Hurtling Toward the Brink of Disaster

While delivering a speech to the United Nations only weeks before the fifty-year anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that his country was “on the cusp of a historic peace agreement” with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. “Such a peace will go a long way to ending the Arab-Israeli conflict,” he said, “But there’s a fly in this ointment, because rest assured, the fanatics ruling Iran will do everything they can to thwart this historic peace.”

Weeks later that peace was shattered when more than 1,400 people were killed and some 200 more were taken hostage by the terrorist group Hamas on the single deadliest day in Israel’s history. Since that attack Israeli forces have launched thousands of air bombardments in the Gaza Strip, killing more than 4,000 people (mostly civilians) and injuring many more according to estimates provided by numerous international media outlets.

As the world awaits a ground invasion by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) into Gaza, let’s consider the larger context in which the events in Israel are unfolding to understand (1) how we got to this point, (2) who the key players are, and (3) where we go from here.

How We Got Here

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the most intractable and long-standing political disputes of the last century. While its long and bloodied history forms the foundation for the latest round of violence, the political divisions in Israel, an impending power vacuum within the Palestinian Authority, and the ongoing normalization talks between Israel and its Arab neighbors are critical backdrops for helping us understand the timing of the recent Hamas attacks, as well as their sophistication and success in wreaking so much mayhem on Israeli society.

Israeli Politics: A Divided Society

In the lead-up to October 7th, large-scale protests had been taking place across Israel in response to the government's push for wide-ranging judicial reform that would (among other things) diminish the ability of courts to conduct judicial reviews of Israel’s Basic Laws and change the makeup of the Judicial Selection Committee. In practice, the changes would help concentrate power within the executive and help Netanyahu possibly obtain favorable outcomes in several major corruption cases against him.

While it’s difficult to know if and to what degree the political divisions within Israeli society caused the Netanyahu government to take its eye off the ball in Gaza, the proposed laws would arguably have the effect of strengthening the hold of settlers within Parliament and are seen as part of a larger effort by Israel’s far-right to annex additional Palestinian territory and bring the West Bank under full Israeli control.?

Needless to say, the current government is especially unpopular with Palestinians and any additional efforts to expand settlements and annex land in the West Bank could have played a role in motivating the recent attacks by Hamas.

Palestinian Succession Crisis

Ever since the death of Yasser Arafat, Fatah, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and the Palestinian Authority have been led by his successor Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas is unpopular, his organization is widely perceived as corrupt, and most importantly, he is seen as having been ineffective in negotiating an end to the Israeli occupation. He is also 87 years old with no obvious successor, having thus far refused to create a process for selecting one. This has created an impending leadership crisis within the Palestinian Authority made worse by the deteriorating security situation in the West Bank where local militant groups have been vying for power.

An obvious candidate to replace the aging president as de facto champion of the Palestinian cause is Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas, whose terrorist organization has been actively working to destabilize the Palestinian Authority by highlighting its corruption and ineptitude and by conducting terror attacks against Israel in order to provoke Israeli reprisals against it and Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

When seen in this light, the recent attacks by Hamas can also be interpreted as an attempt by this organization to establish itself as the most consequential actor in Palestinian politics and as the main resistance force against the occupation of Palestine. Hamas was also effective in thwarting diplomatic efforts on the part of Saudi Arabia to not only normalize relations with Israel but to extract from the Jewish state concessions that could improve Palestinians’ daily lives and maintain the possibility of a two-state solution. The latter is what we turn to next.

Arab-Israeli Normalization & the U.S. Pivot

The ongoing peace talks between Saudi Arabia and Israel are critical for not only understanding the role that Iran has likely played in training and equipping Hamas ahead of the recent attacks, but also for understanding the strategic interests of four of the five key stakeholders involved in the current conflict (the United States, Israel, Saudi-Arabia, and Iran).

The Biden administration has committed itself to pivoting the United States out of the Middle East, which is critical to its larger strategic objective of confronting China and thwarting a potential invasion or blockade of Taiwan. This will require the creation of a new security architecture that off-loads most of the burden and cost to regional partners like Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other Gulf States. The Abraham Accords are part of this larger strategic framework and the recent negotiations between the Saudis and Israel form a critical part of its structure. Hamas’ recent attacks may have been partly motivated by a desire to thwart these negotiations, something that U.S. President Joe Biden alluded to as well at a recent campaign fundraiser.

Where We Go From Here

Now that the United States has entered the conflict definitively on the side of the Israelis, the ongoing violence risks spiraling into a larger, regional war involving Iran and its proxies in Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. Suppose those who believe that the Islamic Republic was directly involved in helping to orchestrate the attacks are correct. In that case, this prospect only grows the longer the current bombing campaign in Gaza continues.

While the general consensus seems to be that the Israeli Defense Forces are preparing a ground offensive into Gaza that could commence at any moment, what is less clear is what that invasion will look like, how long it will last, and what its tangible objectives will be beyond the broad aim of destroying Hamas. At the same time, Lebanese-based Islamist militia group Hezbollah (also an Iranian proxy) has vowed that Israel will pay a high price for any ground offensive, raising concerns that it could soon find itself waging a two-front war between its northern and southern borders.?

Since Israel struck back at Hamas following the October 7th attacks, Hezbollah has repeatedly fired on Israeli settlements, leading to retaliatory airstrikes by the IDF on targets in southern Lebanon and an Israeli evacuation of the northern border, including the town of Kiryat Shmona. Meanwhile, a U.S. Navy warship recently shot down missiles appearing to head toward Israel from Yemen and American bases in Iraq and Syria were repeatedly targeted by drone attacks. And of course, the carnage in Gaza continues as thousands of innocent civilians, many of them children, continue to suffer and die in conditions that have enraged the Arab world and that will make it increasingly difficult for Israel to maintain support for its actions in the realm of public opinion as the conflict drags out.

Uncharted Waters

We are in uncharted waters. The United States is already fighting a protracted proxy war against Putin’s Russia in Ukraine putting strains on America’s defense industrial base during a time of political dysfunction at home where concerns about mounting budget deficits and public debt have driven long-term funding costs for the U.S. government to levels not seen in almost two decades.

With U.S. elections on the horizon, a fractured media environment where unverified narratives spread quickly, and an economy that remains on the cusp of a stagflationary recession, the politics of maintaining American commitments abroad are not going to get any easier. Add to that President Biden's increasingly frail public appearances and the real possibility that he may become incapacitated or fall sick during the course of the next year and you begin to envision many ways in which a regional war with Iran could escalate into a full-blown political crisis.

Of course, the big concern in all of this is the Sino-Russian axis and the danger that China in particular not only holds aspirations to displace the United States as the preeminent global power but that recent events have convinced the leadership in Beijing that America is in decline and that now is the time to strike. For China, this would likely mean an invasion or blockade of Taiwan forcing the U.S. Navy into a confrontation with the PLA over the island's defense lest it allow China to dominate Asia in the 21st century as the U.S. has dominated European affairs in the 20th. The danger of a miscalculation if such an event were to take place cannot be overstated.

We are living through the most perilous time in global affairs since at least the early years of the Cold War. The deployment of new weapons systems, dual-use technologies like AI and synthetic biology, and a fractured media ecosystem that amplifies hate and confusion among an already deeply divided electorate are all pushing us toward the brink of disaster.

I don't know what can be done to arrest this development, but I hold out hope that we will find a way through without managing to destroy what could otherwise be an amazing future for humanity.

Demetri

To listen to my recent episode with Kamran Bokhari on the Israel-Palestine conflict, the role Iran may have played in helping plan and support Hamas’ attacks, and the larger global implications click here.

Don’t forget to check the related section for other episodes we have done on the Middle East, including Syria, Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia.

Upgrade Yourself

If you're currently getting the free version of Hidden Forces, you can gain access to exclusive content (Audiophile), as well as hand-edited podcast transcripts and intelligence reports (Super Nerd) here.

For special access to Demetri, his guests, and our brilliant, international community of Genius members, as well as invites to our private dinners, inquire about joining our community here.