#WTH How does the Hamas-Israel war end?
On Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and deradicalization. With Elliott Abrams
“Ceasefire now” is the mantra of Israel-haters and antisemites the world over. But other than an end to Israel’s effort to eradicate Hamas, they don’t have much vision for what comes next. Neither, it turns out, does anyone else. On the pod, Elliott Abrams calls the two-state solution a “hologram” for right now. So what should we be thinking about the day after?
When the fighting stops, Israel is still going to be in charge of security in Gaza. Call it stage 1B.
War on Hezbollah is inevitable, but it can’t come straight after Gaza. Apart from anything else, Israel needs to release its reservists.
Plus Palestinian “autonomy,” dealing with Qatar, deradicalizing our own State Department, and much more…
There’s very little clear thinking going on about what to do about Gaza. It would be nice if everything could be wrapped up — peace processor-style — with a big fancy conference that ends with peace in our time. (Munich worked so well, after all.) The bureaucrats and graybeards of foreign ministries the world over love the pomp, chardonnay, and brie at these shindigs. But would there be any purpose behind such an effort, other than to assuage the sense that “someone should do something for the Palestinians?”
No.
So let’s step away from the BS ideas for a moment and talk about the building blocks for a better future. The Israelis aren’t going to relinquish security until they’re sure they’ve picked off the last of Hamas’ leaders. So is there a way to start ameliorating Palestinian lives while that’s happening? Sure: Get rid of UNWRA. Offload the Qataris. Block out Iran. End the corruption that has plagued the Palestinians, and start giving small groups of community and village and municipality leaders the autonomy to deliver aid and reconstruction. Cut out the middle man.
Then what? Start to coalesce around who is PNG (persona non grata) in the Palestinian recovery. The United Nations is disqualified after its disgraceful performance since October 7. Think that’s not doable? The US is the number one donor to the UN budget. Offer Qatar a choice: The US moves the al-Udeid airbase and lists Qatar as a state sponsor of terrorism unless Hamas, al Qaeda, ISIS, PIJ, and Al Jazeera are gone. Think that’s hard? It isn’t. We have plenty of options for our aircraft in the Middle East. Bring the boot down on Iran’s neck with Trump-era sanctions and a firm word to its axis of evil sponsors in Russia and China.
We hear you saying, Joe Biden isn’t going to do that. Probably you’re right. But Congress can.
Next step: Clean out the federal government. Bureaucrats, like political appointees, serve at the pleasure of the President of the United States. If you put on a mask and demonstrated against the President’s policies, that is your first amendment right. But federal employment is not an entitlement. (We hear the collective screams of the federal bureaucrat unions here… ) Yes, it won’t be simple, and in some cases, it can’t happen. But it’s time for our Commander in Chief to put his foot down, take names, and deal with the revolts in his ranks.
Yes, there’s a lot more, but this is a start. Let us know what you think… and thank you so very much for making this year a great one for the WTH team. We’re grateful for you every single day. Next week, we re-up a pod about the 14th amendment (think Trump off the ballot in Colorado). Don’t miss it, John Yoo was smart and clear. We’ll be posting some content here on the sub, and as always, we welcome your input.
Happy Christmas, New Year, Festivus and everything else you might celebrate. Do it with joy and optimism. And thank you again. 💕
HIGHLIGHTS
Why is the Biden admin urging Israel to end the war?
EA: I think the real question is, what is the administration saying in private, and what do the top officials actually think and say? And maybe I'm a little bit soft on the administration here, but I go back to what you said about the base. I think some of their posturing, "Oh. We're pushing the Israelis very hard," is for their base. I don't hear very many complaints from the Israelis. They don't seem to me to feel that they're under enormous amounts of pressure to finish the thing early. And remember, there's internal pressure in Israel, and by that, I mean mostly the economy. They can't keep 400,000 reservists away from work for a year. They've got to get back to something more like normalcy, so I tend to be a bit charitable toward the administration on the question of whether they're forcing the Israelis to stop prematurely.
How long can this conflict last?
EA: Assume for a moment that the United States is saying to Israel, "You have to decimate Hamas. You have to eliminate them as a military threat. Just do what you need to do," I don't think it would be very different from what's happening right now, which I would say is this. This stage, stage one, or maybe this is stage two, stage one was the bombing, so this stage, stage two goes until something like the end of January. Maybe it goes in February, but we're talking now about from where we are a month, maybe. If there's a difference between the Americans and the Israelis, I think the administration is trying to shorten it by a couple of weeks. It's not a major difference, so maybe you get to the end of January, and then they have an intermediate stage before the fighting largely stops.
People talk about the day after, but I think there's a stage before the day after. There's a stage where Israel is clearly in charge of security, because there's nobody else there to do it, and that's certainly six months. If you're thinking of organizing an Arab force, you're thinking of PA, or whatever you're thinking of, it doesn't happen very quickly. So we get to the summer, I think, with Israel largely or entirely in charge of security, while friendly Arab states and the United States try to figure out what is the fourth stage the day after. That's what I think it looks like, and I think we get to stage three, where Israel starts releasing lots of reservists and removing troops from Gaza, but is still fighting the remnants of Hamas. I think we get there maybe in February, and it lasts maybe six months, something like that.
Deradicalization, like denazification, is necessary, right?
EA: You're using a model from World War II, Japan and Germany, but the model that is more recent is Iraq and Afghanistan, where the United States, we didn't do any of that. I mean, we did de-Ba'athification, which a lot of people think was probably taken too far and was a mistake. I don't think we're going to get there in Gaza. I think what the Israelis have to do is keep their eye on the security threat to them from Hamas and Islamic jihad. That's the critical thing, so that Israelis don't have to face a security threat of terrorism or of rockets and missiles coming out of Gaza. They can achieve that. Then you get to the question of, "Well, who's going to rule Gaza in the medium run?"
There are things that can be done about, I wouldn't call it de-radicalization, I would call it defunding those who are teaching radicalism, and over a, let's say, five or ten year period, that's got to happen too. As for the Palestinian state, I think I've said before, with you guys, I don't think there's ever going to be a Palestinian state. It is too great. It would be too great a security threat to Jordan and to Israel. Certainly, with Iran desperately trying with the Houthis and the Shia militias in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank, and Gaza, trying to encircle Israel and destroy Israel. A sovereign, an independent Palestinian state would simply turn into a proxy for Iran, and I think it's not going to happen.
How do we start that process?
EA: The formula that is probably least likely to work is to have Israel, that is to say, a bunch of Jews, trying to de-radicalize Arabs. That's not going to work. Where it has worked in, let's say Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, it's because Arabs and an Arab government, a legitimate government set about trying to achieve it. And there's been progress. Where I agree with you is, certainly we should try to stop people from radicalizing, from making it worse. For example, the way it is done in UNRWA schools or the way, to some extent though a decreasing extent, it's done in Palestinian authority schools.
I mean, the one I'd really like to fix, because it's the worst offender and has been for 25 years, is Al Jazeera. If you got your sense of what's going on in the world, what's going on in the Gaza War, what's Israel all about, from Al Jazeera, you too would turn into a terrorist. I remember this from the Iraq War because Al Jazeera cost us American lives by inciting people to violence against Americans in Iraq. Now they're doing it again.
And it's not just Gaza I'm worried about. Al Jazeera has a very broad listenership throughout the Arab world. And it's a crime. It's a crime. I'm not quite sure what can be done about it. But more places should do, I would argue what the Israelis have done, which is to close down the Al Jazeera office in their country.
Look, this has nothing to do with freedom of the press. Al Jazeera is the voice of the Qatari royal family. So whether you give them free rein or not, it's got nothing to do with freedom of the press. That's not a radio station, it's a government mouthpiece.
And what about public sentiment at home?
EA: You need a de-radicalization process in the State Department. Now that is very difficult, very difficult.
Look, I do expect the administration to keep talking about the two state solution. When I talk to them, they understand that it's sort of something on the horizon. And I think the Gulf Arabs, I always put the Qataris on the side, but let's say the Saudis, Emiratis, Egyptians, Jordanians, recognize that there's a difference between something that's on the horizon and something that's actually going to happen.
What I can't figure out yet is whether the administration is smart enough to know this has to be a kind of mirage, dream, hologram or whether they want to start again with negotiations. That will fail. It's interesting that not Netanyahu, but President Herzog of Israel has said, "We are not ready for that. We're not going to do it."
Will Israel need to deal with Hezbollah next?
EA: I thought from the beginning that Hezbollah would not cause a war. And I'm happy of course that I was right about that. I still believe that. That is some people have said, "Well, they're going to wait until the Israelis are tired in April, and then they're going to do it." I don't think that's right.
But I think that war is coming. I think it is not coming next year, I think the Israelis need time partly for their economy to recover and partly for their army to recover. That is, this will be months of combat. Reservists need to go home for a good while, there needs to be a full replenishment of the armories. There need to be new plans taking into account whatever they found out in Gaza.
But the logic of it I think is too clear. That is, what they learned in Gaza was, don't believe you can psyche out the enemy and know exactly what the enemy is thinking and when the enemy is going to do X or Y, look at capabilities. And the Hezbollah capabilities are clear. And their ability to keep northern Israel near the border empty because people don't want to live there is clear.
So I in my own visit to Israel in December, early December, the sense I got from all the Israelis I spoke to was, this is pretty much inevitable unless Iran and Hezbollah change their conduct. There's no sign that that's going to happen. When you look at what the Houthis are doing, the suggestion is that the Iranians are doubling down.
So, I think that's going to happen and it's going to be a pretty terrible war. But it seems to me almost inevitable given Iran's conduct in the region.
But really, it still points back to Iran, right? What have we been doing?
EA: Unfortunately, this has been going on for decades and it's been bipartisan. I mean, they've been killing Americans basically since 1979. I mean, think of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia and the marine barracks in Beirut, hundreds of Americans killed in Iraq during the Iraq war by Iran, not just by Iranian proxies. And we don't do anything about it, so they keep doing it of course. They're not deterred.
I have a little bit of hope that the administration will recognize that it's got to hit the Houthis. But doing that, even if you do it, again, is hitting a proxy about whom the Iranians don't care. So kill some Houthis, they don't care.
Ultimately, you're right, this is a war between Israel and Iran. And it is Iran's effort, first of all, to eliminate the state of Israel by surrounding it, but also to become the power, the dominant power, in the Persian Gulf region.
The question is whether we're going to do anything about it? And we do not have any kind of reasonable anti-Iran policy. What we have today is Obama's Iran policy. It's the same people bringing back the same policy.
How do we deal with Iran?
EA: I think you go back to what Trump was doing in the last half of his administration, which is a real effort to hurt their economy, to deprive them of the money that they use to support all these proxies, and to try to keep the level of internal dissension down. That's first, economic warfare.
Secondly, when they hit us through a proxy, we hit back. At the very end of the Trump administration we did, as Marc said, we the United States did say to them, "If you hit us, whether through a proxy or not, we'll hit you." And it sobered them up, and that is the position I think we should start taking.
And that doesn't mean bombing Tehran tomorrow morning, and it doesn't mean World War III, and it doesn't mean a replay of the Iraq war. It means making them pay a direct price, and there are plenty of targets that could start you low on the ladder of escalation and deliver a very clear message to Iran that the old game is over.
The other part of it is we should be doing a lot more to support the people of Iran in their struggle against the regime that they hate. We don't do zero, but we don't really have a big human rights campaign against Iran, and we should.
What is needed for the Palestinians?
EA: First, I would say that Palestinians have been cursed by two things. They've been cursed by terrible, terrible leadership, from Hajar Amin al-Husseini appointed by the British, to Yasser Arafat, whom you could almost say was appointed by the Israelis, that is in the Oslo process. He was brought back from weakness and exile and put back first in Gaza, then in the West Bank. Now you've got Mahmoud Abbas, but it is a tragedy for Palestinians.
The second thing they've been cursed by is their negative nationalism. That is the key goal of Palestinian politics has not been to build a Palestinian state, it's been to destroy the Jewish state, and that is what I think has largely been responsible for the problems they've created for themselves. What do you do now?
First you push for better leadership in the way that the United States really hasn't done except for George W. Bush for several years.
The second thing I'd say is that you try to crush radicalism and radicalization to the extent you can so that for example, you demand, you the funders demand changes in what's being taught in PA schools and in UNRWA schools.
The third thing you do, and this is of course not being done at all, you begin to talk seriously about Palestinian autonomy rather than, I would argue, rather than a sovereign state. The way I'd do it, I think, is to say, "Look, for the moment that looks completely unrealistic, despite all the speeches people give, what is the way to maximize a decent happy life for Palestinians, a prosperous life, for Palestinians rather than constantly negotiating things that are not happening and are not going to happen? What can you do to raise the per capita income? What can you do to help produce good government, at least let's say at the local level? What can you do to make Palestinian lives better?"
And Palestinians support Hamas overwhelmingly still…
EA: There's a lot of truth to that, obviously, at least I think there is. I think first you'd need to know some sense of the numbers, that is are we talking about 90%, 50%, 20%. Secondly, there's the issue of salience that is, "Okay, you hate the Israelis, you wish they'd go away. You kind of think Hamas and other groups or fine, but how do you want to live your life? Do you want to do that, or do you acknowledge now that that's not doable?"
I don't think we're going to be able to eliminate Arab antisemitism. We can't eliminate antisemitism in Europe and the United States. What we can do is punish it. What we can do is make it illegal. And what we can do, of course, is strengthen the Jewish communities.
But I think de-radicalization, yes, I understand that and I agree, for example, in what is taught in schools. But if the goal is to eliminate the hatred of Jews, well that goal goes back a couple of thousand years and has never been successfully achieved.
Here at home: where are these demonstrations coming from?
EA: It does raise the question, as all these demonstrations on college campuses do, what's being taught in those classes, and what's being learned in those classes? One of the things that's being learned is that rules don't apply. It's very striking. Most of these demonstrations violate the rules on the campuses in which they take place. Who's punished? Nobody.
I mean, one of the ways to deal with this is to say, "We have a rule here that says you can't invade the library and have a demonstration while people are studying," for example. So when you do that, you're suspended or you're expelled. That would be the last such demonstration in that library on that campus. If campuses did that, you would at least be telling people, again, "Whatever sickness is in your head, keep it in your head. Because if you express it in this society, you'll be punished." This is what we did to try to help deal with racism in the United States.
But I agree with you, Marc. It's just horrifying to think of what these young people have been and are being taught at great price in what are supposedly the best hundred colleges and universities in America. It's horrifying.
What should be done about those in government who protest their president?
EA: I went back to the State Department in the Trump Administration after 30 years away from it, and I must say I found the culture completely unchanged. It's a very strong culture. I also found that you can deal with it as a Republican political appointee, but you don't deal with it frankly by pampering people and coddling them. You deal with it by saying, "Here's the policy. Now, I want to implement the policy in an intelligent way. So if you can help me and give you advice about how to do that, that would be great. But this is the policy." And I think it's what Blinken did is exactly wrong. As I understand it, after all these protests, they've organized listening sessions and therapy sessions, and next thing you know, they'll be bringing him therapy dogs. I mean, this is not the way to handle these protests. The way to handle it is to say to people, "Nobody elected you, and you don't make policy. The President made this policy. Now, help him implement it or leave."
Full transcript here.
SHOWNOTES
Uncivil Servants: Foreign Policy Bureaucrats Target Israel (Elliott Abrams, WSJ, November 17 2023)
More Than 500 U.S. Officials Sign Letter Protesting Biden’s Israel Policy (NYT, November 14 2023)
How Will This War End? How Can the Next One be Prevented? (Foreign Policy, Elliott Abrams, December 7 2023)
Israel remains committed to a long-term timetable to take out Hamas despite growing U.S. impatience (Jewish Insider, December 19 2023)
Remarks by President Biden at a Campaign Reception (White House Press, December 12 2023)
Nods and Nudges: How U.S. Is Pressing Israel to Rein in Gaza Assault (New York Times, December 18 2023)
Why Biden Won’t Break With Netanyahu (Foreign Policy, December 18 2023)
Netanyahu is picking a fight with Israel’s best friend: Joe Biden (Washington Post, December 18 2023)
Critical Threats Project Iran Update, December 18 2023
Israel-Hamas War Enters Deadlier Phase With More Close Combat (Wall Street Journal, December 13 2023)
Israel Security Agency Chief: "We Are Determined to Complete Our Mission in Gaza" (Maariv-Jerusalem Post, December 12 2023)
What Israel Needs (National Interest, November 24 2023)
Harvard Harris toplines (December 13-14, 2023)