Day: October 14, 2023
Stevenson’s army, October 14
– US & Egypt agree to temporary opening of border checkpoint.
– NYT reports what some Hamas fighters knew about their targets.
– Australia rejects indigenous referendum.
-NYT tells of Egyptian spies in DC.
-HuffPost says State limits Gaza terminology.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here, with occasional videos of my choice. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Dredging history to justify the present
Friends at the Helsinki Commission in Belgrade have sent out this:
HELSINŠKI ODBOR ZA LJUDSKA PRAVA U SRBIJI
HELSINKI COMMITTEE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS IN SERBIA
Belgrade, 11 October, 2023
Rehabilitation of Draža Mihajlović morally unacceptable
The Helsinki Committee for Human Rights strongly condemns the renewed campaign geared towards the rehabilitation and glorification of Dragoljub Draža Mihailović, a convicted war criminal and collaborator of the occupier. The opening of a private museum and the construction of a monument in Belgrade dedicated to the leader of collaboration with fascism and commander of the movement that committed genocide against the Muslim population during World War Two represents a kind of shrine, and we consider this to be another step towards accelerated fascismization of society. Many factors are responsible for these negative trends – primarily the current Government and the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, as well as the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC) and parts of the academic and cultural elite.
We must also point out that glorifying Draža Mihailović further provokes our neighbors in the region, it will inevitably increase the level of insecurity of all non-Serb nationalities in Serbia, and will have a particularly negative effect on the fragile region of Sandžak. In this context, the revisionist film about the rescuing of US pilots in World War Two – even though it, unfortunately, received the undivided support of the American Embassy – is a step backwards both in the stabilization of the region and in the democratization of Serbia.
One must not forget that troops that followed the command of Mihailović – who is being rehabilitated and turned into a hero without hindrance and with the consent of the entire society – were also responsible for serious war crimes against civilians in occupied Serbia. The Chetniks killed hundreds of civilians and peasants, and the biggest killing sites were the villages of Vranić near Belgrade and Drugovac near Valjevo. Serbia’s authorities need to explain these trends of rehabilitating fascism and glorifying war criminals and quislings to the descendants and survivors of those massacres.
It is also concerning that the rehabilitation of Draža Mihailović and an uncritical attitude towards fascism deviate from the liberal values on which modern Europe allegedly rests, values that Serbia is allegedly striving towards.
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Israel doesn’t have good options
@DanielSeidemann says: “A lone protester now I’m Tel Aviv: Bibi in exchange for the hostages.”
From what I hear on NPR this morning, the Israelis have now focused their Gaza objective to destroying the military capability of Hamas, rather than destroying Hamas altogether. That is good news, as the latter objective was unachievable. It would have required not only a massive deployment of Israeli troops but also a post-war effort to rebuild governance. Like it or not, Hamas provides health, education, social welfare, and other civilian services to the more than 2 million people who live in Gaza.
The traps
There is still however a question of whether an Israeli ground invasion of Gaza is a trap, as Hussein Ibish has argued. Hamas will have prepared carefully for that eventuality. Booby traps, small-unit resistance, organized and spontaneous protests will prolong the Israeli presence. That will provide ever greater opportunities for murder and mayhem. Israel was already stretched thin maintaining its external embargo on Gaza before the Hamas assault. Re-occupying the territory is bound to lead to a prolonged and bloody mess.
It could also lead to a wider war. There has been some exchange of fire across Israel’s northern border with Hizbollah in southern Lebanon. But the lid is still on that front. An Israeli effort to eradicate Hamas could well lead to a green light from Tehran for Hizbollah, and possibly also Iranian proxies in Syria and the Houthis in Yemen. All could launch missiles and drones against Israel from the north and south.
The Israeli government is still a problem
The Israeli army no doubt knows all this. But the Israeli government, even with the addition of a few more moderate opposition figures, is still hard right. Their constitutency will demand revenge and more. They were already blood and territory thirsty before the Hamas attack. The wave of settler violence in the last year against Palestinians on the West Bank was no accident. The Israeli government allowed it.
Hamas’ intentionally brutal and deadly assault and its taking of hostages will unhinge Jewish supremacists. They may well retaliate against West Bank Palestinians. Or even seek to drive many Gaza Palestinians into Egypt, which has agreed to partially reopen its Rafah checkpoint. Even with the best of intentions, the Israeli army is likely to make deadly mistakes in its air attacks on Gaza. But intentions are not the best.
What are the alternatives?
We can hope that the Israeli deployment of ground forces around Gaza is both preventive and intimadatory. It could incentivize Hamas into surrendering at least some of the hostages. Their number is unclear, but it may be 100 or more, which is a lot of people to hide, house, and feed. Hamas is not above offering to return some women and children, in order to gain credit with at least some in the Muslim world. Prospects for the men however are grim, as the history suggests the they may be kept for a long time.
Israel could consider a much tighter embargo on Gaza than it maintained in the past. It had allowed money, supplies, electricity, and water into Hamas-ruled Gaza. Some Gaza residents were allowed to work in Israel. Cutting those connections would amount to a siege of the civilian population, which is arguably a war crime. Even the current siege might be considered both unnecessary and disproportional to the military objective, which is to end Hamas’ military capabilities.
Israel could also try to implant in Gaza a less hostile governing capability, presumably an offshoot of the Palestinian Authority (PA) that has helped to maintain order in the West Bank. But the PA is widely discredited with the Palestinian population. It is hard to picture how it could gain traction in Gaza, where any effort to do so would likely lead to a deadly fight with the remnants of Hamas. Letting the Palestinians fight it out however might be an appealing scenario to some in Israel, even if there is a risk that Hamas might win.
Pie in the sky
Israel might conclude from recent events that its policy of denying the Palestinians a state and making their lives hard by occupying the West Bank and embargoing Gaza was the wrong approach.
It could instead decide to entrust a large portion of the West Bank to unrestricted but democratic PA rule and help the Palestinians to achieve a much higher level of security and prosperity. This would aim mto revive the Palestinian political project, as Paul Scham has suggested. Having achieved success in the West Bank, Israel could then hope to move Gaza in the same direction.
The United States is in a tough spot too
That would be hard and it won’t likely happen. Israeli politics for decades have pointed in the opposite direction. Israel under Netanyahu and his mostly likely successors is committed to a one state reality with unequal rights. Jews get full rights, Palestinians and other minorities who live in Israel proper get less. Palestinians who live in the West Bank and Gaza get little.
This reality puts the United States in a difficult spot. So far, the Biden Administration has shown no inclination to rein in Israeli behavior towards the Palestinians. But what is about to happen in Gaza could test that restraint.
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