Israel’s longest war continues – and is flattening Lebanon: Will Trump's policy on Israel's war be less destructive than Biden's?

Israel’s longest war continues. Former Israeli diplomat and negotiator Danile Levy spoke to Alex Kane of Jewish Currents in an interview published on October 10 on that aspect of the war. (1)

In Israel’s pasts wars, an interview from over a month ago would likely have been outdated. Because the current war that began October 7, 2023 – with Israel’s first strikes on Lebanon coming the next day – is by far the longest war in the country’s history. (I did a three-part summary of that history last month.)

The First Lebanese War is conventionally dated 1982-2000, because some Israeli troops remained in Lebanon until then, but the bulk of the active fighting was in June-August 1982. The intensive phase of the current conflict began in late September of this year. The two “intifada” periods (1987-1993, 2000-2005) were protracted rounds of protests that did include sporadic violence, But today’s conflict, which appears to be far from other, is Israel’s longest.

Kane asked Levy about the current war in Lebanon:

AK: How is Israel able to flatten high-rises in Beirut, conduct attacks across Lebanon, and begin a ground invasion without incurring international fallout?

DL: In the past year, Israel has conducted an unprecedented campaign — one that numerous experts tell us is a genocide — in Gaza, in violation of urgent provisions of the International Court of Justice. Along the way, Israel has learned that there are no immediate tangible consequences for its relentless violations of international law. Gentle US discouragement of Israel’s more extreme waves of destruction, and media leaks about Biden’s frustration with Netanyahu, were completely overshadowed by the diplomatic political cover and the conveyor belt of weapons supplies the US offered to Israel, as well as its messaging alignment. These were combined with the US moving more military assets and troops to the region to mitigate any fallout for Israel, all of which tells Israel’s leaders that they could take additional risks and criminal measures. So after testing these limits in Gaza, and knowing that it had the support of the Biden administration (and other Western allies) to act without consequence, Israel was confident that expanding this destruction into Lebanon would be met with impunity. [my emphasis]

Levy mentions the cynicism of the US public posture in the current war since 2023:

The US negotiating strategy is very familiar: Israeli positions are consistently repackaged and put forward as US positions, and when Israel decides it wants to increase or change its demands, the US accommodates. Even if Israel then reneges on its commitments, the US ultimately shifts the goalposts. This is what happened across decades of American-mediated, Palestinian–Israeli talks.

It’s a modus operandi that has been most conspicuous in the past year with regard to the talks on a Gaza hostage release and ceasefire. Those have been stuck because the US creates no incentive for Israel to limit its demands to those that are achievable. Quite the opposite: It encourages Israeli rejectionism. [my emphasis]

Channel 4 News (UK) reports: (2)

The Biden Administration is at least consistent. Since the October 7 attacks, it has backed Netanyahu’s actions unconditionally with only occasional cosmetic pretenses to criticize it. He has been following the policy advocated be the neoconservatives that was embodied in the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) that Butcher’s Bill Kristol (lately a prominent NeverTrumper) and his fellow chronic warhawk Robert Kagan.

Donald Trump is notoriously unpredictable. But in his first term, he pursued a blundering policy of going along with Israel’s hawks. He recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, a long-standing and highly sensitive issue in peace negotiations over the years. He ever recognized the Golan Heights as Israel territory, though it rightly belongs to Syria in international law. He pursued the Abraham Accords that were based on the assumption that it was part of a process that could normalized relations between Israel and Arab countries without Israel having to come up with a real solution to the rights and freedoms of Palestinians, which would mean giving up Israel’s current apartheid system. He ordered the assassination of Iranian general Qasem Solemani in 2020. (3) And he unilaterally withdrew from the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) Agreement with Iran that had effectively limited their ability to develop and deploy nuclear weapons.

All these acts were consistent with Benjamin Netanyahu’s goals. In the case of the JCPOA, if Iran continued to be restrained from having nuclear weapons, the case that Netanyahu has been making for the last two decades for the US to go to war with Iran would be seriously weakened. Trump gave Israel what it wanted in all those areas. All of them contributed to instability and the Israel recklessness we have seen since October 2023. That was all the work of Trump, the man who some of his supporters still manage to see as a “peace” President.

Tom Collins recently recalled what a bonehead, irresponsible move withdrawing from the JCPOA was:

Six years after former President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, the disastrous consequences of this decision are still adding up.

In addition to Iran being closer than ever to a nuclear weapons capability, now we must consider how the declining security situation in the Middle East has raised the stakes significantly. Trump promised a “better deal” but instead we got an increasingly costly blunder that may be impossible to fix. …

As of May, 2018, the deal was working and considered (by most) to be a great success.

Then President Trump unilaterally left the deal, calling it a “horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made.” And now we are in a much worse place. Iran says it has no intent to produce nuclear weapons and U.S. intelligence sees no current efforts by Tehran to weaponize, yet Tehran is believed to be not one year but just weeks from being able to produce enough fissile material for a bomb if it chooses to do so. (4)

Collins ends by noting, “The lessons of this tragic tale are clear: a meaningful nuclear agreement is much harder to create than to destroy; if we are lucky enough to get one it should be protected; and if we lose it, we should try to replace it.” BTW, Trump failed to achieve a nuclear arms-control deal with North Korea, which has nukes. But Korean leader did write what Trump called “love letters” to the President, so there’s that. And during Trump’s term, North Korea also test-launched two ICBMs with a range capable of hitting the continental US.

I’m always reluctant to quote Thomas Friedman, whose most outstanding talent seems to be making neoliberal platitudes sound like profound thoughts. But I’ll make an exception here:

Two days after the elections in the United States, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman was interviewed by Israeli journalist Ilana Dayan. He told her that what he fears most for Israel is "a Trump who just [tells] Bibi: Do whatever you want, annex it, keep it, occupy it" because then "7 million Jews will end up occupying more than 7 million Arabs."

Friedman didn't provide details – and Dayan didn't ask – on how exactly the future he described is different from the existing situation in Israel/Palestine.

In practice, his description of the theoretical gloomy future was nothing but an accurate formulation of a realistic and known present. While denying reality, Friedman described what Israel already is – and has been for a long time: 7 million Jews rule, dispossess and deny rights to 7 million Palestinians. Apartheid, in other words. [my emphasis] (5)

Like with the Ukraine War, Trump brings his impulsivity, lack of focus, and his preference for “transactional” dealings that will provide him some kind of personal payoffs of perceived political advantage while apparently having no strategic vision beyond “Only I can fix it,” to a very complicated mess in the Middle East which would be a huge challenge for any President.

Biden at some point seems to have put both Ukraine policy and Israel policy on autopilot with little serious thought or effort to pursue peace arrangements. More weapons for Ukraine, and endless support for Israel’s war-obsessed far-right Prime Minister.

William Schabas, author of a key textbook on the subject of genocide, Genocide in International Law: The Crimes [sic] of Crimes (2000), on the current situation in Israel’s wars.

SPIEGEL: Herr Schabas, is Israel now committing genocide in Gaza?

Schabas: I am neither a guru nor a judge. The courts will decide it, political bodies will determine a word for it with a time lag. But I would say that one can convincingly argue that Israel's response constitutes genocide. …

You can be stopped more effectively by your friends than by your enemies. As a loyal friend of Israel, Germany has a duty to intervene and exert its influence. (6)

The US should not be operating on cruise-control on matters this serious. And there is not good reason for the US to keep providing aid and arms to Israel as long as this current policy continues.

Meanwhile, Zvi Bar’el suggests that many Israelis are moving into what in other contexts might be called “inner emigration.” (7) With a corrupt government bent on destructive policies and with democratic processes and the rule of law increasingly crippled. How many times can ordinary citizens accept that their army’s snipers are deliberately assassinating small children by shooting them in the head or the heart and still maintain faith in their institutions? Or stay in touch with their own humanity? Bar’el writes:

But other examples exit, too, of countries in which the public has lost hope. Countries in which the citizens feel like refugees in their own country. It seems Israel is heading down this steep slope. This of course is not a formal refugee status, in which a person loses their homeland because of a military conquest or flees for their life out of fear of persecution. This is being a refugee in the sense that a person is alienated and cut off, because they have no ability to influence their country's future – as if they were an asylum seeker, foreign resident or tourist.

Large parts of the population, and not just Arabs who have been completely excluded from the public debate, have already chosen silence, because they have realized how heavy a price they must pay if they go out to protest. They see how the parties meant to represent their values are ironing and folding up their policies so they can be considered "Zionist." They are looking for a leadership alternative only to conjure up another retired general or two, who won't dare present a different ideology and are very careful to keep their movements inside the shadow cast by the regime.

These citizens, who fear the removal of the attorney general or Shin Bet head – scared they will lose their gatekeepers – have already crossed the threshold. They become emotional over the shocking yellow sign that reminds them there is a "Child in Gaza," a Jewish hostage baby – but they know they must shut up and not speak about the thousands of Gazan babies who have been killed. [my emphasis] (8)

Notes:

(1) Kane, Alex (2024): “Burning the Off-Ramps”. Jewish Currents 10/10/2024. <https://jewishcurrents.org/burning-the-off-ramps> (Accessed: 2024-23-11).

(2) Israeli strikes on Lebanon continue as ceasefire talks gain pace. Channel 4 News YouTube channel 11/22/2024. <https://youtu.be/9yaPJMxw4NY?si=PAqHIfVsX3wLMNsl> (Accessed: 2024-23-11).

(3) Qasem Soleimani: US strike on Iran general was unlawful, UN expert says. BBC News 07/09/2020. <https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-53345885> (Accessed: 2024-23-11).

(4) Collina, Tom (2024): Killing the Iran nuclear deal was one of Trump's biggest failures. Responsible Statecraft 05/07/2024. <https://responsiblestatecraft.org/iran-nuclear-deal/> (Accessed: 2024-23-11).

(5) El-ad, Hagai (2024): Biden's Administration Was Not Committed to Human Rights. Haaretz 11/21/2024. <https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-11-21/ty-article-opinion/.premium/bidens-administration-was-not-committed-to-human-rights/00000193-4fff-ddc8-aff7-4fff15fd0000> (Accessed: 2024-23-11).

(6) Schabas, William (2024): „Als treuer Freund Israels hat Deutschland die Pflicht einzugreifen” (Interview). Der Spiegel 47 (11/16/2024), 88-91.

(7) Cambridge Core Summary of: Klapper, John (2015): The Writers of the Inner Emigration and Their Approaches. <https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/nonconformist-writing-in-nazi-germany/writers-of-the-inner-emigration-and-their-approaches/CF1E20EBB341E891F895D05A93B7A019> (Accessed: 2024-23-11).

(8) Bar’el, Zvi (2024): Netanyahu's New Order Is Turning Israelis Into Voiceless Refugees in Their Own Country. Haaretz 11/21/2024. <https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-11-21/ty-article-opinion/.premium/netanyahus-new-order-is-turning-israelis-into-voiceless-refugees-in-their-own-country/00000193-4adb-d383-abbb-ebfb37b40000> (Accessed: 2024-23-11).