As the Gaza ceasefire talks enter the second day in Doha, the situation in the Middle East remains ripe for an impending vertical escalation between Israel and Iran.
Hamas, whose Political Bureau chief and chief negotiator Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated by Israel in a covert operation in Tehran on July 31, is not participating in the indirect negotiations in Doha for now, although mediators are said to be relaying messages to the group’s representatives based in Doha.
After the first day of talks, White House spokesman John Kirby told the media that “there remains a lot of work to do” to resolve gaps in the implementation of the framework agreement. This is a euphemistic statement that in reality refers to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s strategy to keep everyone stringing along. That strategy is central to where the situation stands, including the continuing savagery in Gaza and targeted strikes in Lebanon and elsewhere.
The method in Netanyahu’s madness
What’s Netanyahu’s strategy?
As I have noted in this space earlier, Netanyahu has gamed it very carefully. To quote Shakespeare, “Though there’s madness, yet there’s method in it.” Consider this from the beginning.
On the day Hamas launched its offensive, Netanyahu’s political stock was at its lowest. His rightwing government was reviled, his corruption trial was hobbling him, his attempt to rein in Israel’s Supreme Court through controversial legislation was widely condemned, including by IDF reservists, over concerns that his rightwing coalition would pass increasingly hardline laws with no mechanism for opposition.
Then October 7 happened.
Netanyahu’s stock plummeted further. He was blamed for the biggest security lapse since possibly the Egyptian crossing of the Bar-Lev Line. His claim that he was the best leader to provide security lay in tatters. Even as the IDF and military intelligence chiefs accepted responsibility for failing to detect and preempt the Hamas attack, Netanyahu kept insisting that he was not warned by security chiefs about an impending Hamas attack. In statements and even public tweets he claimed that security chiefs had consistently assured him that Hamas was deterred.
While fighting rearguard action against his political rivals, Netanyahu was also formulating his offensive strategy on the basis of two facts: the ‘ironclad” support of the United States and the Israelis rallying under the flag to seek retribution. Multiple opinion polls indicated that while the public had little confidence in Netanyahu and his government’s ability to handle the situation, support for a war against Hamas ran high. It still does.
The most important aspect of US support is military and financial. Israel does not have the logistical capacity to wage a long war without US military hardware and US intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance (ISTAR) capabilities. That pipeline is not about to run dry.
That support was Netanyahu’s lifeline. It was also what he desired — the opportunity to wage a war and by doing so strengthen and prolong his political position.
He put forth his objectives: total destruction of Hamas and safe return of hostages. In reality, the second objective — despite Netanyahu’s consistent mouthing of it — was always secondary. That is also clear from multiple reports and analyses in the Israeli media.
Somewhere along the way Netanyahu, despite differences with his intelligence chiefs, worked a strategy parallel to the war on Gaza — find, fix and finish specific Hezbollah, Hamas and Iranian targets. More than the rather bumbling ground offensive, this strategy, at least in tactical terms, has been far more successful. Whether it has also been effective is of course a different debate.
Increasing civilian casualties in Gaza and evidence of IDF savagery began to bring increasing pressure on Israel. It has an overtly adversarial relationship with the United Nations, its aid agencies and an increasing number of world states. It’s in the dock at the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. It is not just accused of genocide, a majority of world opinion considers it to be a genocidal state.
This is a matter of concern for Netanyahu but not a vital one. His vital concern was and remains support from the US: how far he can push the administration’s buttons. That’s where, despite increasing difficulties with the Biden administration, he knows he has ample space.
Here’s why. “Ironclad” support for Israel remains high among both Democrats and Republicans. While Kamala Harris is trying to distance herself from the more Netanyahu-hugging policies of an administration of which she is still a part as vice president, she knows that on the campaign trail she has to find a balance. How to square the requirement of the liberal vote with the necessity of supporting Israel’s defence, especially because the Republicans openly support Israel. That support was obvious when Netanyahu was lionised by the US Congress.
The most important aspect of US support is military and financial. Israel does not have the logistical capacity to wage a long war without US military hardware and US intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance (ISTAR) capabilities. That pipeline is not about to run dry.
The second aspect of that support is Netanyahu’s calculation that if the escalation goes vertical, despite US reservations the latter will have no choice but to step in. For instance, even if the US were to not undertake direct attacks on Iranian targets, its ISTAR help would be crucial for Israel. Ditto for the air defence shield or US targeting of Houthi and Hezbollah assets and infrastructure.
A ceasefire in Gaza has become pressing not just because Gazans require a respite from daily bombings and killings but because that might just be the only way to prevent Iran and its affiliated groups from retaliating to targeted killings of Haniyeh and Fouad Shukr.
It is also this space, crucial to Netanyahu’s strategy, which allows Religious Zionists in his rightwing coalition to continue to approve illegal settlements in Occupied Palestinian Territories, support settler violence and capture and kill Palestinians in the OPTs. That story barely gets traction with the world because of the focus on Gaza.
The US continues to voice concern, for sure. It wants a ceasefire. But it is not prepared to do the one thing that could effectively put an end to Netanyahu’s game: there will be no US military and financial support for Israel unless Netanyahu immediately agrees to a ceasefire.
In the absence of such a clear declaration, Netanyahu’s calculus continues to work in his favour. Since memories are short, it is important to remind the reader that the US, in the past, has managed precisely this. During the Suez crisis, even after Britain and France withdrew from Suez, Israel refused to go along. Ben-Gurion, the Israeli Prime Minister, defied the world for weeks, ignoring six UN General Assembly orders to get out of Egypt. The Knesset backed him up. But when Eisenhower warned of “pressure” if Israel failed to withdraw, “the tough little Premier knew the game was up.”
The same thing happened when Ronald Reagan in an angry phone call told then Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin that the latter had to get out of Lebanon. Begin knew it was time to wrap up.
That pressure is not there, squeamish statements by Biden officials notwithstanding.
There’s another sinister angle to the horrors unfolding in Gaza and the OPTs. Just like Netanyahu, the US and its allies too want Hamas destroyed. But they are more concerned about mounting civilian casualties. Netanyahu isn’t. His Jabotinsky-like approach is that if targeting Hamas requires killing thousands of Gazans, so be it. To the extent that he isn’t even concerned primarily about his own hostages, his strategy, despite being diabolical, is nonetheless understandable.
What next in light of this strategy?
Netanyahu continues to play for time. If he were really interested in a ceasefire, Haniyeh would not have been targeted. Haniyeh’s killing was a two-way signal: to Hamas the message was that Israel would keep coming after the group’s leaders and continue the violence in Gaza; to Iran it signalled that Israel could not be deterred and it had the will and the capacity to undertake sophisticated operations within the heart of Tehran in a compound run and protected by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
The signalling is provocative and humiliating. It is meant to prolong, not end the war.
What about this round of talks in Doha?
A ceasefire in Gaza has become pressing not just because Gazans require a respite from daily bombings and killings but because that might just be the only way to prevent Iran and its affiliated groups from retaliating to targeted killings of Haniyeh and Fouad Shukr.
Here too, Netanyahu has his own calculation and he is deft at using semantics. Hamas has been alleging that Netanyahu has “added new conditions and reneged on its previous agreement.” This includes the demand that Israel maintain full control over the Philadelphi corridor and that displaced people returning to northern Gaza be screened to ensure they are unarmed civilians.
Unless the US withdraws its support from Israel, lead the way firmly and unequivocally towards recognising a State of Palestine, sanction Israel for illegal settlements and makes clear that Palestinians have a right to resist the occupation, the region would remain fraught.
Netanyahu’s office responded last Tuesday by saying that there were no new conditions but that Israel was seeking “essential clarifications to help implement” the initial proposal. The proposal refers to the three-phase Biden plan which was also endorsed by the UN Security Council resolution. The fact is that these “essential clarifications” amount to reopening the text of the deal.
What would it come to going forward?
The first question is, would Hamas accept a proposal that has already been soiled by Netanyahu? If it does, Netanyahu gets his way without having to give any guarantees down the road while getting the hostages. If Hamas doesn’t accept it, Hamas would be blamed and Netanyahu would merrily go about his business of killing more Gazans.
If the deal goes through, Iran will get an offramp — again, with no guarantees of a permanent ceasefire in Gaza or of any future Israeli aggression against Iranian interests and assets. If it doesn’t, the entire situation goes back to Netanyahu’s original calculation — i.e., that in case of an Iranian attack, the US and its allies will stand with Israel because that is how the geopolitical situation and interests are aligned and structured.
What’s the bottomline?
Unless the US withdraws its support from Israel, lead the way firmly and unequivocally towards recognising a State of Palestine, sanction Israel for illegal settlements and makes clear that Palestinians have a right to resist the occupation, the region would remain fraught. A ceasefire would be a temporary salve, at best. And if there’s no deal then the region will be plunged into the unknown.