Tag: Israel/Palestine
Stevenson’s army, October 19
– NYT says intelligence analysis points to errant Palestinian missile in hospital attack.
– Israeli TV channel reports on SecState Blinken meeting with Israeli cabinet
– Mark Cancian assesses US ability to help arm Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan.
– Jordan failures lead to talk of McHenry
– Brookings assesses erosion of US democracy
This was yesterday’s edition:
– There’s no legal authority for US combat operations to help Israel. HFAC chairman McCaul says he’s drafting an AUMF. More from Defense News.
– US secretly sent ATACMS to Ukraine. Background on the process from Politico and from NYT.
– NYT notes that until now Netanyahu has been a reluctant warrior.
– Tom Warrick has lessons for postwar planning.
– In Atlantic, Andrew Exum warns of misconceptions about Gaza war.
– You can’t beat somebody with nobody. Now there’s an alternative to Jordan, speaker pro tem McHenry. Jordan angered the centrists, especially the appropriators.
-Eurasia Group has big survey of US views on foreign policy.
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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Stevenson’s army, October 16
– WSJ outlines Israel’s tough choices.
– WSJ says US has selected about 2000 troops for deployment to Israel.
– Audrey Kurth Cronin notes that hope isn’t a strategy, and neither is revenge.
– Suzanne Maloney says US can’t exit the Middle East
– State is looking for additional aid sources for Israel.
-NYT says US support for Ukraine may have peaked. I think that’s true.
– Pelosi has good advice for next speaker.
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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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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Stevenson’s army, October 13
– Israel demands Gazans move to south; Egypt won’t open its border.
– NYT reminds of earlier Israeli debates over Gaza.
– US & Qatar re-freeze Iranian funds.
– WSJ has details of Hamas planning.
– Reuters has authenticated some Gaza videos.
– Tuberville holds affect 12 Centcom officers.
– Scalise is out, nobody’s in. [If the GOP can’t compromise among selves, dare they compromise with Democrats?]
– Politico notes history of conservative media dominating GOP Congresses.
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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Stevenson’s army, October 12
–None for Scalise right now; no full House session set.
[ I agree with Vox article that Congress is becoming too much like a parliament.]
– US said to be working with Egypt to get humanitarian corridor for Gaza.
-NYT says intelligence shows Iran surprised by Hamas attack.
– Administration notes Trump also allowed Iran to tap frozen assets.
– Amy Zegart examines Israeli intelligence failure.
– NYT describes the tactical failures.
– CBO says US military personnel are well paid compared to civilians.
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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Appeasement is as appeasement does
It is difficult to write about the Balkans when something far more serious is happening in the Middle East, not to mention Ukraine. But Kosovo as well as Bosnia and Herzegovina still merit some attention. The European Union and the US have de facto reversed their positions and now are favoring de facto ethnic partition of both entities.
Clearer in Kosovo
This is clearer in Kosovo. The EU is insisting that Kosovo reduce its overwhelmingly Albanian police presence in the north, which on September 24 responded professionally and effectively to a terrorist attack. The threat of a repeat performance is clear and present. The EU is explicitly ignoring the attempted insurrection on September 24:
This insistence on ignoring the September 24 terrorist insurrection is difficult to fathom. But it jibes with EU insistence on the immediate formation of the Association of Serb-majority Municipalities, which Belgrade explicitly proposes be a vehicle for separate governance of Serbs in Kosovo. Hungary and the five member states that have not recognized Kosovo have become the bottom line of Europe’s position on Kosovo: no recognition and ethnic partition.
Same story in Bosnia and Herzegovina
In Bosnia, the situation is almost as bad. The West is supporting governments at both the state and entity levels that are under the control of ethnic separatists. Serb nationlist Milorad Dodik and Croat nationalist Dragan Covic are busy plotting the takeover of the Central Electoral Commission as well as the Constitutional Court. While they generally oppose the authority of the High Represenative, they naturally supported his post-electoral decisions that favored ethnic nationalists.
Dodik and Covic of course oppose implementation of several European Court of Human Rights decisions that would reverse the ethnic nationalist stranglehold on governance in Bosnia. The EU is ignoring those decisions and proceeding as if they don’t exist. The US has done nothing for years to encourage their implementation.
No priority has consequences
Why are the US and EU supporting, or at least not opposing, efforts to ethnically segregate populations in Bosnia and Kosovo? In part, the explanation is lack of horsepower. The Balkans have fallen off the priority list in Washington. It is hard to get any attention for the region. Secretary Blinken is not interested in doing any heavy lifting on Balkan issues while war rages in Ukraine as well as Israel and Gaza.
In Brussels, the main responsible officials come from Spain, Slovakia, and Hungary. Madrid and Bratislava have not recognized Kosovo. Budapest has, but its current leadership is explicitly ethnic nationalist. Prime Minister Orban is besties with Dodik and Serbian President Vucic, who can rely on his support. The EU higher ups are leaving the Balkans to people who have their own interests.
Appeasement is the policy
But there is more to it than that. Key officials in both Washington and Brussels have deluded themselves that they can attract Serbia into the West. President Vucic, they allege, is only concerned with getting a good deal for Serbs in neighboring countries. He is not serious about partitioning Kosovo or Bosnia. Buttering him up is easier and will work better than the alternative, tough love.
Labeling their current approach “appeasement” offends my colleagues at the State Department. But the US has done nothing more than a few talking points in response to Vucic’s sponsorship of the September 24 terrorist insurrection. The EU has done likewise. They are hoping the incident will give them leverage on Vucic in private but all blow over in public.
Of course that is not possible for Kosovo Albanians or for supporters to liberal democracy in Bosnia and Herzegovina. But the former lack an international backer willing to press the case for serious sanctions against Vucic. The latter lack not only international backing but also political traction in their own country.
The West has abandoned its friends. It is supporting opponents of liberal democracy in both Kosovo and Bosnia. Appeasement is as appeasement does.
#Serbia’s 33 acquis chapters, level of preparedness for membership, as assessed by the European Commission since 2015. https://esiweb.org/publications/scoreboard-true-state-accession-what-commission-assessments-reveal…
That was tweeted in response to this, from the EU Commissioner for Neighbourhood and Enlargement:
Open discussion w/ Serbian Minister of European Integration Tanja Miscevic I encourage #Serbia to continue show its dedication to deliver on outstanding rule of law issues & to ensure implementation of recent laws Our meeting confirms that Reform agenda is a top priority for Serbia.
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