The deepening Middle East crisis

What will happen after peace of some sort comes to Gaza? Several analysts asking this question have gone back to history and cited Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. The American president told the British prime minister that the war the two countries were fighting against Germany, Italy and Japan “does not mean the destruction of the populations of Germany, Italy or Japan but it does mean the destruction of [their] philosophies...based on conquest and subjugation.” Benjamin Netanyahu finds himself at a similar moment. He has demanded the unconditional surrender of Hamas, the group he refers to as terrorists and would like to see the end of its control of the Gaza Strip. “We will crush the enemy,” he has promised his people. Reflecting on the lessons taught by history and the way the situation in the Middle East was developing, The Washington Post columnist David Ignatius wrote that if the Israeli leader “conducts a war that punishes Palestinian civilians, rather than Hamas, he might lose global support and undermine his mission”. He noted the enormous change that was occurring before Hamas struck Israel. That was the “growing willingness of Saudi Arabia, the dominant Arab power, to form an open partnership with Israel — so long as Israel seeks a lasting peace with the Palestinians”. This Netanyahu seems not to want.

History shows that conflicts lead to peace in the Middle East. The 1973 Yom Kippur when Israel was attacked by the militaries of Egypt and Syria. The war led to the journey made by then Egyptian president Anwar Saadat to Jerusalem. And then to Oslo, the capital of Norway. The 1993 Oslo agreement followed the carnage of the first Intifada and led Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to agree to the creation the Palestinian Authority. Martin Indyk who advised both Presidents Bill Clinton and Barak Obama on the Middle East believes that Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman, or MBS, might lead the effort to bring about lasting peace by inviting Netanyahu and Palestinian leaders to Riyadh for a peace summit. In his conversations with knowledgeable people, Ignatius was told that MBS was ready for a transformative policy unless Israel pursues a reckless war that shatters any chance for reconciliation.

“We have an opportunity that we haven’t seen in 20 years to create something different,” said Abdulrahman al-Rashed, a Saudi columnist and chairman of the editorial board of Al Arabiya, Saudi Kingdom’s flagship television network. He elaborated on how change might evolve: “We have a frame in the Palestinian Authority (PA) which was created by the Oslo Accords. It has legal institutions. The United States, the European Union and the League all recognize the PA.” Ignatius talked to several important players to develop his thinking about the post-conflict Gaza and the West Bank.

“The Palestinian Authority needs to be restructured. It needs young, dynamic leadership. I believe Saudi Arabia and MBS would support that,” said Ali Shihhabi, a prominent adviser of MBS. But he also warned: “If the Israelis want a Palestine partner that can create a peaceful solution, then they have to empower that partner.” In his conversation with Ignatius, he cited an Arab proverb: the mistake of a smart person is equivalent to the mistakes of 100 idiots. The Israeli leadership must not make mistakes in dealing with the developing situation.

A day after his return from Israel, President Joe Biden spoke to the American nation in a brief, 15-minute address delivered from the Oval Office in the White House. The speech was aimed not only at the American audience; its audience, no doubt was the world citizenry. “Hamas and Putin represent different threats, but they share this in common: They both want to completely annihilate a neighboring democracy,” Biden said in his speech. “American leadership is what holds the world together,” he added. “American values are what make us a partner that other nations want to work with. To put all that at risk if we walk away from Ukraine, if we turn our backs on Israel, it’s not just worth it.”

Terrorism resulting in mass deaths has become a common expression of unhappiness with current affairs. Most of the killings have resulted in Muslim deaths executed by Muslims. “By April 2008 suicide attacks had killed more than ten thousand Iraqis,” wrote terrorism analyst Peter Bergen. “And more suicide attacks were conducted in Iraq between 2003 and 2007 than had taken place in every other country of the world combined since 1981.”

The Biden trip was part of the American effort not to have the Israel-Hamas conflict spread to other countries. Mass killings on October 17 in a hospital in Gaza where hundreds of Gaza citizens, most of them children, had taken refuge worsened the situation. Hamas blamed Israel for the attack while the Israelis claimed that a rocket fired by the Palestinian militants had misfired. Protesters took to the streets in the West Bank, marched to the US Embassy in Beirut and converged on the Israeli diplomatic missions in Turkey and Jordan blaming the strike on Israel.

There was fear that Iran might join the fight. Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian warned that Iran’s militia allies in the “resistance front” could take what he called “preemptive action” to deter an Israeli offensive. As Liz Sly wrote in The Washington Post, “over the past decade, Iran has built up a formidable array of militias and proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen in addition to Hamas, and all or any of them could be called on to open up new fronts.” Anticipating some involvement of Iran, the United States has positioned two aircraft carrier groups in the Eastern Mediterranean. If this starts going bad, it could go bad in a lot of places simultaneously and very quickly,” said Jon Alterman, a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think-tank based in Washington.

The biggest concern was the well-trained and well-equipped Hezbollah movement in Lebanon. The group is estimated to have amassed between 130,000 and 150,000 rockets and missiles some of which could reach deep into Israel. “A full-scale war with Lebanon would turn Gaza into a slideshow,” said Firas Maksad, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington. But Israel could also inflict heavy damage on Lebanon as it did in the 2006 war and the 1982 invasion of the country. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu warned Lebanon that “the price you will pay will be heavier than in any previous war.”

Published in The Express Tribune, October 30^th, 2023.

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