Reporters who have spent a long time covering the Middle East are rarely optimists. Indeed, the operative phrase has been that “it can always get worse.”
In the aftermath of Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, things have gotten much, much worse.
The civilian death tolls in Israel and Gaza surpass anything seen in the region since the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in the early 2000s, the Assad regime’s slaughter of its own citizens following a 2011 uprising in Syria, or the various atrocities committed during the 1975-1989 Lebanese civil war.
In terms of Palestinians killed, the deaths in Gaza, including those at hospitals and schools, already exceeds 4,000, according to the Palestinian health ministry. That is four times those killed or unaccounted for in the massacre at the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut 41 years ago by Lebanese Christians as Israeli soldiers stood by.
Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 to empower the Christians and destroy the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) – at the time, Israel’s bête-noire. Instead, Israel wound up facing a far bigger menace in the form of Hezbollah, the pre-eminent regional partner of Iran, as well as a string of militant groups that now threaten Israel more severely than the PLO ever did.
Israel cannot eliminate or even contain its enemies long-term without finally addressing Palestinian grievances and the desire for dignity and sovereignty. Now is the time to begin to plan for the end of this war, and hopefully shorten that conflict by announcing those plans as soon as possible.
Both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia have been turbocharged by the grievous images emanating from the Middle East. The longer the conflict continues, the greater the threat will be to Israel and to U.S. interests in the region and the world at large. Already, the conflict shows signs of spreading to Israel’s northern border and the U.S. military in Iraq has come under drone attack from Iran-backed groups.
President Joe Biden has given several speeches in support of Israel and even flew to the country for a day. His close embrace of Israel following the Oct. 7 attacks met a need of Israelis – and many Jews worldwide – for comfort and solidarity. But as the death toll rises in Gaza – and Arab and Muslim populations rise in anger at both Israel and the U.S. – Washington needs to do more than provide humanitarian assistance to Gazans and more military aid to Israel.
Last April, marking the 75th anniversary of Israeli independence, this analyst praised Israel for its accomplishments but also urged the United States, “given its long relationship with Israel and the Palestinians… to flex its leverage and go beyond platitudes and quiet admonitions [when it comes to Israeli actions that undermine the prospects for peace]. Otherwise, violence will escalate, and the U.S. ‘pivot’ to Asia will become even less tenable.”
No one – outside a few leaders of Hamas – knew what form that violence would take. But the notion that Israel, the U.S., and Arab leaders could create a more stable Middle East through the so-called Abraham Accords, normalizing relations between Israel and Arab states while providing only a few minor concessions to the Palestinians, was flawed from the start.
The Biden administration tried to build on this shaky foundation left by its predecessor, which besides negotiating for Israeli diplomatic recognition from the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco, handed Israel multiple gifts without demanding anything in return. The Donald Trump administration moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, violating decades of insistence that Jerusalem’s status should be resolved in peace talks with the Palestinians. Trump recognized the Israeli annexation of the Golan Heights, seized from Syria in the 1967 war, kicked out a Palestinian office in Washington, and closed a U.S. diplomatic office in Jerusalem that addressed the needs of dual Palestinian-U.S. citizens and grievances by the Palestinian population at large. Had Israel announced that it was annexing the West Bank, Trump would likely have given it his blessing.
Biden did not reverse the embassy move or reopen the Jerusalem consulate. His administration did restore funding for the U.N. agency that provides aid to Palestinian refugees and their descendants. But there has been no effort to condition the $4 billion annual U.S. military aid to Israel on stopping the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank that encroach on the freedom of movement of Palestinian residents and increasingly make a Palestinian state untenable. U.S. criticism of Israeli actions, including an increase in anti-Palestinian violence by settlers, has been tepid and formulaic while Washington’s diplomatic energy has gone into trying to convince Saudi Arabia to join the Abraham Accords and normalize relations with Israel.
That effort now appears moribund as even Saudi leader Mohammad bin Salman dares not ignore the newly restoked pro-Palestinian sentiments of his population. Other autocratic pro-Western Arab leaders have also had to bow to their streets, canceling a summit with Biden and permitting rare protest demonstrations.
The U.S. focus, apart from consoling Israel, has been to try to deter a widening of the conflict. The Biden administration has sent two aircraft carrier groups to the Mediterranean. President Biden, when asked in an interview with CBS’s Sixty Minutes what he would say to Iran and others possibly looking to expand and escalate the war, answered simply “Don’t.”
But as the saying goes, you can’t beat something with nothing.
Diplomats and conflict resolution experts who care about the Middle East writ large must begin to think about what comes next in terms of repairing and governing Gaza and addressing the legitimate concerns of millions of Palestinians in that enclave, on the West Bank, and in Israeli proper. The U.S. should also tell Israel that its pounding of Gaza cannot go on much longer.
Israel has tried repeatedly to eliminate its enemies but wound up with more lethal foes. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a particularly poor record as someone who has frustrated previous peace efforts and facilitated settler expansion. His actions since returning to power in a third term late last year have divided Israeli society and left it more vulnerable to this grievous surprise attack. Israel, too, needs new leadership capable of planning a future that gives hope and security to all the people under its rule.
Barbara Slavin is a Distinguished Fellow at the Stimson Center. She tweets @barbaraslavin1.
The Gaza War Will Not Solve the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
By Barbara Slavin
Middle East & North Africa
Reporters who have spent a long time covering the Middle East are rarely optimists. Indeed, the operative phrase has been that “it can always get worse.”
In the aftermath of Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, things have gotten much, much worse.
The civilian death tolls in Israel and Gaza surpass anything seen in the region since the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in the early 2000s, the Assad regime’s slaughter of its own citizens following a 2011 uprising in Syria, or the various atrocities committed during the 1975-1989 Lebanese civil war.
In terms of Palestinians killed, the deaths in Gaza, including those at hospitals and schools, already exceeds 4,000, according to the Palestinian health ministry. That is four times those killed or unaccounted for in the massacre at the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut 41 years ago by Lebanese Christians as Israeli soldiers stood by.
Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 to empower the Christians and destroy the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) – at the time, Israel’s bête-noire. Instead, Israel wound up facing a far bigger menace in the form of Hezbollah, the pre-eminent regional partner of Iran, as well as a string of militant groups that now threaten Israel more severely than the PLO ever did.
Israel cannot eliminate or even contain its enemies long-term without finally addressing Palestinian grievances and the desire for dignity and sovereignty. Now is the time to begin to plan for the end of this war, and hopefully shorten that conflict by announcing those plans as soon as possible.
Both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia have been turbocharged by the grievous images emanating from the Middle East. The longer the conflict continues, the greater the threat will be to Israel and to U.S. interests in the region and the world at large. Already, the conflict shows signs of spreading to Israel’s northern border and the U.S. military in Iraq has come under drone attack from Iran-backed groups.
President Joe Biden has given several speeches in support of Israel and even flew to the country for a day. His close embrace of Israel following the Oct. 7 attacks met a need of Israelis – and many Jews worldwide – for comfort and solidarity. But as the death toll rises in Gaza – and Arab and Muslim populations rise in anger at both Israel and the U.S. – Washington needs to do more than provide humanitarian assistance to Gazans and more military aid to Israel.
Last April, marking the 75th anniversary of Israeli independence, this analyst praised Israel for its accomplishments but also urged the United States, “given its long relationship with Israel and the Palestinians… to flex its leverage and go beyond platitudes and quiet admonitions [when it comes to Israeli actions that undermine the prospects for peace]. Otherwise, violence will escalate, and the U.S. ‘pivot’ to Asia will become even less tenable.”
No one – outside a few leaders of Hamas – knew what form that violence would take. But the notion that Israel, the U.S., and Arab leaders could create a more stable Middle East through the so-called Abraham Accords, normalizing relations between Israel and Arab states while providing only a few minor concessions to the Palestinians, was flawed from the start.
The Biden administration tried to build on this shaky foundation left by its predecessor, which besides negotiating for Israeli diplomatic recognition from the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco, handed Israel multiple gifts without demanding anything in return. The Donald Trump administration moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, violating decades of insistence that Jerusalem’s status should be resolved in peace talks with the Palestinians. Trump recognized the Israeli annexation of the Golan Heights, seized from Syria in the 1967 war, kicked out a Palestinian office in Washington, and closed a U.S. diplomatic office in Jerusalem that addressed the needs of dual Palestinian-U.S. citizens and grievances by the Palestinian population at large. Had Israel announced that it was annexing the West Bank, Trump would likely have given it his blessing.
Biden did not reverse the embassy move or reopen the Jerusalem consulate. His administration did restore funding for the U.N. agency that provides aid to Palestinian refugees and their descendants. But there has been no effort to condition the $4 billion annual U.S. military aid to Israel on stopping the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank that encroach on the freedom of movement of Palestinian residents and increasingly make a Palestinian state untenable. U.S. criticism of Israeli actions, including an increase in anti-Palestinian violence by settlers, has been tepid and formulaic while Washington’s diplomatic energy has gone into trying to convince Saudi Arabia to join the Abraham Accords and normalize relations with Israel.
That effort now appears moribund as even Saudi leader Mohammad bin Salman dares not ignore the newly restoked pro-Palestinian sentiments of his population. Other autocratic pro-Western Arab leaders have also had to bow to their streets, canceling a summit with Biden and permitting rare protest demonstrations.
The U.S. focus, apart from consoling Israel, has been to try to deter a widening of the conflict. The Biden administration has sent two aircraft carrier groups to the Mediterranean. President Biden, when asked in an interview with CBS’s Sixty Minutes what he would say to Iran and others possibly looking to expand and escalate the war, answered simply “Don’t.”
But as the saying goes, you can’t beat something with nothing.
Diplomats and conflict resolution experts who care about the Middle East writ large must begin to think about what comes next in terms of repairing and governing Gaza and addressing the legitimate concerns of millions of Palestinians in that enclave, on the West Bank, and in Israeli proper. The U.S. should also tell Israel that its pounding of Gaza cannot go on much longer.
Israel has tried repeatedly to eliminate its enemies but wound up with more lethal foes. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a particularly poor record as someone who has frustrated previous peace efforts and facilitated settler expansion. His actions since returning to power in a third term late last year have divided Israeli society and left it more vulnerable to this grievous surprise attack. Israel, too, needs new leadership capable of planning a future that gives hope and security to all the people under its rule.
Barbara Slavin is a Distinguished Fellow at the Stimson Center. She tweets @barbaraslavin1.
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