We are in a Bad Place

Trump’s blank check for Bibi likely means a restart of the war

We are in a bad place on so many things. Trump is cuddling up to Putin and embracing his position on the war in Ukraine, and more broadly embracing Putin’s vision of an international order based on bullying and tyranny. Meanwhile, he is levying tariffs on our most important trading partners and allies, likely causing major economic damage. And of course Elon Musk and his Doge minions are still running roughshod over the federal government including taking steps that could lead thousands to die from Malaria, Tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS.

It’s easy in all of this to forget about what’s going on in Gaza, but unfortunately it looks like we’re more likely than not to be heading back to conflict and the Administration’s approach of giving a full blank check to Bibi Netanyahu is likely leading us down this pathway that most Israelis and certainly the hostage families oppose.

Over the weekend, Israel announced it would support a new proposal purportedly offered by the Trump Administration for a new fifty day ceasefire and release of half the remaining hostages upfront with the other half released at the end of the 50 days if the parties can agree on post-conflict governance and an end to the war. Hamas rejected this proposal, and when it did Netanyahu announced he would cut off all humanitarian assistance going into Gaza except for water.

First, I obviously wish Hamas had agreed to the new proposal, but I’m not surprised that it was rejected. The whole purpose of the initial framework of the deal was to negotiate Phase 2 and an end of the war during the first 42 day ceasefire or at least make progress. For Hamas this was a key component. Unfortunately, little progress was made to a great extent because Netanyahu refused to seriously engage in Phase 2 negotiations knowing any deal would likely bring down his coalition (even though he could get the votes he needed for the deal from the opposition). So, it’s not surprising that Hamas is not interested in giving up more hostages for the promise of negotiations to end the war, when that was one of the key elements of the first deal and didn’t happen.

In the aftermath of Hamas’ rejection, the U.S. has stood behind Netanyahu even as he has announced a cut off of all aid to Gaza. It has gone further using emergency powers to bypass regular order with Congress and announce $4 billion in new arms sales - even though these sales won’t get to Israel for a couple of years so no need for the emergency. And Trump has publicly signaled that it’s fine if Israel goes back to war.

The rationale for all of this, is that it’s designed to get Hamas to take a deal by applying pressure. Hopefully, it works. However, the much more likely outcome is that it retriggers the war, and once that momentum starts it becomes much harder to stop, and we might be in for months of fighting again with new suffering for Palestinian civilians, hostages dying, Israel paying a great military cost, and Hamas still in power.

There are also a number of other major problems with this approach. Cutting off all aid into Gaza and punishing a population of 2.5 million people including women and children who do not support Hamas, is immoral. That is one of the reasons why the Biden Administration always opposed any Israeli cut off of aid into Gaza, even though it did not always succeed in getting the Israelis to allow aid in.

Reportedly, this suspension in aid will not have immediate implications since after six weeks of aid flowing in there is supposedly a surplus. I’m skeptical - even if the situation is not as bad as it was six weeks ago, does that mean that a population of 2.5 million people can live with no new supplies of food or medicine coming for weeks? Already, there are reports that prices for basic goods are starting to spike as people anticipate upcoming shortages and are starting to hoard.

Proponents of this policy have long argued and continue to argue that the U.S. didn’t provide humanitarian aid to Nazi Germany during World War II so why does Israel need to provide aid to civilians in Gaza that will be diverted by Hamas. First, it’s important to point out that Israel is not providing aid to Hamas. It allows aid provided by the United States and the international community to enter Gaza. Second, the comparison to World War II is simplistic. The nature of how wars are fought has changed in the past 85 years and many things that were done during WWII were in retrospect unnecessary or overdone and did little to help the allied cause while killing many civilians. The bombing of Dresden and firebombing of Tokyo for example, are not exactly models for how to conduct modern warfare and siege tactics shouldn’t be either. Should we be discounting other societal and global norms that have been established since 1945, simply by saying “that’s how we did it then”? That would be deeply problematic to say the least.

Beyond the moral question, there is also the question of effectiveness. Here a historical analogy does work - that of the U.S. response to the 9/11 attacks. The attacks caused societal anger and trauma that led us to take all kinds of terrible and ultimately ineffective actions – CIA black sites, invasion of Iraq, Guantanamo, and Abu Gharaib to name just a few. In fact, in our most effective counterterrorism and counterinsurgency campaign in recent memory – the counter ISIS campaign – we did the exact opposite of withholding aid. We actually had an integrated strategy that first cleared ISIS from specific areas, and then followed it up with a surge in assistance and early recovery to help alternative governance take root. That would have made a lot more sense as part of a strategy than what Israel has done over the past 15 months.

Another argument for pursuing this approach is that eventually the war will have to start again, because that’s the only way to get rid of Hamas. I’ve already reviewed why that is simply not true, and that if Israel continues with its current search and destroy approach it’s just going to keep going back into Gaza again and again and again only to see Hamas re-emerge after it leaves. And if you don’t believe me, here is a video of Bibi Netanyahu from over a year ago saying that Israel was just weeks away from “Total Victory.”

Finally, there is the argument that only this approach can get the hostages out. However, the hostage families overwhelmingly oppose this strategy and would far prefer for Netanyahu to seriously engage on Phase 2. Of the nearly 150 Israeli hostages who have been returned to Israel alive since October 7th only 8 were rescued via military operation. The rest came about through diplomatic deals.

The reality is that there is overwhelming evidence that the best approach here is to get the Israelis and Hamas back to negotiations. Lets hope that happens, but it feels much more likely that what we are seeing is a flashing green light from Trump to Netanyahu that will eventually restart the war.