When Israel began striking back against Hamas in Gaza a mere hours after 3,000 terrorists stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, most people believed the ensuing conflict would last a few months at most. And yet here we are, six months after the first shots were fired with no end in sight. Despite the latest pullout of Israeli troops in the enclave’s south over the weekend, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is as focused today on wiping out Hamas as he was when the first bombs dropped.
To say a lot has changed since October would be a shallow interpretation of events. The last six months has upended the prevailing assumptions that have dominated U.S. and Israeli policy in the Middle East, delayed big diplomatic initiatives in the region and sparked a series of other conflicts ranging from an undeclared war between the Houthis
and the U.S. Navy in the Red Sea as well as increasingly intense fighting between Israel and Hezbollah along the Israeli-Lebanese border.
Before the war, the United States was eyeing what would be the most significant diplomatic achievement in the Middle East since the Oslo Accords in the 1990s: normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques. President Biden was fully committed to surpassing his predecessor’s Abraham Accords, a series of agreements that normalized Israel’s diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan. Biden’s attempt to do the same with Saudi Arabia would have topped that previous arrangement given the kingdom’s wealth, stature and political power in the Arab world. Indeed, the president himself was so eager to bring Saudi Arabia and Israel together that he was willing to expend considerable concessions to do it, including a offering a firmer U.S. security guarantee to Riyadh and assistance with the Saudis’ domestic nuclear energy program.
The war in Gaza, though, ruined the entire plan. While administration officials are still trying to pull a diplomatic rabbit out of their hat, Israel’s relentless offensive in Gaza and the humanitarian calamity it has unleashed (thousands of Palestinians killed, half of the enclave’s buildings destroyed or damaged, most of the population internally uprooted and imminent famine in northern parts of the territory) has stiffened Saudi Arabia’s spine. Before the war, Riyadh might have been fine with extracting a few token Israeli concessions for the Palestinians such as more land West Bank land transfers to the Palestinian Authority. But this is no longer optimal for the Saudis, who are now demanding nothing short of a full Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as its capital, in exchange for normalizing ties with Israel—the very thing Netanyahu has committed himself to blocking.
The war has also shredded individual reputations. Benjamin Netanyahu used to be Mr. Security—that is, the Israeli politician who prided himself on defending Israel. Then Oct. 7 happened, when Hamas invaded southern Israel, tore through small Israeli communities along the border with Gaza and took more than 250 people back to Gaza with them. The veteran Israeli pol is now dealing with a whirlwind of justifiable scrutiny. Mr. Security looks like a deer caught in the headlights, a man who was caught flat-footed as innocent Israelis were being slaughtered in their homes. Just as worse, Netanyahu looks like a narcissist who is seemingly incapable of admitting fault when there’s plenty of blame to go around.
If the war has shown us anything, it’s that Netanyahu isn’t the strong decision-maker he claims to be. Rather, the politician is a risk-adverse ditherer who cares about his political power first and foremost. Every war-time decision is made with one consideration above all else: will this break my extreme, ultra-nationalist coalition apart? If the answer is yes, then the decision will be avoided, even if causes grief among the families of hostages who are pressing for a still elusive hostage deal.
U.S.-Israel relations have taken a big hit in the last six months as well. This might seem strange given that U.S. support to Israel throughout the conflict has been unconditional. On the humanitarian front, the Biden administration continues to make its complaints to the Israeli government known. Yet U.S. policy itself hasn’t really changed
regardless of the daily lectures. To take the most visceral example: on the same day Israeli aircraft killed seven humanitarian aid workers from the World Central Kitchen charity, the administration approved another transfer of U.S.bombs to Israel.
Last week, however, Washington’s shift in tone became notably tougher. There could very well be a policy shift too. Biden’s call with Netanyahu on April 4, was different from all the others, if only because the president explicitly tied future U.S. policy toward Israeli concessions on humanitarian issues. As White House national security spokesman John Kirby articulated after the call, if there’s no changes to their (Israel’s) policy and their approaches, then there’s going to have to be changes to ours.” The Israelis took notice; a day later, Israel announced the opening of a new land corridor to northern Gaza for aid trucks, opened up Ashdod port to humanitarian supplies and accelerated shipments into Gaza at a pace that hasn’t been seen since the bombing began.
Netanyahu remains bullish and confident that Hamas will be destroyed after a military campaign that is now Israel’s longest since the 1980s.
Yet whether or not Israel achieves its maximalist objectives, the war is nothing short of a regional earthquake whose aftershocks will be felt for years, if not a generation, to come.
