Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain
“…the United States and Israel are making significant progress toward stabilizing three dangerous wars: Israel’s tit-for-tat conflict with Iran, the devastating assault on Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the brutal year-long war against Hamas in Gaza.”
– David Ignatius, Washington Post, November 6, 2024
“Settling Israel’s wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran will be far simpler. Netanyahu has largely achieved his goals: Hamas is devastated militarily. Hezbollah has been decapitated and is ready to withdraw from southern Lebanon. And Iran has been unable to retaliate successfully, thanks in part to U.S. military might.”
– David Ignatius, Washington Post, November 8, 2024.
For the past year, the Washington Post’s senior diplomatic columnist, David Ignatius, has been loyal to the U.S. and Israeli national security teams, playing the role of stenographer in sharing and repeating their optimism about peace in the Middle East. He has reported one hopeful scenario after another, and avoids criticizing the self-serving comments from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Secretary of State Antony Blinken over the past year regarding the outlook for peace.
Not even Netanyahu’s firing of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who favors a cease-fire, has dampened Ignatius’ optimism regarding a “safe landing” for the three dangerous wars involving Israel. Neither is Ignatius’ optimism weakened by the election of Donald Trump, which will give Netanyahu greater opportunities to continue his militarism.
In seeing “so many opportunities to end the nightmare of war in the Middle East,” Ignatius ignores or simply doesn’t recognize the painful history of Israel and its neighbors. It requires a belief that the Lebanese Armed Forces could be deployed to South Lebanon where it could disarm Hezbollah. Such a belief requires that an empowered Lebanese Armed Forces stand up to Hezbollah, a well-trained and well-disciplined force with significant combat experience on the border with Israel and in Syria. This belief also requires that the politics of Beirut can be reshaped, but Lebanon is a failed state that has had no president for the past three years. Nevertheless, Ignatius agrees with sources who tell him that a Lebanese agreement could be completed “in the next few weeks.”
Ignatius even sees opportunities for the deployment of a peacekeeping force in Gaza that would consist of military forces from European and moderate Arab countries to begin “stabilization operations” in Gaza. This would require that the United States provide a military command-and-control center based in Egypt near the Gaza border. It is very difficult to imagine the Israeli government agreeing to such a force, particularly in view of its hardline demands regarding the Philadelphi Corridor, the land border between Gaza and Egypt. Israeli forces discovered numerous tunnels in this region used for smuggling weapons into Gaza.
Ignatius concludes that Gaza might be the hardest “post-conflict landing zone” to establish. This ignores the potential for and implications of a wider Iranian-Israeli confrontation. Trump could make a difference in the latter scenario because his “blank check” policy toward Netanyahu could lead to an all-our war between the two countries that would certainly involve the United States.
There is a fourth battleground that Ignatius doesn’t mention: the West Bank. Ignatius refers to promises that Israel made last year to refuse to discuss any new West settlement for four months, to refuse to authorize outposts for six months, and to take steps to curb violence. The communique was signed by Israel, Egypt, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority and the United States. He fails to mention Israel’s increased violence in the West Bank, which includes possible war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits an occupying power from transferring parts of its civilian population into occupied territory, which Israel has been doing for the past six decades.
Ignatius’ most recent column appeared several days after last week’s election, but there is no speculation regarding the difference Trump’s return to the White House would make. Trump’s first term featured his support for numerous Israeli positions, including moving the capital to Jerusalem, recognition of the Golan Heights as part of Israeli sovereignty, and encouraging additional (illegal) settlements on the West Bank. Trump’s second term will be preoccupied with a worsening Israeli-Palestinian situation as well as the possibility of a wider conflict between Israel and Iran. Trump’s shares Netanyahu’s concerns about Iran getting a nuclear weapon. The region (and the world) is far more chaotic than in 2017, when Trump’s first term began; his capricious decision making could worsen the situation in the region.
Ignatius (and the mainstream media in general) makes no mention of a law passed last week that would allow Israel to deport family members of Palestinian attackers, including Israeli citizens. Netanyahu and his Likud Party championed the bill that was passed 61-41. The law would apply to Palestinian Israelis and residents of East Jerusalem, who could be departed either to Gaza or “another location, for a period of seven to 20 years.” This doesn’t augur well for Netanyahu’s policies toward the West Bank and Gaza in the near term.
The mainstream media is doing an inadequate job identifying the need for changing the dynamics of U.S. bilateral relations and contextualizing the root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian problem. Regarding diplomatic dynamics, the Trump administration must seek bilateral dialogues with Russia and China, and restore diplomatic relations with Iran and North Korea. Regarding Israel and Palestine, the Trump administration must not act on the basis of a crisis that began on October 7, 2023, but address the root causes of a conflict that began 76 years ago. Future articles will discuss the importance of “new thinking,” and will echo William Faulkner’s warning that the “past is never dead; it’s not even past.”
