Israel Has Changed Its Security Outlook and Now Finds Itself in a Dangerous Illusion - 01 octobre 2024
Haaretz:
Israel Has Changed Its Security Outlook and Now Finds Itself in a Dangerous Illusion

IDF Chief of Staff Herzl Halevi's statement opposing a cease-fire in Lebanon, on the grounds that the army has for years waited for this opportunity to attack Hezbollah, is a distillation of Israel's new security outlook. It holds that enemies are only neutralized by military means that dismantle or diminish their capacity to fight. Dismantling enmity by diplomatic means is not considered.

But it's not such a new perspective. From the time of its establishment until the 2000s, Israel didn't undertake to dismantle its enemies' military power, and until Israel's 1979 peace treaty with Egypt, it also refrained from doing so through diplomatic means. Israel responded militarily (retaliation), took preventive action only when the threat was immediate (the Six-Day War) and on more than one occasion exacerbated border conflicts to justify all-out war (wars of choice in the 1956 Sinai Campaign and the First Lebanon war).

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The killing of Nasrallah is a Pyrrhic assassination

Initiated military action to dismantle the enemy's power was only carried out in the form of the Begin Doctrine – that Israel wouldn't permit a hostile country to acquire nuclear weapons. It was on that basis that Israel twice attacked nuclear reactors – in 1981 in Iraq and in 2007 in Syria – and acted to foil Iran's nuclear project through diplomatic means (the world powers' 2015 agreement).
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The turning point occurred with the so-called War Between the Wars, a strategy primarily associated with former IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot, which aimed at making war a more distant prospect by preventing the enemy from using quality weaponry to bolster its strength. In other words, this meant wide scale regional demilitarization that would ban weaponry that could endanger Israel. IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi upgraded the concept with the doctrine of preemptive war.
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The War Between the Wars worked on an initiated basis against the enemy. Israel expanded the geographic boundaries from Lebanon to Iraq and ultimately also to Iran. The old goals were expanded – from preventing the transfer of weaponry to Lebanon to the campaign against Iran.

Nearly all of that took place under the public's radar and without thorough strategic debate. The transition to an initiated step was fed through a circular process. The political approach in the era of Benjamin Netanyahu – refraining from seeking to settle military conflicts diplomatically – encouraged the army to develop technological means to avoid war and without exposing combat troops to risk. As long as the War Between the Wars showed tactical results, the more the pressure was eased on the politicians to resort to diplomacy, and the army was encouraged to step up the fighting and so forth.
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That cycle was purportedly shattered on October 7, which revealed the failures of the Israeli illusion that it could perpetually manage the conflict, while in practice, the opposite had occurred. Israeli public discourse has retrospectively been expressing an intolerance for steps that reconciled Israel to an enemy that was getting stronger (Hamas and Hezbollah).

Israelis are ignoring a simple assumption that they had previously recognized: that after a military campaign ends, the enemy rebuilds its military capabilities. For example, no one blamed Golda Meir in 1973 for not engaging in a preemptive war prior to the Yom Kippur War against an Egypt that had become stronger.

On the right and the left, the expectation implied in the discourse is that Israel would launch a preemptive war as long as the enemy was getting stronger and won't try to deal diplomatically to avoid war by other means.
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So the illusion is that Israel would miss the opportunity now to prevent Hezbollah's defeat and to gradually expand the goals of the war in Lebanon, if Israel's advantage permits it to do so. It's only the world that is capable of freeing us from such an illusion

Voir, lire ou entendre : Haaretz:

Mort de Hassan Nasrallah Israël ouvre magistralement une nouvelle ère de l'histoire du Moyen-Orient : jusqu'où ira l'effet domino ? - 30 septembre 2024
Atlantico
Mort de Hassan Nasrallah
Israël ouvre magistralement une nouvelle ère de l'histoire du Moyen-Orient : jusqu'où ira l'effet domino ?

Le Hezbollah a officiellement annoncé, samedi 28 septembre, la mort de son chef Hassan Nasrallah, tué dans un raid israélien sur la banlieue sud de Beyrouth le 27 septembre.

L'armée israélienne a affirmé ce samedi que « la plupart » des hauts dirigeants du Hezbollah libanais avaient été « éliminés », après l'annonce de la mort de son chef Hassan Nasrallah, dans une frappe vendredi à Beyrouth. Quel va être l'impact de la mort de Hassan Nasrallah pour le Liban ? Les forces démocratiques libanaises vont-elles pouvoir repousser l'influence iranienne et rétablir une souveraineté politique non assujettie à une organisation terroriste ?

Emmanuel Razavi : La mort de Nasrallah, comme tout ce qui se passe au Liban actuellement, constitue un séisme. Pour le Hezbollah, mais aussi pour la République islamique d'Iran. Cela rebat les cartes, et surtout, montre qu'Israël a toutes les données en main. Car l'état-major du Hezbollah est décapité, ce qui affaiblit Téhéran. Il faut comprendre que le Hezbollah est bien plus qu'un simple proxy pour la République islamique d'Iran. C'est en fait la réplique du Corps des Gardiens de la révolution islamique au Liban. C'est Ali Akbar Mohtashamipur, un religieux iranien très proche de l'Ayatollah Khomeini qui était en exil avec lui en France fin 1978, qui contribua véritablement à sa création en 1982, alors qu'il était ambassadeur de la République islamique d'Iran en Syrie. C'est depuis son bureau à Damas, qu'il coordonnait les premières actions du Hezbollah.

Ensuite, parce que le guide suprême Ali Khamenei, successeur de Khomeini, entretenait une relation suivie avec Hassan Nasrallah, le chef du Hezbollah, qui lui remettait des rapports et des renseignements. Maintenant, concernant le Liban, je ne vais pas jouer les devins, d'autant que le pays du cèdre est fragilisé par la corruption et une instabilité chronique. La situation est extrêmement fragile, et les mollahs, comme le Hezbollah, ont deux options : ou ils admettent leur défaite et reculent ou ils se lancent dans une déstabilisation du Liban pour faire pression sur la communauté internationale. Une donnée nous échappe : Israël et la République islamique d'Iran vont-ils s'affronter ? Personne n'a la réponse au moment où je réponds à vos questions. Samedi après-midi, une source iranienne proche du régime m'indiquait que « si la tendance actuelle se poursuit, Israël fera certainement quelque chose à l'intérieur de l'Iran. On peut s'attendre à toute sorte d'opérations, de la cyberattaque au sabotage, en passant par de possibles actions au sol. »
À LIRE AUSSI
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REVUE DE PRESSE DES HEBDOS
L'Express voit le techno-macronisme garder la main, le Nouvel Obs McKinsey complice du meurtre des dinosaures; Ces “alliés” qui veulent torturer Barnier avant de le faire tomber; Cette écologie qui méconnaît la science; Ces femmes qui virent islamistes

Enfin, l'entourage de Khamenei est divisé sur la stratégie à suivre. Il y a ceux qui pensent que le moment de l'affrontement avec Israël et ses alliés est venu, et ceux, pragmatiques, qui pensent qu'en cas de guerre avec l'État hébreux, ce sera la fin de la République islamique. Pezechkian est plutôt favorable à une riposte par des moyens indirects. En clair, cela veut dire par le biais des proxys et des groupes terroristes.

Cet événement est-il comparable en ampleur à la révolution iranienne de 1979 ? La mort de Hassan Nasrallah est-elle un tournant historique pour la région et la politique internationale ?

Je ne crois pas que l'on puisse comparer ce qui se passe au Liban actuellement avec la révolution islamique de 1979, même si le moment est historique. D'ailleurs, le Hezbollah n'existait pas à cette époque, et la révolution iranienne s'est faite avec l'assentiment des grandes puissances occidentales. Ce que l'on voit, c'est que la République islamique d'Iran est un château de cartes, incapable de protéger ses proxys, que ce soit le Hamas ou le Hezbollah. Par ailleurs, Israël est en train d'inverser le rapport de forces, à son avantage, et montre que ses services de renseignement sont toujours efficaces, alors qu'ils avaient été critiqués après le pogrom du 7 octobre.
À LIRE AUSSI
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Démocraties en danger ?
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Le Hezbollah, qui occupait le rôle de faiseur de roi au Liban depuis des décennies, est-il réellement démuni et sans infrastructure de commandement après les récentes éliminations ? La chaîne de commandement du Hezbollah est-elle réellement brisée ?

Pour l'heure, la chaîne de commandement du Hezbollah est lourdement endommagée, avec des communications rendues difficiles pour ne pas dire impossibles, et un accès au renseignement altéré du fait de la mort de hauts responsables du Hezbollah, mais aussi du Corps des Gardiens de la révolution au Liban et en Syrie, qui avaient sous leur contrôle des réseaux d'informateurs. Reste que le Hezbollah cherchera très vite, si ce n'est déjà le cas, à se reconstituer et se réorganiser. Mais cela va lui prendre du temps.

Le Hezbollah est aussi directement impliqué dans la production de près de 20 % de la cocaïne mondiale. Les revenus générés par cette voie financent ses activités militaires et politiques. Avec l'élimination de Nasrallah, ces activités vont-elles être perturbées et vont-elles entraîner une inflation sur le marché de la drogue ?
À LIRE AUSSI
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Saison 2
Haro sur « Les anneaux de pouvoir » : un tsunami de parodies et de critiques faites par les fans de Tolkien s'abat sur la série d'Amazon

C'est tout le sujet de mon nouveau livre, « La face cachée des mollahs » dans lequel j'explique que trafics de drogue et d'armes font partie d'un même ensemble. Le Hezbollah, certains dignitaires du parti réformateur iranien et les Gardiens de la révolution, associés aux cartels colombiens, constituent l'un des plus gros cartels mafieux au monde. C'est avec l'argent de la drogue que le Hezbollah finance une partie de ses opérations terroristes et paramilitaires. Ses activités sont d'ores et déjà perturbées en ce sens qu'une partie des tenants du trafic de drogue ont été tués, et que ceux qui sont encore en vie ne disposent plus de moyens de communication. Sans compter que désormais, ils se savent surveillés. Cela les impacte aussi quant au trafic d'armes. Notamment en ce qui concerne une partie du programme balistique iranien, qui est aussi, pour partie, financé par de l'argent sale.

Sur le plan international, comment vont évoluer les relations entre l'Iran, la Russie et la Chine après l'assassinat de Hassan Nasrallah ? Au Yémen, l'Iran va-t-il devoir rediriger ses ressources pour continuer à soutenir les Houthis ?

La Re?publique islamique d'Iran a annoncé récemment, par la voix de son ministre des affaires étrangères, vouloir se de?tourner de l'Europe et renforcer ses liens avec la Russie et la Chine, ce qui était déjà le cas. L'Iran fournit de?ja? des drones militaires et des missiles balistiques a? l'arme?e russe, afin qu'elle les utilise dans le cadre de sa guerre contre l'Ukraine. Les Russes forment les services secrets iraniens dans plusieurs domaines, notamment la guerre cyber et d'influence, et fournissent de la technologie au régime. La Chine a, de son co?te?, passe? des accords bilate?raux avec la Re?publique islamique en 2023. Cette dernie?re est d'ailleurs devenue membre de l'Organisation de coope?ration de Shanghai en juillet de cette me?me anne?e, ce qui lui permet d'acce?der au marche? chinois et d'exporter son pe?trole.

Avec Emmanuel Razavi


Voir, lire ou entendre : Atlantico

Israel's Obsession With Assassinating Its Enemies From Beirut to Tehran will Cause a Forever War - 30 septembre 2024
Haaretz:
Israel's Obsession With Assassinating Its Enemies From Beirut to Tehran Will Cause a Forever War

Israel relates to its Arab enemies as if they were a pack of wolves: If you take out the alpha male, the pack disperses.

I don't know the source of its obsession with killing the leaders of its enemies – the Palestinians, the Lebanese and even the Iranians – but the approach is wrong: Leaders are an important asset not only for their public, but also for the enemy.

When the parties eventually reach agreements, there needs to be someone from the other side to sign them: a leader whose public will support them if they turn the steering wheel 180 degrees, from confrontation to conciliation.

Don't let Nasrallah's assassination fool you. Netanyahu's gov't is still ruining Israel
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Was any Palestinian leader besides Yasser Arafat capable of signing the Oslo Accords, which many regarded as a renunciation of the principles of the Palestinian struggle?
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Only Arafat, with his credibility and popularity, was capable of persuading the Palestinians to accept the agreement.

And today, will anyone in the Hezbollah leadership agree to a cease-fire after the assassination of their leader?

Anyone who dares to do so will almost certainly be seen as betraying Hassan Nasrallah's legacy.
A woman holds a picture of Lebanon's Hezbollah Chief Hassan Nasrallah who was killed by an Israeli airstrike in Beirut, during a symbolic funeral in Basra, Iraq, Sunday.Credit: Essam Al-Sudani/Reuters

When a leader is assassinated, then, the damage is not only to the followers but also to the possibility of reaching an agreement with the other side.

When a cease-fire agreement with Hezbollah was almost within reach, as American and French sources say it was, we cannot help but ask whether the purpose of the assassination was to prevent it.

During the first period of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the country's American administrator, Paul Bremer, fired over 30,000 commanders in the Iraqi army on the pretext that they were loyal to the dictatorial regime of Saddam Hussein. Some of these commanders went on to become the foundation of ISIS.

Did Israeli decision-makers not consider this when they ordered the assassinations of a slew of Hezbollah commanders? Perhaps they were thinking instead about the chaos that was liable to result in a divided Lebanon when soldiers, in the absence of commanders, are free to do as they please. Was this not discussed when the decision to crush Hezbollah's leadership was made?
Israeli airstrike in Beirut, on Thursday.Credit: AFP/-

There is a well-known saying that the only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.

After all, we went down the same road after the 1992 assassination of Abbas al-Musawi.

He was succeeded as the leader of Hezbollah by Nasrallah, who expanded the organization's capabilities exponentially.

Around two years later, 85 people were killed and hundreds more were injured in the bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in Argentina.

After the apocalyptic accomplishment of the pager and walkie-talkie explosions that have been attributed to it – which stirred leftists' national pride before that of rightists, and after the precisely targeted strikes on Hezbollah leaders, in which hundreds of Lebanese civilians died – Israel is a state that projects force, and only force.

Today, America the Great is assiduously striving to sign a new nuclear arms deal with Iran, and Israel is already talking about the next target for assassination – Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader.

Instead of dialogue, there are targeted killings, and horror falls on the surrounding nations.

But horror does not stop at borders. It crosses them. It's enough to look at the relatives of the hostages: Every cry of joy over Nasrallah's death causes their hearts to plummet in fear for the fate of their loved ones who are rotting away in the tunnels of the Strip.

In The Godfather Part III, Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) wishes that he could be a good man, someone who is so loved instead of being so feared, but he does not repent.


Israel chose to be Michael Corleone, to terrorize its surroundings, and the result is endless wars and a neighborhood that rejects it

Voir, lire ou entendre : Haaretz:

Even After Taking Out Nasrallah, Netanyahu Looks to Intensify Israeli Attacks on All Fronts - 30 septembre 2024
Haaretz:
Even After Taking Out Nasrallah, Netanyahu Looks to Intensify Israeli Attacks on All Fronts

Israel's massive airstrikes in Lebanon have dealt Hezbollah a severe blow, but will the IDF launch a ground offensive in south Lebanon? ? Netanyahu has completely lost interest in negotiations with Hamas while still paying lip service to bringing the hostages home

The body of Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah was extracted on Sunday from the ruins of his command center in Beirut's Dahiyeh neighborhood, which the Israel Air Force bombed on Friday. Shortly afterward, Hezbollah confirmed that the attack also killed Ali Karaki, the Hezbollah commander responsible for southern Lebanon. Another Israeli attack on Saturday killed Nabil Qaouk, who had been a prominent member of Hezbollah's leadership for three decades.

The bombings in Dahiyeh resumed Sunday afternoon. The targets were apparently some of the last survivors of Hezbollah's political and military leadership.

Far away, in an incident whose circumstances remain unclear, a senior coordinator for the Houthis in Yemen was killed in a helicopter crash in Iran. And in Yemen itself, the Israel Air Force bombed the port of Hodeidah for a second time in response to the Houthis' launch of a missile at central Israel on Saturday.

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Don't let Nasrallah's assassination fool you. Netanyahu's gov't is still ruining Israel

All these operations, each of which would have garnered huge headlines had it taken place a month or two ago, have been almost pushed to the margins of the news by the assassination of Nasrallah, who was one of the most important figures in the Middle East in recent decades. In an article he wrote for Time magazine, Firas Maksad, an analyst at the Washington-based think tank Middle East Institute, quoted a saying attributed to Vladimir Lenin: There are decades when nothing happens, and there are weeks when decades happen.

That is certainly true of the last two weeks, during which Israel appears to have almost completely liquidated the core of Hezbollah's senior command, destroyed a significant portion of its missile and rocket stockpiles and ended with the resounding assassination of its leader. Nevertheless, the job isn't truly over.
Israeli Air Force strike in Yemen's Hodeidah port, Sunday.

The Israeli Air Force's current massive attacks are intended not only to pursue the terror organization's remaining senior officials, but also to target more rocket and missile stockpiles. Yet one question remains unanswered: Will the aerial assault, which has racked up such far-reaching achievements, be complemented by a ground offensive in southern Lebanon?

Mayors of towns near the northern border, whose residents have been evacuated, are pressing for such a move, as are senior officers from the army's Northern Command. They say there's an urgent need to address the military infrastructure that Hezbollah, and especially its elite Radwan force, have built near the border both above and below the ground in the years since the last war in Lebanon in 2006.

This would mainly have to be done by sending in ground forces, as was the case in the Gaza Strip. But it would entail more difficult fighting and would certainly result in casualties. Various plans for this have been discussed over the years, from a limited entry into locales with commanding terrain to the occupation of all the territory south of the Litani River.

Given the preparations Hezbollah has made over the years for an Israeli ground offensive in southern Lebanon, this would not be an easy task, even if many of the organization's operatives have fled northward. The debate in Israel revolves around the question of whether such an operation is necessary, and whether another blow is needed now to cause the Hezbollah to collapse and impair its standing and its capabilities for years to come.

One common claim heard in recent days is that Israel overestimated Hezbollah and for years made itself more scared of the group than was warranted. The weakness and confusion Hezbollah has demonstrated since the attack on its beepers on September 17 do indeed prompt such a question.

Nevertheless, this isn't the first time an army or organization has experienced a great crisis during wartime that defied prior predictions. A wartime blow as massive as Hezbollah has recently suffered creates chaos and paralysis that impairs decision-making by the top brass and leaves field commanders and ordinary soldiers to fight alone. Israel ought to know this better than most – that, more or less, is what happened to the army's Gaza Division last October 7.

The major achievements the Israel Defense Forces has scored recently have encouraged a mood of hubris in the television studios, with anchors and experts vying with each in estimating the enemy's weakness and praising Israeli genius. But as always, it's worth remembering that the final whistle hasn't blown, and our enemies, from Iran to Hezbollah and Hamas, can still respond, even if they have suffered serious damage.

The fact that Hezbollah is currently launching only hundreds of rockets apparently reflects the intensity of the shock and confusion in its ranks. But this doesn't mean one of its commanders won't take the reins into his own hands in the near future.

What is more worrisome is how Iran will respond. Its unsettled account with Israel over the assassination of former Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran has greatly increased following Nasrallah's assassination. And even though Iran's spiritual leader, the 85-year-old Ali Khamenei, is generally leery of getting embroiled in wars, it's hard to believe that he will let such an incident pass without retaliation in the long run.

As for the southern front, we can cautiously assume that the rumors of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar's death were greatly exaggerated, or at least premature.

Paradoxically, this may have an upside. Sinwar currently appears to be the only person in Hamas capable of sealing a deal for the hostages' return. He has been delaying his response to the mediators' proposals for a long time, but he isn't the only one thwarting an agreement.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who predicted great days for Israel on Saturday, appears to have completely lost interest in the negotiations with Hamas. He still pays lip service to bringing the hostages home, but in practice, he is wholly focused on the fronts with Hezbollah and Iran, which are heating up. He is already getting plaudits from his political base over the string of successes in Lebanon, which indeed required him to take risks and make decisions under conditions of uncertainty.

As far as can be determined now, he has set his sights on additional attacks on every front. A cease-fire doesn't appear to be his top priority, despite the cries of the hostages' families.

Voir, lire ou entendre : Haaretz:

America Needs a New Strategy to Avert Even Greater Catastrophe in the Middle East - 30 septembre 2024
Foreign Affairs
America Needs a New Strategy to Avert Even Greater Catastrophe in the Middle East


Shuttle Diplomacy Must Be Backed by Meaningful Pressure

Nearly a year after Hamas's October 7 terrorist attack, the Israeli government's ongoing escalation of its conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon has put the Middle East on the precipice of a regional war—one that could all too easily draw in the United States. Although Israeli leaders believe that intensified military action will cause the militant group to back down, this sort of “escalate to de-escalate” strategy seldom achieves the desired results. Hezbollah has consistently tied the cessation of its attacks on Israel to a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, and that remains unlikely to change in the wake of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's death in an Israeli airstrike on Friday. Even if a 21-day cease-fire were declared between Israel and Hezbollah, as U.S. President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron have called for, it would not alter the underlying reality: the best way to prevent a larger regional conflagration is a cease-fire in Gaza.

Unfortunately, negotiations between Israel and Hamas over their war in Gaza appear to be at an impasse over three months after Biden outlined a framework for a cease-fire and deal on the return of Israeli hostages. Both parties have moved the goalposts, adding new conditions or demanding new concessions. After weeks of projecting optimism, Biden administration officials reportedly now concede that “no deal is imminent.” And the window for reaching a deal is rapidly closing ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November, at which point Biden's lame-duck status will diminish his international influence.

Meanwhile, the costs of the war in Gaza continue to mount daily. The probability of securing the safe return of the remaining Israeli hostages only decreases over time. Humanitarian conditions for Palestinian civilians continue to deteriorate day to day amid active conflict, and more of them are being killed or injured in Israeli military operations. The reputational damage to the United States, as well as to Israel, is also steadily building, with negative consequences for other global priorities shared by both countries.

With time being of the essence, Washington must overhaul its diplomatic approach. It needs to undertake a much more proactive shuttle diplomacy aimed at ending the war in the next several weeks. The painstaking, patient diplomacy of the U.S. administration and its fellow mediators, Qatar and Egypt, has failed to push Israel and Hamas, and particularly their recalcitrant leaders, across the finish line. High-profile shuttle diplomacy, though risky, can concentrate and magnify pressure, increasing the likelihood that the parties will feel compelled to take difficult decisions. If accompanied by other sources of pressure, it could prove a game changer. Biden should immediately dispatch Secretary of State Antony Blinken to the region to shuttle between Israel, Egypt, and Qatar for as many days as necessary to close all remaining gaps in the Gaza cease-fire deal. That goal will also require that Washington both intensify its political, diplomatic, and military pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and work with Arab partners to isolate Hamas and further squeeze its political and military leadership.
HIGH RISK, HIGH REWARD

Up to this point, CIA Director Bill Burns has been presiding over the cease-fire negotiations between Israel and Hamas, which are being conducted in a low-key fashion with as much privacy as is possible. Instead of forcing decisions, the mediators prefer to call recesses and reconvene later to discuss disagreements under what they hope will be better conditions. The theory behind this approach is that by buying time and space for further discussion, the gaps will be whittled down over time and eventually present a zone of agreement. Although these methods have been effective in many contexts, they clearly have not been in this case.

By contrast, shuttle diplomacy, a term coined to describe former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's mediation between Israel and Arab countries after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, is high-stakes and high-profile. It involves a senior U.S. official flying between capitals—“shuttling” between belligerents who do not speak directly to each other—to negotiate directly with the parties until the final gaps are closed, sometimes making multiple stops in each country during a single trip. This form of diplomacy is designed to force the belligerents to choose between making difficult concessions and saying no to a cabinet-level U.S. official, with clear negative consequences.

During shuttles, the mediator seeks to maximize pressure and deprive the parties of time to temporize, defer decisions, or let the mediators down gently. U.S. officials conducting shuttle diplomacy will try to stay on the road and maintain the pressure as long as it takes to finalize an agreement; in one case, Kissinger spent 35 straight days in the Middle East. At other times, American envoys have conducted several rounds of shuttling before getting results.

Washington needs to undertake a much more proactive shuttle diplomacy aimed at ending the war in the next several weeks.

Shuttle diplomacy has been most effective when it is accompanied by clear consequences for noncompliance. The mediator wields the threat of publicly blaming the recalcitrant party or parties for the failure of talks. This is what James Baker, a successful practitioner of shuttle diplomacy as secretary of state in the George H. W. Bush administration, referred to as “leaving the dead cat” on the doorstep of the side at fault. When naming and shaming is complemented by other threats—sanctions, withholding arms shipments, the possibility that one belligerent will expand its operations—it has been possible to alter the calculus of foreign leaders.

Using these methods, Kissinger mediated two disengagement agreements between Israel and Egypt and one between Israel and Syria from 1974 to 1975. Former President Jimmy Carter later sealed the 1979 peace treaty between Israel and Egypt by shuttling between Jerusalem and Cairo, and Baker successfully orchestrated the 1991 Madrid peace conference on the Arab-Israeli conflict over several regional trips.

To be clear, shuttle diplomacy is not a deus ex machina. Shuttles do not always succeed. The administrations of President Ronald Reagan and President Bill Clinton both engaged in shuttle diplomacy of a sort, with decidedly uneven results. The United States also incurs a greater reputational cost when shuttle diplomacy fails.

There is also a risk that a party will be less willing to compromise on a position after it has taken a very public stand in opposition to the United States, making an issue a matter of pride and honor. Nonstate actors, particularly terrorist groups, are often less sensitive to naming and shaming than nation-states are, although Baker's shuttle diplomacy worked with the Palestine Liberation Organization before it was recognized by Israel as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people in the Oslo accords. In the current conflict, the inaccessibility of Hamas's leader, Yahya Sinwar, who would be the final decision-maker on any agreement, and the limits of direct U.S. influence on Hamas would make this task even more challenging.
A QUESTION OF WILL

Still, shuttle diplomacy represents the best chance for the United States and its regional partners to end the war in Gaza in the near term and thereby provide a pathway to regional de-escalation. The reported sticking points in current talks—the number of Palestinian prisoners to be released and control over the Gazan-Egyptian border—are not insurmountable. Quantitative issues, such as how many Palestinian prisoners are to be freed, are more amenable to compromise than binary choices between two extremes. On the so-called Philadelphi Corridor along the Gazan-Egyptian border, Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant has reportedly challenged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's contention that the Israel Defense Forces cannot withdraw without endangering Israeli security.

The primary barrier to an agreement between Israel and Hamas is, as Burns has said publicly, “a question of political will,” not the absence of clever formulations to bridge gaps. And the political pressure that Blinken could generate by shuttling between Egypt, Israel, and Qatar is precisely what is needed if the United States is to have any hope of breaking the impasse. With no more elections left to run in, Biden is in a better position to absorb the political costs of failed shuttle diplomacy than either of his potential successors would be.

Shuttle diplomacy is not for the faint of heart. Blinken would have to persuade Netanyahu that he has something to lose by spurning the United States. In this vein, the Biden administration could threaten to publicly label Netanyahu a danger to the U.S.-Israeli partnership or, in a major speech, clearly express a loss of faith in his handling of the war. Although Biden's popularity in Israel has dipped since the start of 2024, 57 percent of Israelis overall and 66 percent of Jewish Israelis express confidence in the U.S. president, suggesting that a public rebuke of the divisive Netanyahu could influence Israeli officials' and civilians' attitudes.

Another option would be to use Executive Order 14115, issued by Biden in February, to sanction extremist ministers in the Israeli government, such as Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich and Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, who are stoking instability in the West Bank. U.S. sanctions would likely increase the ministers' appeal on the far right, but the stigma of being designated by Israel's closest ally could also generate more pressure on the government.

The administration has already suspended the delivery of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel to protest military operations in the Gazan city of Rafah. If necessary to reach an agreement, Biden and Blinken should threaten to withhold additional weapons systems that have been implicated in civilian casualties in Gaza and deemed unessential to Israel's security, such as white phosphorous shells. It is possible to strike a balance between meeting Israeli security requirements and making clear that the United States will not indefinitely support a war causing so many civilian casualties and producing diminishing security returns at best. Such threats are not unprecedented in the U.S.-Israeli relationship; in the past, they have been employed regularly. Every U.S. president since Lyndon Johnson, with the exceptions of Clinton and Donald Trump—that is, nine of the last 11 administrations—has threatened to withhold, or has actually withheld, weapons systems or other aid in order to influence Israeli policy.
PRESSURE BY PROXY

Since U.S. diplomats don't interact directly with Hamas leaders, Washington will have to work with Arab mediators to intensify pressure on Sinwar. Many Arab countries have applied pressure on Hamas, but there is much more they can do, especially publicly. By demonstrating a willingness to put pressure on Israel, the administration would be in a stronger position to demand that the United States' other regional partners squeeze Hamas. Critically, the United States, Egypt, and Qatar should insist that Hamas's leader delegate negotiating authority to someone outside Gaza to facilitate U.S. shuttling.

Empowering a Hamas official located in Doha or Cairo would allow Blinken to secure real-time, authoritative feedback and answers from Hamas through Qatar and Egypt. This is an admittedly complex negotiating format involving U.S. envoys shuttling between Israeli officials and their Egyptian and Qatari counterparts, who are themselves shuttling between Hamas and Israel and the United States. But it would be no more complicated than Baker's shuttling between Israel, Jordan, and the Palestine Liberation Organization (the latter through an unofficial “advisory delegation”) in the early 1990s.

In addition to persuading Arab countries to immediately adopt a more aggressive posture on enforcing sanctions against Hamas, the Biden administration should push them to publicly call out Sinwar's obstructionist role in the talks. Other Hamas leaders appear more willing to negotiate, and Arab criticism of Sinwar could strengthen their hand. This is particularly important, given that Israel's killing of Ismail Haniyeh—who, even with his clear culpability for acts of terrorism, was advocating a cease-fire—may have weakened other proponents of negotiation within Hamas. Convincing Arab countries that Hamas members charged for their roles in murdering Americans must be remanded into U.S. custody will be extremely difficult, but the Biden administration has a strategic, legal, and moral obligation to try.

Although Israel and Egypt disagree about how extensive the tunnels between Gaza and Egypt are, it is undeniable that Hamas has smuggled weapons through this route. Closer cooperation between the United States, Egypt, and Israel on shutting down those networks and better policing of Gaza's Mediterranean coastline must be part of this equation. Egypt should also join Qatar in threatening to deny Hamas officials access to, and expel them from, their territory.

All of this is a heavy lift, and the United States could fail even if this approach is executed perfectly. Given the stakes, however, the administration should use every tool at its disposal. The lives of Israelis, Palestinians, Lebanese, and Americans literally depend on it.

By Andrew P. Miller

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