The hostage deal means Israel Is fighting the clock
Israel needs time to root out Hamas. But the longer the war goes on, the likelier it is to spiral into a regional conflict drawing in the US. Since October 17, Iranian-supplied militias have hit US forces in Iraq and Syria with more than 60 rocket attacks. If a rocket or drone kills American troops, the Biden administration will face a crisis of its own. It could either retaliate against Iran and risk unpredictable military, economic and electoral consequences, or retreat from the Mideast, abandoning Israel and ceding a crucial region in the US’s great-power struggle with China.
Few observers are better placed to understand these dilemmas than Michael Oren. An Israeli-American historian of the US’s relationship with the Middle East, Mr Oren served in Gaza with the Israel Defence Forces, then advised on several rounds of peace negotiations with the Palestinians. He was Israel’s ambassador to Washington during the Obama years. He held the Gaza brief as Benjamin Netanyahu’s deputy prime minister.
Mr Oren praises President Joe Biden’s forthright support of Israel. He agrees with the president’s statement that “a ceasefire is not peace” as long as Hamas “clings to its ideology of destruction.” It is war by other means, allowing the terrorists to “rebuild their stockpile of rockets, reposition fighters and restart the killing by attacking innocents again”. Mr Oren expects U.S. and international pressure for ceasefires to grow “exponentially” in the coming weeks.
A ceasefire deprives Israel of military momentum and transfers the initiative to Hamas. Now that Israel has agreed to a short ceasefire, the Biden administration and its Qatari interlocutors will expect longer ceasefires. Hamas will remain armed and dangerous in Gaza, despite Israel’s war aims and the US’s stated goals, and will use this ceasefire to regroup. The ceasefire’s terms allow Hamas to extend the truce by releasing 10 hostages a day. As the possibility of a permanent truce nears, and as Hamas starts to trade adult, male and military hostages, the group’s demands will rise. The US will pressure Israel to release hundreds of Palestinian terrorists.
The partial hostage release also increases pressure inside Israel for further ceasefires. Israeli society, and Mr Netanyahu’s cabinet, are already split by a real-life “Sophie’s choice”: Who is returned home, and who is left behind? The Israeli government insists its Gaza campaign will resume once the ceasefire lapses, but a combination of domestic and international pressures may prevent Israel from regaining military momentum. The State Department is already refusing to endorse an Israeli move into southern Gaza, citing humanitarian concerns.
A temporary ceasefire that becomes permanent is incompatible with the Biden administration’s commitment to Israel’s security. More than 200,000 Israelis are internally displaced from the southern regions adjoining Gaza and the northern border with Lebanon. This ceasefire with Hamas won’t return those Israelis home. It will, however, embolden Iran and its proxies, none of whom are parties to the ceasefire deal. Hezbollah’s attacks across Israel’s northern border have intensified in recent weeks, as has the pace of rocket attacks by Iranian-sponsored militias on American bases in Iraq and Syria. The Houthis of Yemen, removed from the Foreign Terrorist Organisations list when the Biden administration came into office, have hijacked a cargo ship in the Red Sea and launched ballistic missiles at Israel.
“What’s going to happen when the message gets out that we can be hit more or less with impunity, and when we try to defend ourselves, someone’s going to slap a ceasefire on us?” Mr Oren asks.
Restoring Israel’s deterrence is a matter of survival for the Jewish state. It’s also an asset that the US is defending by resupplying Israel and sending out two carrier strike groups to the region. Israelis now appreciate the indispensability of American support more than at any time since the 1973 Yom Kippur War. It’s vital the Biden administration uses its leverage wisely.
Mr Oren endorses reports that after October 7 Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant advised launching a pre-emptive strike on Hezbollah before addressing Hamas’s smaller rocket arsenal in Gaza. Mr Gallant was overruled in the cabinet partly, Mr Oren believes, because of “tremendous pressure” from the Biden administration. The president’s one-word warning to Iran and its assets—“Don’t” — also applies to Israel.
Mr Oren hears several clocks ticking at once. A short ceasefire won’t slow any of them, and it will exacerbate some of their pressures. There is the “ammo clock”: The IDF needs to be resupplied consistently with US-made advanced munitions. There is the “reservist clock”: Israel has mobilised an army equivalent to those of Britain and France combined; its young men and women, he says, form “the backbone of our hi-tech economy.” There is the “economic clock”: Foreign investment and tourism have collapsed, and Israel is burning money on the war. There is the “humanitarian clock”: Footage continues to show civilian casualties and more than a million displaced Gazans.
Israel needs to stop these clocks to survive. The Biden administration should create time and diplomatic space for Israel’s forces to break Hamas. That means preventing the terrorists from setting the timetable in the Gaza war, letting Israel strike Hezbollah as necessary, and re-establishing American deterrence against Iranian-sponsored rocket attacks. It also means rethinking America’s Iran strategy.
Israel’s leaders, Mr. Oren among them, made the mistake of believing Hamas could be bought off with Qatari cash and work permits. The Obama administration, he says, “made the same mistake” about Iran. The Biden administration, which transferred $US6bn to Iran to secure the release of five American hostages in September and allowed sanctions on Iran’s missile technology to lapse, is under the same delusion. The Democrats’ long campaign to escape the Mideast by placating Iran has “completely boomeranged” in “abject failure,” Mr Oren says. The US has been dragged back into the region by Iranian-sponsored aggression.
Two other clocks are ticking: the countdown to Iran’s nuclear breakout and the countdown to what Mr Oren calls the “crunch” moment when an Iranian missile takes American lives or hits a US Navy vessel. That would also be a direct hit on “the contradictions of American policy”. Time is tight for Israel, but the U.S. is approaching a fateful moment too.
Dominic Green is a a fellow of the Royal Historical Society
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With a four-day ceasefire reportedly going into effect on Friday, time isn’t on Israel’s side in its war with Hamas in Gaza. Israel already faces challenges unprecedented in the history of war. A terrorist enemy dedicated to its destruction holds hundreds of hostages in a complex tunnel network and uses civilians as human shields. Israeli society, already riven by political infighting, is traumatised by Hamas’s October 7 assault and divided over how to handle the hostage crisis. Further ceasefires mean the recovery of more hostages, but this will slow and eventually halt Israel’s effort to break Hamas’s control over Gaza. That would be a strategic defeat for both Israel and the US.