This is the fifth war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza over the last 15 years. Israel controls air, land and sea access to the strip. Israeli intelligence is supposed to have an extensive network of informants in Gaza. So what happened? We will need time to reach a full assessment, but it does appear the Netanyahu government was so focused on judicial overhaul at home and a Saudi deal abroad that it ignored the possibility of an upheaval in Gaza — despite allegedly receiving a warning from Egypt.
Hebrew University professor Dmitry Shumsky writes more provocatively that, for years, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “developed and advanced a destructive, warped political doctrine that held that strengthening Hamas at the expense of the Palestinian Authority would be good for Israel.” This approach divided the Palestinians, undermined the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and made it easy for Netanyahu to claim there was no path to a Palestinian state.
Shumsky cites a Jerusalem Post report that at a Likud party meeting in 2019, Netanyahu made clear that he supported the money the Qatari government was sending to Hamas. That way, the prime minister is reported to have said, Israel would foil the establishment of a Palestinian state. Tal Schneider, Times of Israel correspondent, references the same meeting and also notes that, “Most of the time, Israeli policy was to treat the Palestinian Authority as a burden and Hamas as an asset,” as Israel’s current finance minister once asserted.
The Netanyahu government was pursuing a policy premised on the notion that it could ignore the Palestinian issue and make a deal directly with the Gulf Arabs, who were increasingly nervous about Iran’s rise in the region and eager to tie up with Israel’s booming technology-driven economy. The assumptions behind that strategy exploded last week.
But there is a broader backdrop to last week’s terrorist attack. For the past two decades, the Middle East has been shaped by Washington’s actions — above all by the Iraq War and the subsequent withdrawal of U.S. power. The war upset the delicate balance between Iran and the Arabs, and Shiites and Sunnis. When the United States toppled Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-dominated government in Baghdad, Iran gained unprecedented influence in Iraq (which is majority Shiite.) Then began the U.S. retreat from the Middle East, which left a vacuum into which many players entered — Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Israel — each trying to promote its own interests.
We think of the world as having been reasonably stable for these past two decades until Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. But that is not true of the Middle East, where the past two decades have been particularly bloody. Hundreds of thousands died in Iraq. Then came the Syrian civil war, which displaced more than 14 million people and killed still more hundreds of thousands. That was followed by a war in Yemen, which quickly became the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. And in all of these crises and conflicts, regional players have picked sides, trying to maximize their advantages and bleed their foes.
We are seeing a global contest between the forces of order and disorder. Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas are trying to erode the international system. If Hamas succeeds, it will encourage others — Hezbollah, the Houthis — to flex their muscles as well.
Defeating Hamas is a daunting challenge. That terrorist group is hoping for a massive Israeli overreaction that produces thousands of civilian casualties and bogs down Israeli troops. Hamas is also hoping for the collapse of any possible deal with Saudi Arabia. The more brutal Israel’s response, the more likely it is the deal will collapse. Israel’s goal should be to respond to Hamas and deal with the Palestinian issue in a way that still allows for the resumption of negotiations on Saudi normalization. That is the strategic prize. The establishment of normal relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia would be the severest setback for Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran.
One lesson is clear: The United States cannot walk away from the Middle East entirely. It can forswear military interventions, and it can recognize the centrality of Asia, but it needs to remain politically and diplomatically active in the region. U.S. engagement is a stabilizing force in the world. For those unconvinced, look at the emerging post-American Middle East.
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