Tag Archives: #Israel

Netanyahu fighting Biden’s plan to end the war bodes ill for the ‘special relationship’

This op-ed was published by The National on June 5, 2024

In a dramatic news conference last week, US President Joe Biden outlined “an Israeli peace proposal” to end the war in Gaza. But the speech didn’t add up.

The plea for acceptance of the “Israeli peace proposal” was, bizarrely, aimed mainly at Israelis. As he spoke, it became apparent the proposal was not Israeli, but his own, albeit marketed by Mr. Biden as “Israeli” to pressure its government to agree to what he was craftily branding as its own idea.

Mr. Biden appealed to ordinary and elite Israelis for help. “I know there are those in Israel who will not agree with this plan and will call for the war to continue indefinitely,” Mr. Biden stated, adding that “some are even in the government coalition”. This invited casual observers to assume he was referring to Jewish supremacists such as Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

“The people of Israel should know they can make this offer without any further risk to their own security,” with the operative word being “can”. In effect, he means that Israelis could and should “make this offer”, although they haven’t.

Anyone reading between the lines could immediately see that Mr. Biden was attempting to enlist the support of the Israeli public, particularly the huge percentage that favors a negotiated agreement with Hamas to retrieve hostages over an indefinite continuation of the quixotic and even absurd effort to secure the complete destruction of that organization.

He was also attempting to give Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu every opportunity of siding with Washington, at least in public, and blame any categorical opposition on his radical cabinet colleagues. Mr. Netanyahu, however, declined to co-operate.

His public responses, which stressed that the war must continue until an undefined and unachievable “defeat” of Hamas, amounted to an obvious and categorical “no” to what Mr. Biden had presented as an Israeli proposal. Mr. Biden’s plan envisages three loosely defined phases, leading from a phase 1 ceasefire and mutual release of captives to a phase 2 permanent cessation of hostilities followed by a phase 3 reconstruction in Gaza and establishment of a new post-conflict order there, which he did not describe.

Mr. Biden also said that if talks over phase 2 had not concluded in the six weeks allotted for phase 1 negotiations over phase 2, talks and the ceasefire would continue as long as all parties were abiding by phase 1 commitments. Neither side, therefore, would be able to simply pocket the gains from phase 1 and reinitiate conflict, willy-nilly, because they’re not interested in phase 2, most notably permanent cessation of hostilities, meaning an end to the war under the conditions that effectively exist whenever such an agreement is reached.

By insisting that the war must continue until additional unspecified, undefined and probably undefinable military and political goals are achieved, Mr. Netanyahu was categorically rejecting the logic of the three-phase plan and the American position that the goal is to permanently stop the fighting.

Mr. Biden concluded his remarks by bluntly saying, “it’s time for this war to end and for the day after to begin”. Mr. Netanyahu’s response was unmistakable, albeit slightly less explicit, amounting to “this is no time for this war to end”. He didn’t put it that way, but by insisting that Israel has a good deal more fighting to do and leaving the scope, aim and timetable of additional hostilities completely undefined, he only added to the impression that he would prefer to see this war go on, perhaps, as Mr. Biden said, indefinitely.

Hamas leaders understood this dichotomy immediately, and played on it, saying that they would accept the proposal as long as Israel “agreed to end the war”. Their intention is obvious: to exploit and exacerbate the split between Mr. Biden and Mr. Netanyahu and, indeed, between the US and Israel in general, over the continuation and purpose of the war. However, Hamas leaders in Gaza almost certainly also want the war, which they apparently believe is going according to plan, to continue indefinitely. The insurgency and “permanent state of war” they intended all along has already begun in Gaza city and elsewhere, after all.

Mr. Netanyahu tried to manage the latest crisis with Washington caused by his intransigence by saying he is open to phase 1, which includes a 42-day pause in fighting in exchange for return of many remaining hostages. But he insisted that Mr. Biden had not presented “the whole picture” in his speech. Once again, however, it was clear that he did not embrace the logic of Mr. Biden’s three-phase plan or his goal of securing an end to the war.

Mr. Netanyahu not only effectively rejected Mr. Biden’s proposal, he also batted aside the opportunity to blame his extremist coalition partners for the Israeli refusal to co-operate, welcoming the opportunity to play that role himself. However, Mr. Smotrich and Mr. Ben-Gvir refused to allow him to monopolize Israeli hawkishness, threatening to leave and bring down the government if it ever agreed to what both of them separately described as a “surrender”.

Mr. Biden and his administration will continue to pressure Mr. Netanyahu, the entire Israeli leadership and even the Israeli public to get behind this proposal that he unconvincingly claims was their own offer, but his chances look decidedly slim.

Mr. Netanyahu has clearly decided that the best way to stay out of prison, given that he is facing serious corruption charges in an ongoing trial, is to stay in office, and the best way to remain in power is to continue the war into the foreseeable future. Mr. Biden implied as much in a recent interview with TIME magazine. And Mr. Netanyahu is unlikely to risk losing his coalition and face incarceration just to please Washington.

The rift between the Israeli government and Mr. Biden, and indeed between Israel and the US, over Gaza – not to mention a possible invasion of Lebanon and the necessity of creating a Palestinian state – appears to be widening at every phase.

This is not, as I’ve noted on these pages before, an ordinary rift in the US-Israeli partnership. It has, instead, all the makings of the beginning of the end of the “special relationship” that has existed between the two countries since the late 1960s. And, as things stand, it’s only likely to get worse over time.

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.

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.

By cracking down on the Gaza protests, US universities are betraying their core mission

This op-ed was published by The National on April 24, 2024

Free speech at American universities is enduring one of its most severe stress tests in decades. Israel’s war of vengeance in Gaza, precipitated by the October 7 killing spree by Hamas-led militants from Gaza, has riveted and appalled the world, even eclipsing the perhaps historically more significant Russian assault on Ukraine.

Huge coalitions of US students have united against Israel’s rampage that has targeted not just Hamas but Gaza society generally, damaged or destroyed the vast majority of buildings, and killed at least 35,000 Palestinians, mainly civilians. The slaughter has been shocking, even given the vicious savagery of the October 7 attack.

Since the end of South African apartheid, Palestine has been the most likely focal point of US student international social justice outrage. This movement was predictable and predicted. Yet pro-Israel constituencies appear taken aback by outrage at the butchery in Gaza and sympathy for Palestinians roiling American campuses, particularly at elite schools. Not since the Vietnam War have university leaders looked this discombobulated, unable to placate any faction or to credibly and creditably defend their institutions from such intense internal and external pressure.

Turmoil over Gaza has already contributed to the downfall of several major university presidents. Others, most recently the Egyptian-American president of Columbia, Minouche Shafik, have committed extraordinary miscalculations. Following several other elite university leaders, she was recently grilled by a highly aggressive Republican congressional committee, and told to take tougher action against pro-Palestinian protesters, particularly by Representative Elise Stefanik who is angling to be Donald Trump’s running mate in the coming election.

 

Ms Shafik tried to placate the right-wingers by labelling phrases such as “from the river to the sea” and even just the word “intifada” as “incredibly hurtful”, without any additional context. Upon returning to campus, she ordered police to arrest more than 100 students encamped on a campus lawn. Even the authorities appeared uneasy at the operation, with New York Police Department Chief John Chell noting that “the students that were arrested were peaceful, offered no resistance whatsoever, and were saying what they wanted to say in a peaceful manner”.

This unnecessary and chilling crackdown had the inevitable effect of galvanising student protests at Columbia and elsewhere. Ms Shafik is now predictably squeezed between demands for her resignation from dissatisfied pro-Israel Democratic and Republican legislators and a pro-free-speech censure motion filed by outraged faculty in the University Senate.

University leaders find themselves trapped between two competing and crucial values: upholding the protesters’ right of free speech while simultaneously protecting a sense of safety and security for pro-Israel Jewish students.

While the protests have been almost entirely nonviolent, instances of harassment and speech that either is, or is interpreted as, hateful have left many Jewish students – like their Arab and Muslim counterparts, some of whom have even been shot – feeling shaken and unsafe. Both are left wondering if they are truly welcome at their own schools.

Meanwhile, the demonstrators are being systematically and unfairly painted as all or mostly followers of Hamas, proponents of terrorism, and violent anti-Semites. They are being generally conflated with the worst elements of the far left that have, of course, seized a golden opportunity of outbidding everyone with extremist rhetoric that dominates media attention and trying to gain control of a potent fledgling oppositional movement.

The political right, abetted by some liberals, is similarly relishing the chance to paint criticism of Israel as inherently anti-Semitic and claim that liberal-dominated universities have in recent decades created an atmosphere of casual left-wing extremism by not being more conservative. For supporters of Israel’s otherwise indefensible bloodbath in Gaza, pointing to the genuinely extreme, rhetorically violent, or effectively anti-Semitic screeds of the most radical protesters is a desperately needed means of discrediting and delegitimising vigorous opposition to the war.

Panicky universities are not just mishandling a delicate and difficult fissure. They are missing a rare and profound opportunity for academia to demonstrate its unique social role and putative worth.

Rather than arresting students en masse and denouncing them as anti-Semitic because they object to a barbaric war on top of an unjust, predatory occupation, university leaders should be embracing their institutional mission of education. Nothing is going to magically make traumas and bitter divisions evaporate. But everything necessary for universities to foster serious dialogue on a mass and highly sophisticated level is readily available.

There are countless constructive and serious scholars and advocates on both sides who are ready for such a conversation, which should most certainly include students. And the communication technology that all students, and much of society, access daily provides many excellent platforms. These forums should resonate with calm but passionate and principled voices on all sides.

While many Jewish students hear the chant “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” as an exclusionary call to get rid of Jews, surveys demonstrate that most Arab and Muslim students hear merely a call for freedom. No one is asking the demonstrators what they mean by such slogans. Instead, malign sentiments are being inferred or presumed. A dialogue is therefore urgently required. What would freedom from the river to the sea entail? Is anyone against freedom? Can everyone have it equally? Must an area be under a single sovereign or system to be free? Is this really anti-Semitism?

Rather than fostering such a novel and broad conversation, many universities are instead trying to limit speech, not just by arresting or otherwise punishing and maligning protesters, but also, as in the shocking and shameful case of the University of Southern California, silencing it outright.

USC cancelled the graduation ceremony speech by valedictorian Asna Tabassum because of her criticism of Israel, citing highly credible and numerous violent threats. This yet again confirms that extreme harassment and intimidation are coming from both sides. Worse, assuming its rationale is sincere, USC is effectively pioneering a preemptive and presumptive heckler’s veto.

Like Columbia and others, USC is charging headlong in the wrong direction. Rather than finding creative ways of tapping into a huge appetite, and the vast intellectual and other resources at hand, for serious, albeit difficult and potentially painful, dialogue – and thereby fulfilling academia’s socially indispensable educational mission – these schools are turning to suppression, marginalisation and demonisation of speech that offends some students, reactionary politicians and pro-Israel donors.

It’s a betrayal of the core mission of academia, a cowardly and short-sighted blunder, and a missed opportunity of epic and historic proportions.

 

 

Iran-Israel conflict poses an existential risk for Lebanon, unless Biden can intervene

This op-ed was published by The National on April 16, 2024

Iran’s failed attack on Israel may have sealed Lebanon’s fate. Israel undoubtedly has come out the winner in the latest exchange, having killed several key commanders who are said to have played a role in directing Iran’s regional network of Arab militias to help Hamas fight Israel in Gaza and help Hezbollah prepare for a potential Israeli attack.

Israel suffered no fatalities, few injuries and very little damage in the Iranian barrage of over 300 projectiles aimed at military facilities. The US estimates about 140 of the drones and missiles failed due to malfunctions. US forces downed most of the remaining 160 projectiles, with the UK, France, Jordan and Israel’s own Iron Dome antimissile system also involved.

Iranian chest beating – and misleading news reports depicting fires from Chile and Texas as damage in Israel – aside, Iran seems to have been effectively thwarted.

Yet Iran does not appear to have intended to cause significant damage and fatalities in its attack, despite its size. Tehran telegraphed both the timing and the nature of the attack to Arab and European diplomats close to Washington well in advance. This explains warnings to Iran from US President Joe Biden, in his now-standard diplomatic catchphrase, “don’t”. Moreover, by using mainly slow, cheap drones, Iran actually may have pulled its punch. These missiles were fairly easily, and almost completely successfully, defeated.

Yet there can be little doubt that Iran could have done a great deal of damage, had that really been its intention. Not only do the Iranians have much greater capabilities than were on display in the attack on Israel, they also held back their biggest weapon, which is Hezbollah in Lebanon and its massive arsenal of over 150,000 missiles and rockets, many with precision guidance. Hezbollah’s stockpile is, if nothing else, capable of overwhelming the Iron Dome, and would have posed a huge challenge even to the US forces that did most of the important work.

So, what did Iran think it was doing? Clearly, Tehran believed that a direct strike on Israel in retaliation for the stinging assassination of its senior operatives in Syria was necessary. But it’s likely that domestic politics and political pressure from hardliners was the main factor, rather than a desire to escalate unduly with Israel. This is reflected in the failure of the Iranian attack, which is rather predictable given its structure and handling, and the obvious alternatives Iran could have used and still holds in reserve.

It appears Iran’s leaders wanted to score a “win” in the eyes of their people, while simultaneously giving Israel every opportunity to avoid feeling compelled to launch an additional new escalation. Indeed, Israeli leaders, too, can look at the score sheet and conclude that they have achieved a massive “win” over Iran. Neither side, rationally, has a real reason to push the confrontation further.

In addition, the Iranian attack was the antithesis for Israel of October 7. Rather than a shock which took the Israeli state and military completely by surprise and overwhelmed it, at least for a couple of days, this was telegraphed in advance and was easily dealt with by existing forces, even if they involved many other countries. Besides, most Israelis think their own military did the heavy lifting against the barrage. Instead of feeling violated, vulnerable, stateless and abandoned, Israelis can now feel a new sense of security, stability, predictability and that they are under the protection of a powerful and effective government that defends them and their interests against powerful foreign attacks.

The real question is, will Israel see this latest round with Iran as a sufficient “win”? Israeli leaders have been looking for such a victory since October 7, under the rubric of “restoring deterrence” but, really, in order to restore the national morale and sense of security and stability among a traumatized Israeli society. It was obvious from the outset to many, and has surely become clear to everyone by now, that such a “win” isn’t available in Gaza.

The great danger in recent months, not just to the region but to US policy as well, has been the prospect that Israeli leaders were seeking this restorative and cathartic “win” against Hezbollah in Lebanon. The group represents the most powerful immediate threat to Israel and is a much more conventional enemy than Hamas. Such a conflict would provide the Israelis with obvious targets, quantifiable metrics of success or failure, and no quagmire of having to occupy large chunks of Arab land indefinitely. They could simply pummel the group, damage and degrade its arsenal, kill some of its leaders and commanders and attack its infrastructure in relatively short order and then declare a victory that could be clear-cut in a way that no development in Gaza could.

The greatest problem with the Iranian attack on Israel is that it could well stoke, rather than mollify, the passion among some leading Israelis, like Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, for a war in Lebanon. Such hawks can point to the Iranian missile attack and claim that Hezbollah’s arsenal represents of much deadlier and intolerably dangerous version of the what Iran ineffectively flung in their direction.

The ball is now in Israel’s court. It could retaliate significantly against Iran, escalating prospects of a regional war. It could employed much more limited, or targeted, reprisals of a kind that has characterized its grey war with Tehran in recent years. Or it can decide to deliver Iran the biggest possible strategic blow by taking on, and, it would hope, taking out, Iran’s strategic trump card: Hezbollah.

If the Israelis decide the Iranian attack justifies an offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon, it will be up to Mr. Biden, who has successfully held them back from such a folly on numerous occasions since October 7, to once again successfully restrain them. This will not come naturally or easily to Mr. Biden, even though he has made his opposition crystal clear. Nonetheless, his powers of persuasion with Israel may face their ultimate test in the coming weeks. It may be up to the US President to stop Israel from committing the most dangerous and readily avoidable escalation in recent Middle East history by yet again invading Lebanon.

Going after UNRWA is a charade the world must reject

This op-ed was published by The National on February 5, 2024

Ten days ago, Israel began circulating accusations that 12 employees of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza had involvement in the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7. This led to a crisis of indispensable, largely western, funding for this crucial humanitarian services provider for Palestinian refugees, especially in Gaza, where a large majority are refugees from what has become southern Israel.

But this latest campaign is just part of a decades-long attack on the agency by Israel, which is itself just a subset of the broader campaign to eliminate the Palestinian refugee issue by eliminating Palestinian refugees as an internationally monitored and protected group.

On January 18, UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini attended his monthly meeting with Israeli officials. He was presented with allegations that 12 of the 13,000 Palestinian employees of UNRWA in Gaza were directly linked to the October 7 attacks. The UN itself publicly revealed the claims by announcing that it had dismissed nine of the 12 accused employees (two were dead).

The news provoked a cascade of demands for UNRWA’s dissolution and defunding, particularly since it broke on the same day that the International Court of Justice issued a favorable initial finding for South Africa’s genocide case against Israel.

Israel added, without evidence, that 10 per cent of UNRWA’s Gaza workforce is linked to Hamas. That was likely intended to offset the obvious observation that if UNRWA could keep Hamas supporters or even members to a mere 12 out of 13,000 staffers in Gaza, that’s an outstanding performance. UNRWA is not a government and it has no investigative or intelligence wing that would allow it to carefully vet thousands of workers – and it routinely shares its employment rolls with Israel.

But the useful immediate distraction is part of a larger and longer campaign that is even more insidious than it initially appears. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried to paint Israeli anger as partly motivated by UNRWA-related testimony regarding Israeli abuses in Gaza cited in South Africa’s ICJ case. But even that is a relatively minor detail in Israel’s animus against UNRWA.

The real offence by the organization, for which Israel has labored mightily for decades to discredit and eliminate it, is that its very existence reflects the persistence of the Palestinian refugee problem and issue. This simultaneously points both backward to the past, to the origin of Israel’s founding, as well as forward to the future and to the need to resolve the refugee question as a key part of any agreed-upon final status arrangement. Both are utterly unacceptable to not merely the Israeli political far-right, but deeply threatening to most Jewish Israelis.

Israel never tires of complaining that UNRWA is a unique refugee agency, dedicated to one particular people, as if that were somehow unfair to Israel. But, crucially, this is because when the agency was founded in 1949, the same year as the armistice agreements that formed Israel’s de facto international borders, and Israel’s membership in the UN General Assembly, the international community was well aware that for the first and only time, it played a direct role in creating a major refugee crisis that otherwise probably would never have existed.

The UN’s predecessor organization, the League of Nations, after the First World War issued a self-contradictory mandate to Britain over Palestine. As with all the other mandates, Britain was instructed to prepare the (almost entirely Arab) population for self-government and independence without altering the local society, and simultaneously repeated verbatim Britain’s commitment to transform that society into a Jewish “homeland” as expressed in the earlier Balfour Declaration.

After the Second World War, the new UN itself had voted to partition Palestine between its overwhelming Arab majority and the Jewish settlers who were still less than 30 per cent of the population but were to receive 56 per cent of the territory.

In the subsequent war, between 1947-49, about 700,000-800,000 Palestinians, or 80 per cent of the Arabs in what became Israel, were displaced and forbidden to return. Thus, almost overnight, an Arab society vanished and was indeed replaced by a Jewish one. The creation of UNRWA was a clear recognition of the international community’s direct hand in this tragedy of the dispossession and displacement of one people to make way for another.

Many Israelis would regard all of that as the Palestinian national narrative at best, and Arab propaganda at worst. But not only is it true, but it is the truth as the rest of the world understood it at the time. Yet this history of dispossession as the indispensable foundational necessity for Israel is the subject of intense and systematic repression at home and suppression abroad. The mere existence of UNRWA threatens both.

In the present day, it isn’t merely that seeking to deny UNRWA’s relief services to the Palestinians in Gaza is part of Israel’s war of vengeance, though the agency could shut down by the end of February if funding isn’t restored. Israel has long viewed the refugee issue and the “right of return” as a potent bargaining chip, one that is on par, and often paired with, Jerusalem, and a powerful form of Palestinian leverage in negotiations and international public diplomacy.

UNRWA’s work requires it to carefully tally Palestinian refugees, providing accurate numbers and crucial legal status. Israel therefore sees the existence and work of UNRWA as the decisive obstacle to redefining the Palestinian refugees out of existence, and maintains that only those who themselves were physically displaced nearly 80 years ago deserve that status. Hence the astonishing spectacle that the country that created and refuses to resolve one of the world’s great refugee crises blames the agency that cares for those refugees, because they are and remain refugees.

It’s so simple: no refugees, no issue.

The cynical and cruel campaign against UNRWA operates at nearly every level of Israel’s relentless conflict with the Palestinians: as part of the collective war in Gaza; key to suppressing historical realities and memories dangerous to Israel’s self-serving national mythology (and, conversely, central to Palestinian mythologies); and crucial to eliminating a potent source of Palestinian leverage at the bargaining table and on the global stage.

The international community needs to see this charade for what it is and, while demanding reasonable reforms and accountability, redouble the commitment to the humanitarian services that UNRWA provides, what it stands for, and the role it must continue to play unless and until the displacement and dispossession of the 1940s is, at last, redressed.

Is US-Israel disagreement on a two-state solution unresolvable?

 

This op-ed was published by The National on January 22, 2024

Last week, the penny finally dropped between the US and Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu owned up that he’s been dissemblingfor decades, at least in English and in public, about being open to a two-state solution. He flatly ruled out any form of Palestinian statehood without offering an alternative addressing basicPalestinian human rights like citizenship. This has effectively been Israel’s consistent policy, with a few notable hiccups, since the assassination in 1995 of former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin by an Israeli extremist.

Since at least 1990 implicitly, and explicitly once George W Bush formally endorsed in 2002, Palestinian statehood has been a US foreign policy goal. Even Donald Trump framed his 2020 proposal as a two-state solution, even as it envisaged Israel annexing 30 per cent of the occupied West Bank, including the Jordan Valley, which would have rendered Palestinian statehood effectively nominal. The plan’s titular architect, Jared Kushner, now says it was only meant as “a starting point” for negotiations intended to produce much smaller annexations.

As President, Joe Biden moved quickly to repair US policy by reaffirming Washington’s commitment to a meaningful Palestinian state and opposition to annexation and settlement expansion. More recently, Mr Biden tried to use both the triangular negotiations with Saudi Arabia and Israel, and the post-October 7 crisis to put eventual Palestinian statehood back on the international and, especially, Israeli agenda.

Mr. Netanyahu’s declaration is both ideologically pure and cynically political. Israel is under significant pressure both in public and, especially, private, including from Washington and its potential normalization partner Saudi Arabia, that any day-after scenario to the Israel-Gaza war would, rationally, have to involve forming an alternative, post-Hamas Palestinian government in Gaza (albeit, perhaps, with Hamas’s acquiescence) and, more importantly, the restoration of the peace process but this time as a starting point with Israel explicitly acknowledging the Palestinian right to a state.

I’m always struck by how few people realise that Israel has not just never recognised a Palestinian state, but has never even acknowledged the Palestinian right to a state. To the contrary, all Palestinian-Israeli diplomacy to date has been based on a 1993 exchange of “letters of mutual recognition”, which kicked off the Oslo process. That quickly led to the prevailing status quo in the occupied territories, but ground to a halt as soon as Rabin was murdered.

In a letter to Rabin on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, which is universally recognised as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people diplomatically (even by Hamas), chairman Yasser Arafat recognised Israel and its right to peace and security. In reply, on behalf of Israel, prime minister Rabin recognised the PLO as a legitimate interlocutor and undertook to negotiate with it. That’s all.

Many argue Israel implicitly recognized the Palestinian right to a state throughout its negotiations with the PLO, but that is simply not true. Israel never brought itself to acknowledge this Palestinian right, and, in that tradition, Mr. Netanyahu has now categorically rejected it. The world knew that he and the Israeli right were merely pretending to be at all interested in peace while sabotaging a two-state solution diplomatically and strategically developing settlements to make it politically impossible.

His Likud party has Jewish control “from the river to the sea” – a geographical formulation routinely labelled as “genocidal” when Americans declare that “Palestine will be free” in the same area – as a key part of its founding document. At this year’s UN General Assembly, during his address Mr Netanyahu brandished a map that included all the occupied territories in “Israel”.

That’s the ideological part.

Cynically, Mr Netanyahu knows that he’s in big trouble because of the security meltdown on October 7, among other failings. So now he’s been saying, bluntly: “The world is pushing us on Palestinian statehood, even in theory. Re-elect me and I will block this forever.” He’s similarly been claiming “credit” for sabotaging the Oslo agreements, which is no idle boast.

Washington should make important aspects of bilateral relations with Israel contingent on, at a minimum, a formal Israeli declaration recognising the Palestinian right to a state

The Palestinian issue was once a marginal matter in Israeli-American relations, but recent decades have shown howfalse that istime and again. So, now, at least with Mr Netanyahu in charge, and probably almost any other plausible Israeli prime minister as well, the US and Israel are at categorical odds on a two-state solution, and therefore peace.

Mr Netanyahu’s position is simply not tenable for Washington, because – since he’s certainly not willing to offer Palestinians citizenship in Israel – he’s making it virtually impossible to rebut accusations that Israel maintains an apartheid-like political system in the occupied territories. Even in the medium term, Washington cannot be associated with that, particularly under the Democrats, including the over-35s like Mr Biden who, unlike younger liberals, are inclined to give Israel every benefit of the doubt.

Mr. Biden tried to shrug this crisis off by saying: “We’ll be able to work out something.” He tried claiming that Mr. Netanyahu might be prepared to accept a non-militarized Palestinian state, but was immediately and flatly contradicted by Mr. Netanyahu’s spokespeople.

After decades of US and Israeli leaders dancing around the issue and performing extraordinary rhetorical and logical contortions to obscure the fact that their policies on this most central of issues are totally at odds, the jig is up. In a bid to be re-elected, Mr Netanyahu has put extremism on the table and on the ballot.

Even if he loses, unless his successor flatly contradicts these proclamations – which is extremely unlikely since this really is and has long been the Israeli position – then Washington must also stop pretending. The US is either going to have to give up on peace and the Palestinians altogether, which could prove fatal to sustaining its regional leadership, or break with Israel over this dramatically.

Within the next 24 months at the latest, Washington should make important aspects of bilateral relations with Israel contingent on, at a minimum, a formal Israeli declaration recognising the Palestinian right to a state in the normative Westphalian and UN meanings, which still leaves much to be negotiated. Almost 25 years after the disastrous 2000 Camp David summit – when some Arab leaders first began questioning Washington’s post-Cold War leadership – a failure to confront Israel over peace could form part of a historic inflection point marking a potentially fatal crisis of US leadership in this vital region.

Washington must be clear that the “special relationship” is only sustainable with an Israel that’s genuinely open to peace.