Tag: United States
The cacophony is deafening but unnecessary
It is hard to make good sense of the varying perspectives on the Gaza war. Let me try to suggest they need not be so cacophonous.
Israel and the United States are diverging
The dissonance between Israel and the United States is get louder. They agree on the war objective of destroying Hamas in Gaza, whatever that means. But President Biden is pressing Israel to allow more humanitarian aid, protect civilians, ease the crackdown on the West Bank, and agree to turn over Gaza eventually to a renewed Palestinian Authority. Biden is also worrying out loud about declining international support for Israel and about the extreme nationalists in Israel’s right-wing government.
Prime Minister Netanyahu will have none of it. He wants Israel to be responsible for Gaza security after the war and to conduct a deradicalization operation, whatever that is. The Prime Minister claims Israel is already doing everything reasonable to allow humanitarian assistance and to protect civilians. He is uninterested in bringing the Palestinian Authority into Gaza and is continuing the crackdown in the West Bank. He hopes to stay in power, at least so long as the war lasts. That will make it last longer.
Arab disharmony
This is not the only disharmony evident around Gaza issues. Arab countries are anxious to signal support for a ceasefire in particular and Palestinians in general. But they in fact have done little to pressure Israel or Hamas for one. The Abrahamic accords remain in place and the Arab signatories (and possible future signatories) are not doing anything to limit Israeli economic and military capabilities. Nor is there any sign they are helping to block Hamas from resupplying.
Gaza has split the Arab world. Syria, Hizbollah-conditioned Lebanon, and Houthi-ruled parts of Yemen are trying to aggravate Israel’s challenges. Iran is supplying and cheering them on, thus prolonging the agony of the Gazas the “resistance axis” claims to support.
Others would be happy to see the destruction of Hamas, which is especially non grata in Egypt and the UAE. Those two countries loathe Islamist politics, especially the Muslim Brotherhood version from which Hamas descends. Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and even Qatar don’t want to see Hamas win and thereby seize the banner of Palestinian liberation.
Even within Israel and in the West Bank, there are conflicting Arab views. Some Palestinians within Israel came to the aid of Jews on October 7. In the West Bank, however, Hamas has gained support.
American Muslims, Christians, and Jews
Inside the United States, there is growing discomfort among the majority of Jews, who lean heavily Democratic, with Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza. That contrasts with the Christian right solid support for Israel. Liberal American Jews largely agree with American Muslims on a ceasefire and on a two-state solution. The vast majority of American Jews differ from more radical Muslims and supporters who are pro-Hamas or oppose the idea of a Jewish state.
Harmonizing
The cacophony is unnecessary. Here are a few propositions that many would support:
- Hamas has proven itself devoted to mass murder of civilians. Disempowering it is vital, though its Islamist ideology will survive.
- The current conduct of the war is not the only way to disempower Hamas and does not appear to be succeeding. It is killing a disproportionate number of civilians relative to modest military accomplishments.
- Israel should end the military attacks and hunt Hamasees responsible for the October 7 murder and mayhem individually. Many Arab states would be prepared to cooperate, quietly, in that effort.
- A massive relief operation is already needed for Gaza. The requirements will increase once the war stops. The US, Europe, the Gulf, and Israel need to prepare to meet those requirements.
- American and Israeli Muslims, Christians, and Jews should unite in supporting humanitarian assistance and reconstruction.
- Governance of Gaza after the war will be an enormous challenge. If it is not met, guys with guns, many of them former Hamas, will run local protection rackets, trade in drugs and other contraband, and continue to attack Israel when the opportunity arises.
- Chaos of that sort on Israel’s border is in no one’s interest, especially Egypt and Jordan (because of the likely infection of the West Bank) but also the Gulf.
- A clear roadmap to a two-state solution would offer a political outcome most Palestinians would find attractive and most countries, other than Iran’s proxies, could support.
- This would need to start with renewal of the Palestinian Authority, through presidential and parliamentary elections as well as convening the Palestinian Legislative Council.
- It will also require replacement of Prime Minister Netanyahu and his extreme right-wing coalition in Israel with politicians prepared to deal with the Palestinian Authority once renewed.
Not everyone will agree with these propositions. But they are a start in building a consensus among today’s dissonant voices.
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Stevenson’s army, Decemberr 15
– Former SAIS prof Mara Karlin, stepping down at DOD
– WaPo reports Chinese cyber attacks on US infrastructure
– NYT says US & Ukraine are working on a new strategy
– Economist has valuable report on Indian military, including strategy, organization, deployments, and civil-military tensions
– NBC says promised US-Chinese military hotline still hasn’t been started
– New NDAA, expected to pass this week, will allow some military program starts despite normal CR blocks
– French analyst explains internal Hamas debates–
And this from Legistorm:
Time to hand out those holiday bonuses: The average House personal office is on track to end the year with more than $360,000 left in its annual operating budget.
The average House personal office used just 61% of its office budget in the first nine months of the year, according to a LegiStorm analysis. That puts each office on pace to use 81% of its budget by the year’s end, leaving close to $363,000 unspent per office.
The personal average office ended 2022 with 10% of its budget left unspent, or more than $176,000.
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Stevenson’s army, November 30
Henry Kissinger died Wednesday, 6 months after his 100th birthday. NYT has a comprehensive obit. Fred Kaplan is more critical, drawing on declassified documents bundled by the National Security Archive.
As most of you know, Kissinger was one of my academic mentors. I TA’d in his course for two years, had weekly meetings with him. I almost went to work in his NSC — until my immediate sponsors resigned in protest because of the invasion of Cambodia.
I was disappointed that he never wrote a letter of recommendation for my academic job portfolio, but Tony Lake later told me he said he was too busy. Lake also said I was in good company. Among the other things Kissinger repeatedly didn’t have time for were relations with the UN and foreign economic policy.
– There’s a new poll showing US polarization and willingness to use political violence.
– NYT analyzes polls on US views of Israel and Palestine.
– NYT notes danger of US-Iran war.
– Paul Musgrave tells how views of war have changed.
One more point on Kissinger: while I admire many of his accomplishments and deplore others, I especially resent his way of trying to avoid responsibility by making jokes. [“The illegal we do right away; the unconstitutional takes a little longer.”]
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Friends don’t let friends commit mass murder
Let’s leave aside whether the Israeli campaign in Gaza has constituted genocide. That depends on its government’s intentions. There are genocidal implications of what some Israelis, including Prime Minister Netanyahu, have said. But we are far from the kind of evidence on intent that would be required for an indictment at the International Criminal Court. Nevermind a conviction. Let’s leave that question for after the war.
Is it worth it?
The immediate effects of the Israeli bombing are appalling. It has displaced at least half the population. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, which operates under the authority of Hamas, on the order of 15,000 people are dead. Forty per cent are said to be children. Gaza is densely populated. Half its population is under 18. So the Israelis are hitting fewer children than if they were shooting randomly, but not by all that much.
The number of Hamas fighters killed in Gaza is not known. It is likely not much more than the 1500 killed inside Israel during the counterattack October 7 and thereafter. The question is whether killing 10 or even 5 civilians for each Hamas fighter is reasonable. Proportionality between military action and result is an important criterion in the laws of war. So too is necessity. Is there no way other than what the Israelis are doing to destroy Hamas? I’ve addressed that question previously.
Next could be worse
If the fighting restarts after the current pause, we can expect worse. Much of Gaza’s civilian population has sought refuge in the south, as Israel advised. Those displaced will already be short of resources. The civilian population will be more concentrated and exposed, many living in the open rather than in buildings. Intensified bombing in the south will quickly kill more. It will also destroy much of the remaining civilian infrastructure.
Hamas will have taken refuge in its tunnels. Hitting them in the north is one of the reasons for the devastating destruction there, with perhaps half the buildings destroyed. Repeating that destruction in the south will be catastrophic.
Some Israelis hope the Gazans will flee to Egypt, which is resisting their entry. Egypt already hosts an extraordinary number of refugees. But even if Cairo opens the door, the result will be an influx into northern Sinai, which borders Israel. Extremists there are already rife. Would it really help to increase their recruiting potential and risk an assault in southern Israel?
Still worse after the fighting stops
The impact of war continues after the fighting ends. At some point, the Israelis will decide they have done enough. But that won’t end the effects of what they will have done. Disease, hunger, and radicalization will haunt the end of the Gaza war. All will be worse the longer the fighting lasts.
The international community knows how to deal with disease and hunger. It will flood Gaza with assistance of those sorts once the fighting stops, provided the Israelis permit it.
But we know little about avoiding radicalization, which even Netanyahu has acknowledged is a risk.
What is to be done?
Gaza is not going anywhere. It will remain a threat to Israel. That is a good reason not to completely alienate its population, which wasn’t fond of Hamas before October 7.
While President Biden has been jawboning the Israelis to target better and reduce civilian casualties, his diplomatic approach has not been effective. Some in Congress are suggesting imposing conditions on US aid to Israel. That proposition isn’t going to pass in either the House or the Senate. But the proposal may still boost those in Israel who think Netanyahu has gone too far. Friends don’t let friends commit mass murder.
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Stevenson’s army, November 29
– NBC sees a Biden-Obama clash on Israel policy
– WaPo reports pressure on India over attempted assassination
– FP reports the surprisingly bipartisan House committee on China, but notes it can’t report bills.
– AP says Trump would likely use US troops domestically
– The issue of US hypocrisy came up in class. Dan Drezner explains its role.
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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When too much is not enough
Now that the initial exchange of prisoners appears to have succeeded, it is time to re-evaluate the situation in Gaza.
The Israelis have gotten themselves in a fix. Pursuing their war objective of wiping out Hamas is ending too many lives and wrecking too much property. If they continue, the odds of achieving stability after the war are small. They may not, as they claim, be targetting civilians, but they are hitting a lot of them. Their military efforts do not look either necessary or proportional to the objective. Those are important conditions for lawful behavior.
Stop and try something else
Even the Israelis have no idea how Gaza will be governed after the fighting stops. Prime Minister Netanyahu says Israel will take miitary responsibility for Gaza security. He says nothing coherent beyond “deradicalization” about civilian governance. We know what that means: a new version of the open-air prison with high walls. No one should believe that will work well. President Biden has explicitly rejected that option. He wants some sort of international administration as a transition to a Palestinian Authority takeover of responsibility. That is only slightly more promising.
The time has more than come for the Israelis to stop what they are doing and try something else. This could mean an extension of the current pause, but it may not mean a formal bilateral ceasefire agreed with Hamas. It could also mean a unilateral Israeli move intended to provide an opportunity to flood Gaza with humanitarian assistance. Israeli raids against identified concentrations of Hamas fighters might continue, but without the destruction of civilians and civilian infrastructure that remains.
The alternative
There is an alternative. The Israelis waited a long time to get Adolf Eichmann. They then wisely tried him publicly and convicted him in a court of law. They need to show similar strategic patience in dealing with Hamas. It will take years to identify and track down the Hamas commanders responsible for October 7. If they are terrorists, as Netanyahu claims, the right place for them is in court. A trial would have a more salutary effect on deradicalization than the extra-judicial killing the Israelis exercised against the 1972 Munich Olympics terrorists.
Continuing the hunt for Hamas fighters in current conditions in Gaza is madness. But it helps to keep Prime Minister Netanyahu in power. Once there is a prolonged pause in the fighting, the Israeli public will have an opportunity to demand his resignation. Israelis need to hold him accountable for the intelligence and military failures of October 7, as well as the conduct of the subsequent prisoner exchange negotiations and of the war. Not until Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition allies are defrocked will it be possible for the Israeli government to begin to restore its credibility both at home and abroad.
Tone it down at home too
Meanwhile, here in the United States we also need to lower the temperature. I have participated in two events at Johns Hopkins SAIS that were peaceful and thoughtful, if occasionally spirited, discussions of Gaza. But they were open only to our international affairs students, who quite rightly adopt analytical frames even when anger and other passions motivate them. And those discussions were a couple of weeks ago, before the Israeli move on Al Shifa Hospital that appears to have produced little evidence of Israeli allegations.
In the meanwhile, things have heated up on other US campuses, including even Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore. The administration there has suspended a prominent physician for inappropriate remarks on social media. That is distressing. It used to be that most of us could encourage violence only in a limited circle of acquaintances. Now it can be done to thousands with a click on Twitter (the social media platform whose owner wants it called X and retweets anti-Semitic material).
We can hope things will cool off in the US Monday, after the Thanksiving holiday when most Americans try to be with close family and friends. It would be entirely out of keeping with the occasion to encourage hard feelings. We have a lot to be grateful for and good reason to recall those in both Israel and Palestine who have less.
Those who are saying they will never vote again for Joe Biden because of his support for Israel’s military action I hope will reconsider. Trump would take a much harder line. And for him “humanitarian” is a dirty word.
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