Israel, Hamas, and US Policy in the Middle East

This podcast episode includes references to the Eurasia Group Foundation, now known as the Institute for Global Affairs.

Transcript:

SCHEINDLIN: There is no such thing as a frozen conflict. And if you don't change the political equation, we are going to see further rounds of violence, whatever form they take.

WAHID HANNA: I do really worry that the United States is really tied to the hip, of whatever comes next…

HANNAH: Welcome to None of the Above, a podcast of the Eurasia Group Foundation. My name is Mark Hannah.

Today marks one month since the Palestinian militant organization Hamas launched a brutal cross border terrorist attack on Southern Israel. 1400 Israelis were killed and another 240 were taken hostage. Israel has responded with an aggressive aerial bombing campaign and ground invasion of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, As of November 6th, more than 340 IDF soldiers and almost 10,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to Israel and the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry respectively.

While Israel and its allies believe there is no way to return to the pre-October 7th status quo of a Hamas governed Gaza, critics and advocates for a ceasefire fear the death and destruction that an indefinite ground invasion promises.

Archival: Digging through the rubble with bare hands. Gaza’s hospitals overwhelmed by the tide of injuries.

HANNAH: Even the United States, one of Israel’s closest allies, has called for a humanitarian pause.

Blinken: It means food, water, medicine, and other essential humanitarian assistance must be able to flow into Gaza and to the people who need it.

HANNAH: Prior to October 7th, the Biden administration’s foreign policy had largely centered on Europe and Asia. Normal relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors seemed to be all but a foregone conclusion. And the issues of Palestinian self-determination and self rule appeared to be something the administration and Israel were eager to avoid. Now, in the wake of Hamas’ attacks, Palestine’s political future and the United States’ long term strategy for the Middle East have become increasingly unclear.

Josh Paul: … and we are providing arms to Israel on a path that has not led to peace.

HANNAH: Arguably, armed conflict in Gaza alone will not address the political issues at the root of today’s violence. And without addressing those concerns, security and stability for both the Israelis and Palestinians is likely to remain elusive.

To better understand the immediate causes of the war now unfolding and evaluate Israeli and US strategic objectives, we spoke with political analyst and public opinion expert Dahlia Scheindlin. She’s based in Tel Aviv. We also spoke with US Program director of the International Crisis Group, Michael Wahid Hanna.

We spoke first to Dahlia, whose areas of expertise include public opinion polling and Israeli democracy.

How stable is public opinion in Israel right now? Is it moving in predictable ways for you as a pollster?

SCHEINDLIN: Over these first two to three weeks, public opinion has been very clear about a few things. Blaming the government, society is very substantially rallying to the support of the war effort by mobilizing to help soldiers and people who are displaced. And that is a very clear sentiment. Polls have shown rising optimism about the future of the country.

And they have all, all been very consistent about the fall of support for the government. However, I do think that we can expect significant changes in public opinion as people process the crisis. And I would not be surprised if public opinion eventually begins to settle back into some of the pre existing camps, at least such as they were before October 7th.

HANNAH: You mention support for the government before October 7th, and I think it’s important to note that even before Hamas’ attack, Netanyahu and his coalition were facing intense backlash as a result of their reforms to the judiciary. Talk to us for a minute about the crisis of legitimacy that Netanyahu has been facing domestically – you write about this quite a bit – and to what extent that is weighing on what's happening now?

SCHEINDLIN: Yeah, the crisis of legitimacy, I mean, in ways it was going on for years. You know, it's almost amazing that we can forget the political turmoil that preceded this era. You know, since 2019, Israel held five election cycles, four of which were almost completely, you know, ended in some sort of a paralysis and only by the fifth election was Netanyahu able to form something like a stable government, but it was a government that Israelis very quickly decided they hated even after having voted for them.

Now, they never achieved a significant majority. They have a majority of coalition seats, 64 out of 120. But in fact, the vote broke down basically half and half. In fact, slightly less than 50 percent who actually voted for the parties that formed the coalition because Israel has a system in which a number of parties don't actually cross the electoral threshold, but if you look at the major parties, still, they only got about 50, 50 percent plus, you know, a few percentage, a few fractions of a percentage point.

So it was already a very divided government, and the very first thing the government decided to do was unleash, was reveal a series of plans to undercut the independence of the Israeli judiciary to essentially stifle judicial independence. And that sparked a shocking social backlash among not only the regular opposition to the parties of the coalition.

And we should remember those parties include very extremist, theocratic, authoritarian, supremacist, expansionist, annexationist parties. I think those are the most accurate descriptions without trying to inject any of my own commentary because they would pretty much describe themselves in that way too.

These are, it's based on pretty explicit statements, including the coalition agreement, certainly the annexation and expansion as part of it and the primacy of Jewish people and identity over everything else in Israel. So those are fairly indisputable. Now when the government's first action was to commit itself to those plans to undermine the Israeli judiciary, it set off protests not only among people who voted for the opposition, but also pretty quickly among certain portions of the right wing and even certain people who had voted for parties in the coalition.

HANNAH: You’ve spoken elsewhere about the ways in which Israel sacrifices some of its democratic principles in the name of national security. It seems like that is a thread running through all of this. Speak to us about that - are democracy and national security in tension with each other, and vis a vis specifically Israeli control over Palestine?

SCHEINDLIN: I would say it's a tension between national security, but also it's a tension of Israel's political aims, which contradict democracy. And that's a very historic reality. And I just wrote a book about it. I can plug it for a second. My book is called The Crooked Timber of Democracy in Israel, Promise Unfulfilled. It was published on September 18th, just a few weeks before this happens. And, the basic thesis is that... Israel has, from the very beginning, chosen to avoid committing itself to the pillars of democracy, implementing many of the aspects of democracy for some of its people.

So it would be impossible to avoid the fact that Israel, you know, to ignore the fact that Israel does have some robust democratic practices and institutions, which is exactly why we saw this protest over the course of this year to save those institutions. But it was far from being something like a normal democratic country because many people could not enjoy those democratic rights and privileges, and that Israel purposely, because of its political aims and its unwillingness to state openly or commit itself to a finite political identity. Right? Israel did not want to define its borders or define the relationship between the people and the state for the people who were not citizens.

And the main check and balance that Israel has on its executive power is regular elections and the independent judiciary, and the independent judiciary was about to go, and if that had happened, elections would not have been nearly legitimately free and fair, I think, because that's the kind of interdependence between liberal rights, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and the institutions to protect those rights and the legitimacy of proper elections where people can really compete.

So that's, in a nutshell, my democratic theory, and it's hopefully not just mine. But I think that the reason why Israel doesn't have those significant anchors of democracy is because it has wanted to obfuscate its desire over the years for more territory, to expand to the full historic Mandate of Palestine. And let me point out that in Israel, it's very hard ever to find a map, and you won't find any official maps that show the green line.

The map of Israel is the whole land, you know, what they consider the whole land of Israel. You will not hear most any Israeli in government refer to the West Bank. The Israeli government calls it by the biblical names, Judea and Samaria. And this is one of the most easily kind of understood reasons why there has been a clash of political aims with democracy. The moment you don't have boundaries, and the moment you don't actually define the relationship with people who are being controlled by Israel, but who are not citizens, you avoid a constitution which would guarantee equality of all citizens. To this day Israel has no guarantee for equality of all citizens anywhere in its laws, not just in its basic laws, but in any law.

And you know that there's a political contradiction. And then, you know, you ask about national security. Of course, certainly, Israel has very historically and regularly been prepared to suspend some of the normal, civil and human rights for the sake of security. And every time we ask this in surveys, the numbers go back and forth, but for the most part, you have a majority who are willing to suspend or violate basically, or think that security should trump civil rights, human rights, and democratic norms. For Israelis, security always comes first. But I just think it's a mistake to view that as the primary challenge. Because it's a little bit like letting ourselves off the hook. Sure, it's easy to say security should sometimes cause us to suspend democratic practices. But the problem is a political problem. Israel doesn't want to commit itself to being a democracy.

HANNAH: You’ve written quite a bit about Israel’s blockade of Gaza, which was ostensibly put in place to prevent Hamas’ rearmament. Now, did that policy pay dividends in any way? And how would you say the peacetime blockade set the stage for Israel’s response to Hamas’ attack?

SCHEINDLIN: Yeah, I mean let me clarify a couple of things. There is no peacetime. I mean, Israel has not been at peace with the Palestinians ever. And so I think it's important to realize something that we tend to forget, which is that even when there's not a major escalation, this is a militarized occupation and conflict. So, you can't assess this as if there is a normal peacetime policy and I think that's been a mistake of Western policy makers and, and other outside actors. And frankly, it's been a mistake of many Israelis because Israelis convinced themselves that everything was sort of okay as long as there wasn't an open escalation.

In terms of the closure policy, I think we need to understand that – you know, a reader pointed this out to me and it's fair – that Gaza was not exactly an easily accessible society before this and Israel, before the Oslo Accords had kept the complete military occupation control over Gaza and the West Bank. That was loosened somewhat, in rather, I would say tinkering kind of ways. But there was a kind of change with the Oslo Accords.

And by those accords, Gaza was governed by the Palestinian Authority, like other parts of Area A and the West Bank, with Israel keeping very tight security control over the crossings, of course. And so it's always been the case that Gaza is fairly limited in terms of what it can, you know, and in terms of how open it actually is, but the Palestinians were more in control over Gaza from the internal perspective during the Oslo years.

Of course, there were still settlers there, so the army was still there as well. You know, that was sort of a complex situation that reflected the earlier stages of occupation, which never really changed. But in 2005, Israel did dismantle all of its settlements in Gaza. And we often say evacuated the settlers, the settlers themselves say they were expelled, of course by an Israeli government decision. And since then, in 2006, the Palestinians held elections, Hamas essentially won those elections, But nevertheless, their competitor and the leading party in the PLO, the Fatah, took over and established the next government.

Hamas then had a sort of rebellion in 2007 and violently took over in Gaza. And at that time, Israel said, we are putting as strict closure as possible on Gaza. So again, this is not a society that was... was easily open or accessible before that, but certainly after that, Israel basically shut down almost, well, shut down or severely restricted and completely restricted all the movement of all people and goods going in and out of Gaza.That includes import and export, which essentially devastated most of Gaza's economy.

It included basically ending all regular work permits for laborers from Gaza, which also had a severe impact on society and the economy. And generally made people's lives very difficult, even as Israel continued to control things like the flow of electricity, fuel, and controlled again the crossing, all of the crossings that Israel controls, as well as the airspace and sea crossings. The only area that Israel did not control, was the Egyptian crossing at Rafah. But that is also very closely coordinated with Egypt for which for most of the time coordinated with Israel in enforcing this blockade.

HANNAH: So, your suggestion is essentially that the blockade of Gaza has blown back on Israeli security interests. And I’m left wondering, where is the U.S. in all of this? Because if this were any other country, the US would presumably be forcefully criticizing the segregation and discrimination against a whole population. Has the US been turning a blind eye to what’s been happening in Gaza over the past 16 years?

SCHEINDLIN: I would be cautious about assuming that America would take such an interventionist role in other cases that were similar. And I can give you one example. You know, when all this happened, by the way, I was in Armenia visiting in the aftermath of what was essentially an expulsion of 120,000 Armenians from Azerbaijan, from Nagorno Karabakh.

And what preceded that was about nine to ten months of a very similar blockade. In fact, the Armenians quite suspect that Israel helped Azerbaijan plan that policy because of Israel's deepening relations with Azerbaijan. I can't prove it and I don't want to speculate too much, but it did look very similar.

And did America do anything about that? Not really. There was lip service. There was, you know, maybe condemnations, but there was no significant policy to change that situation until the, until the military assault. And so, I would be a little bit cautious because I'm trying to understand exactly where the American government's priorities do lie when it comes to these foreign policy issues.

Now, where has America been generally? Well, I think we know that, certainly over the last number of years, it's been a very long time since America tried to make any significant effort to reach a bigger resolution, political resolution, for the Palestinian Israeli conflict, in terms of a comprehensive political resolution. I think that after the process led by then Secretary of State John Kerry in 2013 and 14, it was clear that Netanyahu did not want to advance that kind of solution, which at the time was still considered to be the two state solution as the main paradigm.

It was clear that the Palestinian Authority increasingly lacked the legitimacy to do so. Although compared to now, I would imagine the Palestinian Authority had quite a lot more legitimacy to do it then, but even then it was overstating the case. And the American government since then has essentially given Israel a free pass to continue the policy that the Netanyahu government has chosen.

Netanyahu's preferred policy has been conflict management. When there was a change of government, okay, briefly, for about a year and a half in total, but really only a year of a functioning coalition. From mid 2021 to mid 2022, the leaders of that government portrayed that they wanted to do something different. And their version of conflict management was shrinking the conflict, for which I failed to see any significant difference. These were a matter of small adjustments to essentially an approach that avoids any comprehensive political resolution and presumes that the only way forward is for Israel to maintain control and eventually continue expanding its hold in various ways, whether it's settlements or land usage or army presence or, you know, uh, changing the consciousness of Israelis to assume that Israel will always be in control of these areas, but in any case, avoid a comprehensive political resolution that will allow for Palestinian self determination.

There was a time in the late eighties and early nineties when I think the Israeli leadership was convinced that to take its rightful place among Western democracies, which is, I'm speaking, conjuring the Israeli aims. It needed to get rid of this albatross of being an occupying nation and get rid of the problem of the Palestinian, of its hold over the Palestinians, which also many people feared would change the demographics, and all of that was a condition for Israel's economic and geopolitical integration.

And so it made those steps forward in the 1990s – at least what Israel thought would be a step forward. When that process collapsed and Netanyahu became prime minister again in 2009, he had a completely opposite perspective that Israel didn't need to do anything in terms of allowing Palestinian self determination, relinquishing Israel's military hold over Palestinian people, and it could still have global integration, and he was right when it came to the Western countries. Israel's economic indicators have never been better through much of the 2010s. And its global integration has made itself indispensable both politically and economically.

And then, with the Middle East peace, It looked like Israel could have everything it wanted, and America was behind that. The Biden administration has claimed to be different from the Trump administration, but in fact, has continued a number of the Trump administration's policies. Certainly not rolling back, reestablishing the embassy or establishing the embassy in Jerusalem, advancing the idea of Arab normalization and essentially not extracting any price on Israel for continuing to expand settlements and its hold on the West Bank. And this management policy in Gaza, which was never really working.

HANNAH: We also sat down with Michael Wahid Hanna, the US program director at the International Crisis Group, to talk about the international response to Israel’s retaliation against Hamas, and the Palestinian claim to self-determination.

In broad strokes, Michael, how would you describe the Biden administration’s foreign policy stance, broadly speaking?

WAHID HANNA: I think the general approach upon coming to office in January 2020, was to accelerate the long talked about pivot, looking at Asia as the focus of future US security commitments and the place that needed more attention. The Middle East has taken a disproportionate focus for US administrations and it goes back to pre 9/11. You know, this obviously accelerated post 9/11.

But there's been a lot that has drawn the United States to the region, and I think it has led to some consideration that perhaps that focus, has been disproportionate, that it has meant the neglect of other priorities and at a time when the administration was thinking much more clearly about a future of more sharpened, heightened competition with China, and to a lesser extent, Russia. The thinking was that we need to find a new equilibrium.

And that's, I would say, the kind of the first entry point of the administration into the region and it is an attitude that wants to see the region managed, news kept off the front page, Biden and other senior level attention elsewhere to higher, more important priorities. And to do that, the administration eventually latches on to the Trump administration's so-called Abraham Accords.

So the Abraham Accords saw, most prominently, the UAE and Bahrain basically normalize relations with Israel, and for some people, reinforced an idea that the question of Palestine, that the Palestinian national movement, that the necessity of a peace process were old questions that were no longer relevant. That the region was moving on. Countries like the UAE felt like they didn't want to be held hostage to a problem that had no solution, and they weren't willing to wait.

And clearly, you know, the Biden administration shared some of those assumptions. They were the first administration in decades that made no effort, didn't even go through the sort of play acting in terms of having a focus on any kind of Israeli Palestinian peace process. And so there was an assumption that this was contained. As we saw in succeeding years, it was a broader moment of managing conflict in the region. There were these de-escalatory trends within the region. And it looked, I think, to many, that this was a new phase.

HANNAH: So Michael, as you know, Israel is now engaged in a ground invasion of Gaza. Let’s zoom out for a minute. What are the dynamics in the region right now, and where are the flashpoints for escalation or expansion of this conflict?

WAHID HANNA: I mean, first and foremost, the United States is in a position where there are certain triggers that might bring the United States into the actual war. Not in Gaza, but perhaps in the northern front. If a northern front breaks out between Israel and Hezbollah, which is a distinct possibility. Whether either of the parties want it or not, the kind of pressures for escalation might lead to that outcome. And one of the pressures for escalation is what the war in Gaza looks like. I can tell you that, for US audiences, they're not seeing the same war that everybody in the Arab world is seeing. It is a really graphic, gruesome event. It is all day long pulling little babies and children and old men and old women out of the rubble.

And thousands upon thousands of dead civilians. It is obviously a kind of explosive, inflammatory event. And the longer that goes on, it does create its own pressures on other regional actors, most prominently Hezbollah, to come to the defense of both Hamas, and Palestinians. As a movement that stakes much of its credibility on the defense of Palestine and the Palestinian cause, there at some point might be credibility issues if you don't actually engage in the fight.

The US has surged military assets to the region in an effort to deter that kind of outcome. But of course deterrence doesn't always work. And if it doesn't, the United States could very quickly find itself in a shooting war. And that's obviously something that this administration certainly wants to avoid.

HANNAH: Are the presence of American troops in the Middle East helping as a deterrent or are they a vulnerability in that they could be a tripwire for a wider conflict?

WAHID HANNA: It's a good question because we see different kinds of escalatory action in different places. And so, the kind of escalatory tit for tat that has gone on between the United States, which still has a presence in Syria and still has a presence in Iraq, against Iran backed militia groups, that has picked up. DOD has talked about over 20 attacks, and that's a much greater tempo. And there are real questions, I think, to be asked about, some of those deployments, particularly in Syria.

It stands to reason that if we do see the regionalization of conflict, it’s very likely not simply going to be contained to Gaza, the northern border with Hezbollah, but you will see much greater militia activity in Iraq and Syria, focused squarely on the United States and US interests. So, in crisis, it's a real question whether they are an asset to some kind of further deterrent effect, or whether they're representative of vulnerability.

HANNAH: I’d like to ask you about this Israeli Intelligence ministry document, which has been making the rounds online. It appears to be an internal draft regarding the ground invasion, which among other proposals, suggests a strategy of relocating the population of Gaza to tent cities in the Sinai. Have you seen this document, and what do you make of it?

WAHID HANNA: Yeah, so I've seen the document. It seems like people have verified it. I think there's some contestation around its weight that this is not representative of government policy. But of course, this is like the longstanding nightmare narrative of Egyptian national security planners. I have talked to Egyptian national security folks, more than 10 years ago they would confide to say you know, our deep fear is the three state solution. Israel decides to push its Palestinian population and responsibility for that issue onto Egypt and onto Jordan.

Since the 1948 war, and with 1967, the Palestinian narrative, Palestinian history has been marked by successive refugee crises where Palestinians have been pushed out of their land and have gone to other places in the Arab world. And there's going to be a bigger question here and this is a question here and now, for people who left Gaza City and went south. There's a question of whether there's anything to go back to: the scale of destruction of infrastructure and housing is shocking and this bigger question of potential transfer is clearly on the minds of regional leaders and others..

You will note that in the last readout that I saw of a Biden - Sisi call, you know, there's explicit mention about the fact that both sides agree that there's not going to be population transfers, that Palestinians in Gaza have a right to remain in their homes. That's something that the Egyptians have been pushing for and it's something that they want to see the United States reiterating in public.

HANNAH: In the wake of the tragedy facing Israelis and Palestinians, the conversation around this war has been emotionally charged, and understandably so. It’s easy for the fervor of the moment to cast a shadow over the strategic and humanitarian considerations at the heart of this unfolding conflict. We asked our guests about this, and here’s what they had to say.

WAHID HANNA: Emotions are very high in Israel. They're very high in the Arab world. They're high in diaspora communities. It's understandable. There's no way not to be emotional based on what happened on October 7th and what's happened since. What has happened is really catastrophic, but what could happen next could be much more so. I think it's really important to think about what’s next. I think part of what happened in the response to October 7th, particularly on the Israeli side and to an extent on the American and European side, was a sort of reflexive response to the horrors of that day.

And maybe that's understandable. But that's not a successful approach to constructing efficacious policy. And so I think you've seen the beginnings of a shift in the Biden administration as well, to start to be concerned about where this is going. I do really worry that the United States is really tied to the hip of whatever comes next, because of how tight that initial embrace was, how deep this relationship is and has been. And you want to maintain this posture as a way to potentially positively influence the gradual diminution of fighting.But in the meantime, you might be on the hook for what has happened and whatever comes next. And that's not a very comfortable place for the Biden administration or the United States.

SCHEINDLIN: The major strategic problem with this policy, which is that if you don't think about changing the political reality on the ground and you continue the policies that have led us to this point, I mean, I'm not going to blame the Israeli government for the attack itself because again, nothing justifies this attack.

But I do think that every conflict eventually reaches violent escalation. There is no such thing as a frozen conflict. And if you don't change the political equation, we are going to see further rounds of violence, whatever form they take.

And so if this strategy of leveling Gaza to the ground and destroying, you know, causing so much civilian damage, in a way, looks like continuity of a policy of 16 years that damaged civilian life, but did not... ultimately lead to greater security for Israelis because of the five, or numerous escalations depending on how you count them up, until now and then the current attack. Then we need to change the policy going forward. And I mean that in terms of political decisions. This can't be reduced to a security problem. It requires a political resolution. Political resolution will not protect every life. It will not create utopia, and we can still do better than where we are now, which is completely unacceptable for anybody on the ground

HANNAH: I'm Mark Hannah, and this has been another episode of “None of the Above,” a podcast of the Eurasia Group Foundation.

Special thanks to Dahlia Scheindlin and Michael Wahid Hanna. Thank you to Zuri Linetsky, who assisted with the interviews and consulted on the production of this episode. Special thanks also go out to our None Of The Above team: Olivia Chilkoti and Lucas Robinson.

If you enjoyed what you heard, we’d appreciate you subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or anywhere else you find podcasts. Please rate and review us, and if there is a topic you want us to cover, send us an email at info@noneoftheabovepodcast.org. Thanks for joining us. Stay safe out there, and see you next time.

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