US policy and the Hamas-Israel war at the end of the first week

“The two sides hate each other. ... And they will now hate each other even more.”

I’ve been commenting in Notes about the new Hamas-Israel war but this is my first full post here.

The war is apparently just in its beginning phase and the long-standing, highly emotional engagements of people in the US and Europe also make commenting on it in terms of US and European policies tricky.

The war polemics this past week have been heavy on the good-vs.-evil, you’re-for-us-or-against-us tone that is all too familiar. The end of the Cold War seemed in 1989-92 like a pacifist dream come true. But the window on that particular opportunity has finally closed. The US “unipolar” moment as the unchallenged hegemonic power in the world is gone, even more countries have nuclear weapons, and the international arms-control regimes that began in 1963 with Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) - a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis came incredibly close to a nuclear war - have been reduced to a seriously alarming extent.

Israel is a nuclear power, though for some arcane reason they don’t officially admit to that. Ex-Prime Minister said earlier this year, warning about the threat of what he calls a hard right political coup in Israel:

In conversations between Israelis and Western diplomatic officials, there are deep concerns raised of the possibility that if the coup in Israel succeeds, a messianic dictatorship — that possesses nuclear weapons and fanatically wishes for a confrontation with Islam centered on the Temple Mount — will be established in the heart of the Middle East.¹ [my emphasis]

Seymour Hersh published a long description of the development of that program back in 1991, The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy.

The Hamas-Israel war - that could become a much bigger one

The polemics of the first week on the Israeli side - including its foreign allies in the US and Israel - were focused heavily of stressing outrage at the unquestionably brutal and criminal massacre and kidnapping of civilian noncombatants by Hamas. There were heated arguments of striking false equivalences between the military actions of Hamas and Israel.

But William Arkin talks about the very practical ways the dynamics of ”both sides“ function in reality:

Though everyone has an agenda, the doesn’t mean that those very same people don’t struggle to understand the conflict. That’s what I think about bureaucrats, soldiers, and spies as well. Complexity is so easily brushed aside by seeing the fighting through a lens that is already established and understood. Hatred can be ignored in this process: They did that to us is the order of the day. On both sides. Because human emotions and actions are so complex to understand, particularly in situations where one is willing to give ones life, many just go to an easy place to explain, that this is just a repeat of history or that there’s some hidden hand operating behind this. ² [my emphasis]

And he continues directly:

But sometimes a duck is just a duck. The two sides hate each other. They did so before the current conflict and the current government and they will after it’s gone. Both sides. And they will now hate each other even more.

The US after the Clinton Administration essentially gave up on trying to promote any kind of peaceful solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Today things have reached the point Jimmy Carter warned about in his 2006 book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Both US political parties are now committed in practice to a policy toward the occupied territories than has nothing to do with democracy, the rule of law, or the ”rules-based international order.“

And the Biden Administration ´before this latest blowup pointedly avoided any new initiatives on the Israel-Palestine front. As Alex Kane explained last month a couple of weeks before the Hamas offensive began this month:

[A] two-part dance step—mild criticism of Netanyahu and his coalition followed by walk backs and declarations of friendship—has become the Biden administration’s go-to move since the December 2022 ascension of Israel’s extremist right-wing government, which has expanded Israeli settlements in the West Bank, elevated far-right politicians to influential ministerial posts, and advanced legislation to gut the power of Israel’s judiciary. In response to these blatant contraventions of long-standing US policy and public challenges to the bromide of “shared democratic values,” the administration has repeatedly voiced its dis­pleasure—all while continuing to stress the importance of the US–Israel alliance, to send weapons to Israel, and to shield the country from pressure at the United Nations. Aaron David Miller, a veteran former diplomat who spent more than two decades advising six secretaries of state from both parties on Israel/Palestine, said Biden is “trying to create some distance” between the administration and Netanyahu’s coalition, but is “simply not willing to impose any sort of cost” for their behavior beyond the “passive-aggressive approach” exemplified by Netanyahu’s delayed invitation [discussed in the article]. Yousef Munayyer, a scholar at the Arab Center Washington DC, pointed to the disastrous effects of this strategy: “The Israelis are committed to doing what they’re doing to Palestinians in good part because there haven’t been any negative con­sequences for it,” he said. “They’ve only been rewarded for this behavior over time—particularly in Washington.”³ [my emphasis]

And part of the gruesome irony of US policy is that the Republican Party and the Trump cult (if there is any meaningful difference between them now) follow the program demanded by anti-Semitic Christian nationalists based on a crackpot apocalyptic narrative in which all the Jews of the world will be ”gathered“ in Israel, then most of them will be slaughtered in the Battle of Armageddon, and the few surviving Jews will convert to Christianity. With the world finally rid of The Jews, Jesus can come again and dump all the Mean Libruls into Hell.

John Mearsheimer’s and Stephen Walt’s 2002 description of the Christian Zionist perspective is still valid today:

Christian Zionists oppose a two-state solution or any other form of territorial concession to the Palestinians. On the eve of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's breakthrough visit to Jerusalem in 1977, evangelical groups published advertisements in major American newspapers saying that they viewed "with grave concern any effort to carve out of the Jewish homeland another nation or political entity."90 In 1996, the Third International Christian Zionist Congress resolved that "the Land which He promised to His People is not to be partitioned . . . It would be further error for the nations to recognize a Palestinian state in any part of Eretz Israel [Greater Israel including the occupied territories]." Such ardent beliefs led the Christian Right leader (and former GOP presidential hopeful) Pat Robertson to suggest that the stroke suffered by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in January 2006 was divine retribution for Sharon's decision to withdraw from the Gaza Strip. In Robertson's words, "He was dividing God's land and I would say woe unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the [European Union], the United Nations, or the United States of America . . . God says, 'this land belongs to me. You better leave it alone.'" Robertson later apologized for his "inappropriate and insensitive" remarks, but they offer a revealing insight into how some Christian evangelicals justify a greater Israel. [my emphasis]⁴

The authoritarian theocrats in Israel like Netanyahu (though he himself is said to be not especially religious) have been successful in leveraging these American Christian nationalists to keep the US government backing even their most brutal and self-destructive policies.

But how policies based on this fanatical ideology furthers any legitimate US national interest is not at all clear.

How any ”two-state“ solution could work now is also very hard to imagine. Israel and Palestine seem to be in the place Carter described back then, except that now the kind of two-state solution he still considered possible in 2006 looks even less feasible than ever.

Israel seems to have reached the point where they can be a multiethnic democracy or a Jewish apartheid state with chronically brutal and discriminatory policy towards the Palestinians. In the Democracy vs. Autocracy binary, Netanyahu and the theocratic/ethno-nationalist hardliners can only go in the latter direction.

As things stood in 2006, Carter didn’t see this as an option that would be acceptable to Israel, describing it as follows. He was examining plausible diplomatic strategies that could bring peace. But already then it was difficult enough that even describing the option sounded pessimistic:

A forcible annexation of Palestine and its legal absorption into Israel, which could give large numbers of non-Jewish citizens the right to vote and live as equals under the law. This would directly violate international standards and tl1e Camp David Accords, which are the basis for peace with Egypt. At the same time, non-Jewish citizens would make up a powerful swing vote if other Israelis were divided and would ultimately constitute an outright majority in the new Greater Israel. Israel would be further isolated and condemned by the international community, with no remaining chance to end hostilities with any appreciable part of the Arab world.⁵ [my emphasis]

It’s worth noting that what I called “a multiethnic democracy” was at least in theory the goal of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) that is now the official government of the occupied West Bank now:

The more radical factions have remained steadfast in their goals of the destruction of Israel and its replacement with a secular state in which Muslims, Jews, and Christians would, ostensibly, participate as equals. Moderate factions within the PLO, however, have proved willing to accept a negotiated settlement with Israel that would yield a Palestinian state, which at times has led to internecine violence [among PLO factions]. ⁶ [my emphasis]

Even in a genuinely peaceful version that’s very hard to imagine at the moment, a “secular democratic state” in what is now Israel and the occupied West Bank and Gaza would mean that Israel would cease to be a Jewish state as such. And, as Carter noted in 2006, Jews would become a minority within it based on demographic growth projections.

Given the pronounced authoritarian trend under Netanyahu’s recent years in office as Prime Minister, such a solution seems further away than ever. But in practical terms, absent a genuine permanent peace settlement, the cycles of violence will continue. As William Arkin says, “The two sides hate each other. ... And they will now hate each other even more.”

That one of those sides is disturbingly far down the road to becoming "a messianic dictatorship" which "possesses nuclear weapons and fanatically wishes for a confrontation with Islam centered on the Temple Mount" is a particular cause for concern.

Let’s just say that the hopeful vision in this 2002 song of Steve Earle’s, apparently prompted by the 2002 Israeli Operation Defensive Shield in the West Bank and Gaza, still looks to be a long way off:

And I believe that on that day all the children of Abraham
Will lay down their swords forever in Jerusalem

A long way off from this moment.

The performance here with Jackson Browne and Emmylou Harris⁷ is from 2022:

1. Worst-kept secret? In tweet, ex-PM Barak seems to confirm Israel has nuclear weapons. Times of Israel 04/04/2023. <https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-tweet-ex-pm-barak-seems-to-confirm-israel-has-nuclear-weapons/> (Accessed: 2023-14-10).

2. Arkin, William (2023): The war in Israel is already lost. Bill's Black Box of Government Secrets (Substack) 10/10/2023. (Accessed: 2023-13-10).

3. Kane, Alex (2023): “Biden’s Legacy Will Be Apartheid”. Jewish Currents 09/20/2023. <https://jewishcurrents.org/bidens-legacy-will-be-apartheid> (Accessed: 2023-13-10).

4. Mearsheimer, John and Walt, Stephen (2002): The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, 134-135. New York: Farrar, Straus and Gieroux.

5. Carter, Jimmy (2006): Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, 214-215. New York: Simon & Schuster.

6. Editors (2023): Palestine Liberation Organization. Britannica Online 10/12/2023. <https://www.britannica.com/topic/Palestine-Liberation-Organization> (Accessed: 2023-13-10).

7. Steve Earle & Jackson Browne, Jerusalem (live), San Francisco, September 29, 2022. Tim Bracken YouTube channel 10/01/2022. (Accessed: 2023-13-10).