes in safety and security unless Hezbollah’s elite Radwan force commandos were permanently relocated approximately 18 miles north of the border area.

However, the Radwan force, in my assessment, does not appear to be prepared for or capable of launching a meaningful, large-scale ground invasion of northern Israel, regardless of what Hezbollah says about the force. While it’s understandable for Israel to be concerned about the potential for a dangerous incursion by Radwan, the main purpose of the force is to justify Hezbollah’s maintenance of its private army — and therefore its own foreign policy — by claiming it is defending southern Lebanon and the border area from Israel. Therefore, we should be skeptical about Israel’s motivations.

Even though Hezbollah has made it clear in both word and deed since October 7 that, with Iran’s backing, it does not want a broader war with Israel under current circumstances, despite ongoing tit-for-tat attacks, the Lebanese group would not simply capitulate to a major concession of withdrawing its elite fighters from the southern regions in which the group was formed and that are its heartland.

Israel’s war hawks’ real target in Lebanon is Hezbollah’s missile, rocket and drone arsenal, which it would hope to damage and degrade while inflicting a humiliating blow against its most potent immediate foe.

Israeli leaders would also undoubtedly hope that another potential war in Lebanon would finally provide Israelis with a major victory, the “win” that has never been available in Gaza under any scenario. Hezbollah is much more of a conventional force than Hamas. Damage to its military and other capabilities would be readily quantifiable and, if the cost were tolerable, likely warmly applauded in Israel — and the country would not face the problem of any prolonged reoccupation of additional Arab territory.

In the process, Iran’s regional trump card would be severely degraded, Israeli leaders would hope. However, each time Israel has engaged Hezbollah anew, it has found the group’s capabilities far exceed its expectations, and Israelis may come to regret another avoidable adventure in Lebanon.

Biden’s worst nightmare

For the Biden administration, however, this scenario is a nightmare. One of the main purposes of the bear-hug of support from Washington to Israel in Gaza was to position the US to restrain friends as well as contain foes in the battle to prevent a catastrophic regional conflict.

After the recent exchange of bombardments with Iran, it may be down to the administration and even President Joe Biden personally to restrain the Israelis from moving forward with the threatened major offensive in Lebanon.

If this happens, a primary US goal regarding the Gaza war — conflict containment — would be shattered not by Washington’s adversaries, but ironically by its closest regional partner.