By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, LinkedIn, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content, my Linktree with all my public links/profiles) October 18, 2023 (*UPDATE late evening October 18/early AM October 19: further analysis on hospital explosion); *UPDATE October 31: I had some massive technical issues on my site, and an update to the Hospital explosion story mysteriously disappeared, so I have redone that update to include even more information that has been coming out since then about the responsibility for the explosion); all casualty figures are according to respective local officials unless otherwise noted.

(Arabic الترجمة العربية / Hebrew תרגום לעברית) The second article in a series of special reports about the 2023 Israel-Hamas-Middle East Crisis.

See related July 28, 2014 article The Israel-Hamas Gaza High-Stakes Poker Game of Death; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating! Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion. Also, Brian is running for U.S. Senate for Maryland and you can learn about his campaign here.

“How we choose to fight is just as important as what we fight for.”

—Ezra Bridger, Star Wars: Rebels

SILVER SPRING—As I wrote in my last piece, a level of violence has been perpetrated against the Jewish people not seen since the Holocaust and against Israelis like never before, a vile terrorist act by war criminals and legally constituting genocidal ethnic cleansing of an up-close-and-personal nature, in which an increasing toll of over 1,400 Israelis are now known to have been killed since October 7, the vast majority on that single day and defenseless civilians butchered in their homes or a at a peace-themed music and dance festival, in addition to over 4,200 wounded and some 200 hostages abducted into Gaza.

An Ugly Atmosphere but with Rays of Hope Thanks for Biden and Blinken

Obviously, emotions are running high and there are understandable calls for vengeance in the air in Israel.  But emotions and vengeance—and dehumanization—cannot be allowed to eclipse sensible policy that can bring about some of the best possible outcomes.  As America knows from its own “War on Terror,” in Israel’s current situation, counterproductive actions and mentalities will help no one, not Israelis, not Palestinians, not anyone else in the region except extremists who would bring about more death and destruction.  And keep in mind Gaza is one of the worst places anywhere to be conducting a military campaign as far as the 2.3 million local civilians are concerned: they cannot leave what has been called an “open-air prison” because of restrictions imposed by Israel—which, as I have noted in detail before, exercises much of the meaningful de facto sovereignty over the Gaza Strip—and Egypt, it is one of the most densely populated territories on earth, about half of the population is children, and the Palestinians in Gaza have been suffering from a humanitarian crisis for many years already.

Even considering, all this, Israel cannot tolerate a Hamas governing Gaza that is now trying to imitate ISIS, not after what Hamas did.

And so Israel must invade.

Unfortunately, already some 3,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed (before yesterday’s hospital bombing, discussed in measure 4), some 12,500 wounded, including whole families wiped out.  Those numbers are significantly increasing daily, with Israeli strikes still happening in the south of Gaza, right where Israel has told civilians to evacuate.  And while nobody knows how many Hamas members are included in those numbers, footage coming out of Gaza indicates most of the dead are civilians, especially as Hamas has access to its underground tunnel system that civilians do not and that many, perhaps most, Hamas dead would be buried underground in most strikes successfully targeting Hamas terrorists and fighters, therefore, many of them are likely not included in health officials’ body counts easily or quickly, if they even know there are tunnels underground in any given location, which they may not.

Yet even in this bleak atmosphere, I am heartened by U.S Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s shuttle diplomacy, President Joe Biden’s skilled behind-the-scenes engagement (as was the case with another Gaza flareup 2021), and other top Biden Administration officials’ diplomatic efforts.  In just days, they have already mitigated some of the worst: an initial, insane demand by Israel for all residents of the northern Gaza Strip—some 1.1 million people—to evacuate within twenty-four hours has seen that timeframe substantially extended (though it may still be a breach of international law, according to the United Nations), water service to Gaza has been partly restored by Israel (though from live interviews I saw on CNN two days ago, including with a senior United Nations humanitarian official, damage to the water infrastructure is so severe that only one of the main water pipes was functional, severely limiting the effect of the partial turning back on of the water supplied by Israel), and there is confused but progressing talks about opening the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt to get foreign nationals out, humanitarian supplies in (five United Nations fuel trucks two days ago were allowed through but that is it so far), and perhaps letting some other civilians out (in fact, just as I was wrapping parts of this article up Monday night in what may be a major diplomatic achievement, Blinken announced—after a marathon negotiation session with Netanyahu under Hamas rocket fire (such attacks being war crimes)—that Israel had agreed to the delivery of humanitarian aid, that safe zones for civilians were a major topic of discussion, and that Biden would be coming to Israel and Jordan today (the Jordan leg was canceled shortly after the hospital disaster, discussed in measure 4).  Biden’s trip may very well delay Israel’s near-inevitable assault on Gaza, giving more time for civilians to evacuate and supplies to be delivered to Gazans, saving many lives.

If you track the public statements of both Biden and Blinken, it is clear they have been and are emphasizing—will continue to emphasize—these concerns about protecting Palestinians in their discussions with Israeli leaders; clearly, Israel began on a harder line and clearly the U.S. has been pushing back behind the scenes against some of Israel’s worst impulses as in convulses in grief.  Biden specifically has been emphatic in repeatedly standing up for the vast majority of Gazan Palestinian civilians who are innocent and have nothing to do with Hamas and has even made clear on one of the flagship U.S. news programs, CBS’s 60 Minutes, that it would be a “mistake” for Israel to reoccupy Gaza in the long-term and right after reiterated U.S. support for a two-state solution, which would much displease Netanyahu as he has been against this his entire career in action whatever deceitful verbiage he has uttered to the contrary and still is.  There remain serious obstacles—especially after that hospital tragedy—but knowing Biden and Blinken leading Israel’s closest ally in America are clearly, forcefully, and consistently prioritizing saving Palestinian civilian lives in their private interactions with Israeli officials and their public comments on the crisis are a serious source of hope for me.

Hamas Must Be Neutralized, But Civilians in Gaza Must Be a Priority (and that Would HELP Israel)

Before proceeding, let us condemn Hamas and make it clear that for all their flaws, Israel and Israeli Prime Minister Benajmin Netanyahu and his extremist government of right-wing religious zealots and bigots—and I have been extremely critical of them, even examining Israel’s moral flaws in its military targeting and tactics in great detail—are not the moral equivalent of Hamas, a terrorist group that had for quite some time also functioned as something of a government in Gaza but that now has veered in its brutality into ISIS territory and is resembling ISIS in this brutality more than it resembles its own version of itself from five years ago.  And in recent polling, it is also clear that Hamas is not very popular with Palestinians.  During this latest violence, Hamas is even telling Gaza’s civilians not to evacuate, framing leaving as allowing Israel to push Palestinians from their homes, take more Palestinian land, and enact ethnic cleansing; Israel, the U.S., the UK, the EU, NATO, and others have long claimed that Hamas is cynically using innocent Palestinian civilians as human shields, purposefully putting them in harm’s way to get them killed to turn global opinion against Israel and/or lessen the intensity of Israel’s attacks (the Israel Defense Forces, or IDF, claims Hamas is blocking civilians from evacuating, though despite this claim, at least some 600,000 Palestinians have evacuated from the north as of a few days ago).  While some prominent human rights organizations and other analysts argue the reality is complicated when it comes to whether or not Hamas uses civilians as human shields, what is fairly clear is Hamas cannot be trusted to look after the safety and welfare of the innocent civilians of Gaza, and it will certainly fail in its responsibilities to them.

But this does not mean that Israel can simply dump the entirety of the responsibility for the welfare of Palestinian civilians in Gaza on Hamas, shrug its shoulders, and do anything it feels like at this particularly emotional moment, with the consciousness of the global Jewish community, not just Israeli Jews, reeling in its worst collective moment in close to 80 years.

In short, the worst anti-Jewish pogrom since the Holocaust cannot be answered by one of the worst mass displacements in a generation: currently some 1.1 million Gazans being told to evacuate northern Gaza by Israel, without anywhere really safe to go.  Israel’s tragedy cannot be followed by cutting off food, water, fuel, and power to 2.3 million Gazans, including thousands of wounded, 50,000 pregnant women with 5,000 due to give birth in the coming month, and babies in incubators in hospitals who will surely die without power, water, fuel, and food.  One war crime atrocity, no matter how vile, cannot be answered by another war crime.  And while there is certainly legitimate concern as to Hamas appropriating some of any aid that would go into Gaza, the solution cannot be for Israelis to simply throw up their hands and block all aid.  And especially as the U.S. is the main guarantor of international law globally along with the United Nations and that Israel tries to sell itself to the world as abiding by international law in comparison to Hamas, both risk looking like gross hypocrites if the U.S. stands by Israel as commits war crimes.

This would play into arguments and/or propaganda and gaslighting from Russia, China, and others (sometimes rooted in legitimate concerns, many that do not hold up to scrutiny) that international law is a joke and that the West only applies international law to its enemies, not itself.  It is in time like this, though, that international law matters most as ultimately, no matter how horrific a terrorist attack a country might suffer, the response when there are credible accusations of serious violations of international law and war crimes being committed by the responding party cannot be “But look at these pictures of our dead babies!  Let us violate the rules!”  Such an emotional response suggests that international law can simply be set aside when rage and grief arise in response to barbarity on the part of one party, but the point of international law is to ensure fewer dead babies and civilians of all types overall.  Pictures of one side’s dead babies cannot be used to justify illegal war crimes leading to more dead babies on the other side: there may an inevitability to some dead babies on that other side, but international law is there to minimize the amount.  The laws of war must be upheld by all parties that profess to adhere to them regardless of how low another warring party may sink.  Sadly, we cannot expect much from Hamas but it is to Israel’s credit that compliance and conduct of a far highest caliber than Hamas is expected of it, not an unfair double standard.  Hamas’s failure, then, to honor its moral and legal obligations is not an invitation or an excuse for Israel to abandon its own moral and legal obligations.  Because once we view international law protecting the most vulnerable of innocent civilians in war time as something to be tossed aside when one side engages in atrocities, international law truly is meaningless can protect no one consistently.  The only solution is to follow international law even if those we are fighting do not, to have it protect some people some of the time, rather than nobody any of the time.

Unlike Hamas, Israel is a legally legitimate nation recognized within its 1967 borders by over 160 nations (with 165 total offering some form of recognition: the U.S. under Trump extended recognition beyond the 1967 borders and recognized Syria’s Israeli-occupied Golan Heights as Israeli territory, something of  a pariah move).  I know some people don’t like the reality that Israel has long-been a recognized legitimate state under international law but tough, and while people are free to and can even reasonably disagree over the justice and morality of establishing Israel as a state and the manner in which that happened, that Israeli is a recognized international state is history: that ship has sailed and there is no time machine going back to before Israel became a state in 1948.  But the privilege of having statehood as a legitimate nation and a democracy (at least within its proper borders if obviously not in the West Bank) that is a signatory to the major human rights conventions, that comes with the responsibility that it is rightly expected to follow international law, that it can and should be expected to follow all international laws regarding civilians in wars zones and to be held to those standards.  Sadly, while the international community and especially Hamas’s backers can and should press Hamas to do the same, Hamas is a terrorist organization that has a modus operandi of defying international law.

While Israel itself has a questionable track record on international law, there is not an equivalent record between the Israeli government and Hamas: they are not moral equals, and after what Hamas pulled off in its insane attack on October 7, Hamas has signed its own death warrant: the status quo is over and Israel simply cannot tolerate Hamas’s existence right at its border and near its communities any longer.  Israeli must neutralize Hamas (and its mini-me, Palestinian Islamic Jihad), whether destroying it, taking prisoners, some sort of exile, or otherwise demilitarizing (and destroying seems to be the most likely option given Hamas’s posture).  As is the situation with Ukraine’s fight against Russian colonialist imperialism, the “give peace a chance/there need to be negotiations to stop the war” crowd does not understand the reality of how Hamas on October 7 moved itself beyond the pale of what Israel can tolerate, let alone make peace with, and the Israeli voting public would absolutely not accept leaving Hamas in power in Gaza even is in some fantasy world the current government did: the coalition would collapse and voters would put in a new one that would continue with the campaign to remove Hamas.

But that last point only refers to Hamas.  Conversely, Netanyahu’s lack of willingness to engage in real negotiations with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party running the West Bank through the Palestinian Authority (PA): the de jure Palestinian government in the West Bank propped up by Israel’s much more sovereign de facto “governance” there through its military for well over half a century now.  Fatah has long renounced violence against Israel and cooperated with Israel to prevent terrorism against Israelis, making Netanyahu’s longtime willingness to boost Hamas as a way to undermine its rival Fatah even more shameful—Israel even helped to create Hamas decades ago to do just this—and, as I have noted before, Israel should be engaging with Fatah even now, should have been for years, and advancing Palestinian statehood.  By not doing this at all, Netanyahu has literally incentivized violence by punishing cooperation and nonviolence over many years, sending the message that occupation, dispossession, and privation are the makeup of Israel’s long-term plan “for” Palestinians, and making Abbas and the PA look like mere collaborators in the eyes of Palestinians.

While Israel has to remove Hamas from power in Gaza and that means there will be many innocent Palestinians killed in the crossfire, that does not mean “anything” goes as far as Israel’s conduct, that all safety for civilians is Hamas’s responsibility, or that there cannot be some sensible measures not currently being undertaken by Israel that will make the situation far better, save many Palestinian and some Israeli lives, and lead to a better outcome for Israel and Gaza.

With that in mind, here are my thoughts on some sensible, very possible, very practical steps that if adopted can minimize the worst of what is to come, keep international public opinion from turning even more against Israel than it would otherwise, and minimize the risk of protests in perhaps the West Bank other nearby countries like Jordan and Egypt from boiling over while also reducing the chance that actors like Hezbollah and Iran will enter the conflict in a major way.

My Six-Point-Plan for Mitigating the Horror that Is to Come

So my very first two recommendations are as follows: especially as Gaza is surrounded on three of four sides by Israel and is mostly dependent on Israel for water, electricity, fuel, and food by Israeli design, receiving those supplies at deeply insufficient levels for Gazans even before October 7 (since 2007, day-in, day-out, most Palestinians are malnourished and much of the day there is no power), 1.) the collective punishment of cutting off of water, power, fuel, and food to 2.3 million Gazan Palestinians must end.

Secondly, 2.) Israel must say loudly and unambiguously that the vast majority of noncombatant civilians who end up leaving northern Gaza or Gaza altogether will be allowed back into their homes in northern Gaza or Gaza overall (or what’s left what they left behind) shortly after the fighting stops, that there will be no mass expulsion of peaceful civilians, no ethnic cleansing, no mad pipe dreams that existed throughout Israeli history and in the mind of prominent rightist Israelis like former Prime Ministers Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon, among other prominent Israelis even still today, to expel Palestinians into the barren Sinai Peninsula in Egypt and create a “Palestine” there.  This is actually one major reason why Egypt is so reluctant to open the Rafah border crossing to outgoing civilians in Gaza: they fear new refugee camps that will become long-term fixtures, that, left unaddressed, festered instability, insurgencies, civil war, and even terrorism like so many camps set up for Palestinians after 1948 and 1967).

Frankly, given Israel’s track record, that this or subsequent Israeli governments can change their mind or break their word, and the composition of much of the current extremist Israeli government (especially before this unity government), Egypt and others would be justified in doubting whatever assurances Israel would give regarding allowing fleeing Gazans to return:  in what is still regarded as a deeply controversial and illegal move (though quite understandable from Israel’s perspective), Israel has allowed very, very few Palestinian refugees who fled or were expelled in 1947-1949 and in 1967 to return, either to Israel or to the Palestinian territory Israel occupied in 1967.

That cannot be the situation with the current possible waves of flight within or out of Gaza.  I personally would not bet on most Gazans that might move into Sinai ever returning unless the U.S. can pressure Israel into agreeing beforehand that they would be allowed to return soon after the fighting stops (in a live CNN interview with the always-stellar Christiane Amanpour I saw two days ago while writing this, Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid declined to say whether Israel’s leadership would provide a guarantee that displaced Palestinians would be allowed to return to their homes of if he would support such a move).  And it may be temping for Israel to turn all of northern Gaza into a bulldozed buffer zone, but this, too, would be a war crime and illegal under international law, and would be cramming all of Gaza’s 2.3 million people—already in a Gaza that is one of the most densely populated places on earth—into roughly half the territory they were living in before.  This would turn an already intolerable living situation into one that would be catastrophic.

Related to the last measure, this is a conflict mainly between Israel and Hamas; Israeli is in no position, morally or legally, to impose the problem of Palestinian refugees on Egypt and dump the responsibility for accounting and planning for their welfare onto Egypt is a not a party directly involved in the conflict as a primary party but is one that has every right to suspect Israel will be wanting to permanently dump Palestinians from Gaza into Sinai.  Israel is deciding to clear out half of the Gaza Strip and to invade a Gaza from which they are not currently allowing anyone to exit from the three sides of Gaza it controls.  As a major party to the conflict and as the party forcing civilians out of their homes, Israel is just as responsible as Hamas for their welfare as one of the two major belligerent parties, and Hamas’s moral and legal failures do not absolve Israeli form its moral and legal responsibilities, nor are those responsibilities Egypt’s.

Yet I am only hearing that “Egypt should open the Rafah crossing” without any mention that Israel could open one or both of its crossings and set up temporary shelter in its territory.  The simple fact of the matter is the land and infrastructure in Israel surrounding Gaza is far more hospitable, connected, and resourced than the desolate Sinai peninsula near Rafah, that Israel is far more capable of hosting humanitarian operations and a series of temporary refugee camps, and—especially now that Hamas is boxed into Gaza—southern Israel near Gaza is far more secure that the anarchic Sinai Peninsula, which has for many years has been filled with untamed Islamic terrorist insurgents from al-Qaeda and more recently a branch of the Islamic State (ISIS, remember them?).  ISIS even famously used a soda-can bomb to take out a Russian civilian airliner over Sinai in 2015, killing 224 people.  Thus far, the Egyptian government has not been able to quell these insurgent terrorists, despite multiple attempts over the years.

Considering this, throwing a large number of Palestinians into refugee camps into the mix in Sinai would seem to be setting up a disaster for the future in an already volatile area, could lead to a destabilization of Egypt, and, should ISIS gain a presence in the camps and launch, say, rocket attacks into Israel with any frequency or intensity, could also lead to Israel striking into Egyptian territory in response in a repetitive cycle the like had developed in between Israel and Gaza up until this point, a disaster for the region that should be avoided at all costs by taking Sinai off the table as far as discussions of where to settle Gazan Palestinians, either temporarily or otherwise (indeed, the current ISIS franchise in the Sinai has fired rockets into southern Israel multiple times before, though to shruggable effect).

Israelis, ever lacking strategic thinking, would likely consider the problem more or less “solved” if they could pawn the Gazan Palestinian “problem” off onto Egypt, and be much happier worrying, but worrying less, about Palestinians in Egypt than Palestinians closer by in Gaza and would feel less incentive to move the refugees back into Gaza, perhaps playing the semantic games that come so easy to Netanyahu without ever getting to a point of moving Palestinians back into Gaza.  Tellingly, in an interview yesterday with the always-excellent Nic Robertson for CNN, an Israeli man living near Gaza in Sderot, hit hard by Hamas, called for transferring the Gazan Palestinians “into other Arab countries,” a view Robertson noted was “typical of many” there.

Conversely, if Palestinians were in camps in set up in southern Israel on the Gazan border, Israel would want to get the Palestinians there back into Gaza as soon as possible and not a day later.  The dynamics are far more likely to pressure parties into a far better result with the Israel camp option than the Sinai camp option, keeping the conflict and the bulk of responsibility for a competent, swift resolution with Israel and not dragging Egypt into it, which cannot even handle its own situation in the Sinai.  Therefore, 3.) Israel should allow several camps on its own territory neighboring Gaza for many of the civilians who want to exit Gaza, especially women and children (obviously military-age men are going to be more difficult to process but not impossible to at least partly screen).

And Israel does not need to deal with this alone: apart from the UN and NGOs that will certainly be willing to aid (and feel much more secure operating in Israel than the Sinai), Israel can and very much should bring in Abbas’s and Fatah’s PA.  There is obviously great concern about what is the plan is for Gaza after Hamas is defeated, as Israel clearly has none and is not shy about admitting this repeatedly publicly and privately, even to the Biden Administration despite U.S. pushback for not having such a plan.  After Netanyahu has spent so many years deliberately weakening and undermining the only major alternative to Hamas, allowing PA officials into these temporary camps can help the PA build credibility among Gazans up from its current crisis-low levels, allowing the idea of the PA moving into Gaza to govern after Hamas is defeated to actually be built in the hearts and minds of Gazans, bolstered by international and aid organizations (for all its issues, can anyone think of a better choice than the PA to fill this role?).

If a post-Hamas future for Gaza begins with Israel, the PA, and international partners working to the benefit of the Palestinian civilians of Gaza, that is about as good of a new start one can hope for.  Without Hamas as a player on the scene, the only good path forward that can lead to justice, safety, and freedom for large numbers of Israelis and Palestinians is one that immediately begins building up a new Palestinian partner in Gaza for self-rule and to restart life there.  And for this, the PA is the only realistic option in the here and now.  Flatly speaking, there cannot be a military solution to what is fundamentally a political problem, and such Israeli-PA political cooperation (as opposed to just security cooperation) is long overdue.  Gaza after Hamas is a good chance for this (along with the West Bank if restrictions are eased and settlers reigned in) and there is no sense in putting it off, which would risk a collapse of the PA while it and Abbas are at their nadir along with a radicalization of its members.

Quite nobly and bravely, some Palestinian doctors, nurses, and medical staff are pledging to stay in northern Gaza—in the hospitals there—dozens even paying with their lives, so as not to abandon their patients, including newborn babies, who will die if they leave.

Especially in light of this, quite sadly and horrifically, the al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza City in northern Gaza was struck by an explosive projectile in northern Gaza just as I was finishing this last night, with estimates in the dead ranging from roughly 300 to 500.  I’m not a weapons expert, but on the one hand, this confirmed video of the strike does not resemble other videos of misfired Palestinian rocket attacks, as the IDF claims caused the blast and deaths, and seems closer to resembling a video of an Israeli airstrike especially given the size of the explosion; but on the other hand, factors that can push the conclusion in the other direction are still being digested, such as a lack of a large impact crater, video footage of a Palestinian rocket exploding high above the hospital just before the explosion in question and showing the explosion from a distance immediately after, and that if it was a rocket that misfired, it would have had more fuel so early in its journey, resulting in a larger explosion than normal.  The fog of war is still enveloping this situation even if it has become a Rorschach test, with people expressing certainty before having the facts and the incident understandably inflaming the region, making Biden’s visit and diplomatic push far more challenging.  At first, I believed with strong confidence it was an Israeli airstrike, but most of the evidence put forth of the publicly verifiable type favors Israel’s explanation. Still, there is yet doubt and dispute about what happened as of the publishing of this article and I am not sure definitive proof has been presented.

*(UPDATE: Throughout the day more analysis has come through. Despite Israeli’s track record of being caught lying in prominent cases like this, as excellently discussed by CNN’s Christiane Amanpour here, the forensic evidence, from subsequent video to crater/blast analysis, points very strongly, perhaps overwhelmingly, to the conclusion that this explosion resulted from a misfired Palestinian rocket and was an accident. As for the audio presented by Israel purported to be Hamas, it may or may not be authentic; in our present age, this audio could very well be an edited or fabricated cherry that Israel is adorning to the top of its cake of evidence to help win the public relations war it is losing, and some experts have called the audio out as fake; so that and some other aspects of the Israeli narrative are far from perfect. The audio may possibly be a distortion or a lie, but the lack of a large crater and the confirmed video evidence is not. On the other side of things, there is no hard evidence that has been presented to be able to draw the conclusion that this was an Israeli airstrike. I have discussed Israel lying in the past myself, and indeed, a whole article could be written about that [Israel in the past lied about airstrikes, including an incident last year in which it claimed categorically as fact that a misfired Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket had killed 5 children, it being later reveled there were no rockets launched or falling near the children and they were actually killed by an Israeli airstrike; conversely, as documented by Amnesty International, both Hamas and Islamic Jihad lied and blamed Israel for two rocket misfires in a 2014 incident that killed 13 civilians—11 of them children—claiming they were killed by Israeli attacks; thus, it is wise to not take everything any of these parties to this conflict say at face value without scrutiny] but even if the audio is possibly not credible, the overall circumstantial evidence is credible and very strongly does not indicate an Israeli airstrike and does indicate a misfired Palestinian rocket, whether from Islamic Jihad or Hamas, was responsible, and without any substantive counterevidence, we must go in the direction of the existing evidence unless further substantive evidence changes the picture substantially.)

*(SECOND UPDATE) Since my last update, there have been multiple other independent investigations, most of which admit they can not make a definitive conclusion in the absence of an on-the-ground investigation.  Among the new investigations are ones from the AP and CNN, both of which concluded that a misfired Palestinian rocket was the most likely explanation behind the tragic explosion at the hospital.  The CNN investigation also allowed for the possibility of an IDF artillery round, but found that possibility less likely based on the available evidence.  I personally messaged the serially reliable CNN military analyst, Col. Cedric Leighton USAF (Ret.), to weigh in, and he echoed the CNN investigation in also offering his view that the available evidence strongly favored a misfired Palestinian rocket based on available evidence versus other explanations but also could not rule out an Israeli artillery shell.  The Washington Post’s own investigation corroborated Israel’s and the U.S. assessment that a failed Palestinian rocket was the best explanation.  Following up on its earlier investigation that also found a misfired Palestinian rocket the most likely explanation but cast doubt on details of both the official Palestinian and official Israeli narrative, the UK Channel 4’s more recent investigation found further evidence to discredit what seems to be doctored or altered audio released by Israel that it claimed to be of Hamas operatives and that also cate doubt on Israel’s account of the trajectory of what caused the explosion (likely exposing Israeli hasbara, Israel’s unique brand of information warfare trying to make Israel’s narrative more convincing than the evidence alone would make it).  A New York Times investigation disputed that videos that have been widely cited by other investigations as showing strong evidence that a misfired Palestinian rocket was responsible actually showed what those other investigators concluded, including the aforementioned; rather, it corroborated some other interpretations that stated the videos do not show a misfired Palestinian rocket, casting the situation into further confusion and intensifying the fog of war.  The UK-based Forensic Architecture presented its analysis conducted with partner organizations that presented seemingly decent analysis discrediting parts of the official Israeli narrative and favoring the theory that an Israeli artillery round caused the blast, but the organization also seemingly presents the problem of anti-Israeli bias in its presentation: it refers to the IDF as “IOF,” which stands for “Israel Occupation Forces,” “Israel Offense Forces,” or “Israel Offensive Forces;” IOF is a pejorative term that some critical of the IDF and Israeli policy towards Palestinians have taken upon themselves to use to replace IDF; I will simply say that I do not find North Korea, formally known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and often referred to by the ensuing acronym DPRK, to be either democratic of belonging to the people; to use another Asian example, China’s army is named the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), but it is neither liberating anything, nor run by the people; in both cases, I do not invent cute if accurate pejorative terms based on my own views, I use the official terminology because that is how the world works in the realm of journalism and research organization, otherwise we could start renaming everything and retitling anyone based on how we personally feel about them; those that do rename based on personal views more than suggest the presence of bias.  Al Jazeera put forward its own investigation, but it comes off fairly propagandistic: it presents information it claims disproves that a Palestinian rocket was responsible, but it is not convincing or conclusive at all and does not actually provide any evidence it was an Israeli airstrike, not even addressing the issue of crater size.  For its part, Hamas has also not produced any evidence the blast was from an Israeli airstrike or Israeli artillery round.  Greatly adding to the confusion around this incident, there have also been glaring errors made by media outlets throughout this process, with few owning up to their errors and both governments and international organizations not adjusted their narratives to newly revealed facts.  And one independent analyst who has not received proper clarification after reaching out to multiple major outlets may have even exposed that the figure of 500 killed that supposedly came from the Hamas health ministry—a figure later seen as widely non-credible, though numbers coming out of Gaza from all the other violence are generally seen by aid organizations and the United Nations as largely credible—may have no specific confirmation or evidence supporting that such a claim was actually made. After reviewing all of these, my own view—given the preponderance of independent investigations’ conclusions and the indications of “high confidence” U.S. intelligence—is that a failed Palestinian rocket is still the most likely explanation, but I feel less confident in this conclusion given several other investigations that have different interpretations of video analysis and that it seems very likely both Hamas and the IDF are lying about certain aspects of this in addition to no definitive investigation having yet been conducted on the ground; thus, I went from being pretty convinced it was an Israeli airstrike, to being even more convinced it was a failed Palestinian rocket, to still favoring the Palestinian rocket theory with less confidence and more doubt/questions to be answered.

Your not-so-humble author here has little to add to this incredibly inspiring self-sacrifice of the medical staff or the horror of the still-staffed hospital being struck by some weapon to devastating effect.  With the staff, the concept of the Hippocratic Oath taken to such an extreme level will inspire long after this conflict.  The bottom line for the purposes of my article is that, hypothetically speaking, if it was an Israeli strike, such a situation is generally quite avoidable, especially given how large hospital complexes tend to be.  Yet it is far less avoidable with the current Israeli approach.

Their bravery and sacrifice of the medical staff and the helplessness of their patients mean that, despite the crimes of Hamas, these doctors and their patients deserve all the care Israel can take to save them.  Even if this situation was not the result of an Israeli strike—and I am not stating that is the case—the current approaches leave such a possibility wide open, even likely, to still happen.  To this end, 4.) I call on the IDF and other Israeli authorities to reach out directly to the administrators of the hospitals and to try to coordinate delivery of aid to the hospitals and to coordinate if possible the IDF securing the hospitals as safe zones for civilians and patients unable to be safely moved as well as for the medical staff tending to them.  To the degree that Hamas avoids using these hospital as defensive positions or staging areas, there is great opportunity for clear, careful, open coordination avoiding needless loss of life or IDF attacks at these hospitals.

Israel also has to be careful about provocations and incitement against Palestinians by leaders, politicians, settlers, police, soldiers, and perhaps even more normal civilians after such traumatizing events.  This has been a huge problem in Israeli society in recent years, with one of the most complex, top-of-society-to-the-bottom examples being the horrible events in 2014 leading to Palestinian teen Muhammad Abu Khdeir’s abduction and murder by being beaten and burned to death by Israeli settlers—a “price tag” revenge for the kidnapping and murder by Palestinians of three Israeli teens, Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shaar, and Eyal Yifrach—so heartbreakingly portrayed in the excellent HBO and Keshet (an Israeli TV station) joint-miniseries titled Our Boys.  The show was so revealing of the toxic and dangerous effects of Netanyahu’s style of politics and the warped ideology of many of his supporters that he even outrageously called the joint-Israeli production “anti-Semitic.”  This incident back in 2014 was part of the runup to the worst Israel-Hamas violence before the current fighting.

Yet there are many examples going back years before and years beyond that prolific one.  These include multiple acts of violence, terrorism, and murder against Palestinians by Israeli settlers acting with sheer impunity in the West Bank, including ambushing and killing a father and a son just days ago who were attending a funeral of four other Palestinians recently murdered by settlers.  Israel’s security forces had already been massively escalating the situation in the West Bank all year with provocative raids and arrests before October 7, too.  Overall, the violence earlier this year hit levels not seen in East Jerusalem and the West Bank—both occupied illegally by Israel from 1967 on—since 2005 and is only exploding further now after Hamas’s October 7 pogrom and Israel’s devastating assault on Gaza: 61 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, 1,250 wounded since October 7, destined to get worse especially after the Gaza City hospital horror. 

There are nonviolent issues that drive violence that must also be considered: just the additions to, expansions, and continued presence of illegal-under-international-law Israeli settlements in the West Bank on land that that is supposed to be Palestinian are themselves provocations, with the U.S. condemning Israeli settlement expansion moves multiple times just last month and also earlier this year repeatedly, a year that has seen Netanyahu’s unprecedented right-wing extremist government dramatically accelerate settlement expansion.  The recent eviction of Palestinians from their home in East Jerusalem so they can be replaced with Jews and even some recent displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank—textbook ethnic cleansing on a slow, small progression—also adds to the poisonous atmosphere and the feeling held by Palestinians that they are under constant siege and assault.  

Statements from too many Israelis are also incitement, even lawmakers and senior members of the current government, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir—previously suspected and convicted, respectively, in Israeli legal cases of terrorism against Palestinians—Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and inciter-in-chief Netanyahu himself.  Such statements can even include denying the very identity of Palestinians as a distinct people and pushing for mass expulsion of Palestinians from their land or can surprisingly even recently come from Israel’s leftist figurehead president Isaac Herzog, and though he later walked back some of his worst remarks, he was clearly thinking what he said at the time. 

Additionally, the focus of Netanyahu’s multiple governments on normalization with Saudi Arabia and others while totally ignoring any political negotiations with the Palestinians, along with his recent predecessor Naftali Bennet pledging his government would literally do nothing to try to make political progress with Palestinians, were in themselves provocations because the clear subtext to Palestinians was that “You don’t matter and we don’t care about your political and nationalist aspirations at all,” an unsustainable illusion given false credence by a Trump-Kushner Abraham Accords that totally ignored Palestinian nationalist aspiration (I will be writing a whole article about this later).  And last but hardly least, the Israelis under Netanyahu’s new government have been provocative throughout the year at one of the holiest sites of Islam, the Al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem’s Old City, including in the days just before the Hamas pogrom on October 7.

Israel needs to put its best foot forward during its Gaza operation in regards to these incitements and provocations, which it is already failing to do, or risk blowback that will see more Israelis and Palestinians get killed and complicate what are already a complicated Gaza offensive and simmering, even now exploding, regional dynamics.

The key measures that must be taken here are that 5.) Israeli leaders must police and reign in officials engaging in hate-speech, the language of anti-Palestinian incitement, or ordering provocative security force deployments or actions at Al-Aqsa while prevent any settlement expansion in the West Bank or ethnic cleansing in East Jerusalem during this fighting in Gaza.  And they must not only prevent terrorist settler violence against Palestinians but must also prosecute any settlers guilty of such terrorism against Palestinians.

These first five measures absolutely will help to stem criticisms of “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” currently being leveled against Israel’s Gaza campaign, and they are prolific and not without meriting concern given some of the statements coming from Israeli quarters, discussed above (indeed, if the Palestinians leaving northern Gaza are not allowed to ever return, that would be the legal definitions of those accusations, and the damage to Israel for playing into the these legitimate criticisms would be considerable on the world stage).  Blunting such criticism with substantive action would not only be effective public relations and buttress Israel’s campaign against Hamas, it will actually save many innocent lives.

Finally, while there is rightly and emphatically condemnation of Hamas’s abduction of children among the hostages, there is an ugly truth that receives far too little attention: according to Save the Children (full in-depth report here), each year, Israel detains without civilian due process but through military authorities between roughly 500-1000 Palestinian children, most of whom are physically abused in custody, a large portion of whom are denied timely legal assistance access (often interrogated before any assistance), and many of whom are “denied a meaningful opportunity to defend themselves against allegations.”  Human Rights Watch also shows Israeli military authorities handling and detaining the children are regularly abusive and that they are often denied anything resembling an acceptable due process, with the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem showing more detailed figures and that Israeli authorities have not been transparent or forthcoming when it comes to inquiries about detained children. 

From various statements coming from official Israeli spokespeople, the rescue or exchange of the hostages taken by Hamas into Gaza seem to be taking a backseat to the desires of the Israeli government first and foremost to destroy Hamas, and, indeed, those two goals are largely incompatible; thus, it must be said this does not augur terribly well for the survival of the many Hamas hostages.  And while there is a current proposal that was just floated by Hamas offering to release all civilian hostages if Israel ceases airstrikes and would release all military hostages if Israel releases all Palestinian prisoners, this is ambitious and complicated and probably unlikely to be accepted.  Perhaps Israel offering to exchange the most vulnerable and least culpable prisoners in its custody—the children discussed above—in exchange for some or all the hostages in Gaza would put Hamas even more so on the defensive in the international arena for not acting on a legitimate, balanced, serious offer to exchange civilian life for civilian life, to free children and not all prisoners, including clear terrorists, from prison, so my last proposal is that 6.) Israel should offer to release all the children in its custody in exchange for at least the civilians held by Hamas.  It might not work but it doesn’t hurt as far as posturing and could put pressure on Hamas while showing that Israel is willing to explore ways to save hostages beyond military methods.  This would also be appreciated by many members of the Israeli public, who seem anecdotally in many, many interviews and from looking at social media posts of people I don’t know and people I know personally to at least seem to want Israel to prioritize getting the hostages free.

Conclusion: 6 High-Reward, Low-to-Moderate Risk Steps to Benefit Israelis and Palestinians Alike

As America’s Israel-whisperer, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, noted repeatedly and emphatically, if Israel does not take measures like the ones I am suggesting into consideration and just hurtles itself into Gaza with the sole consideration of destroying Hamas rapidly, then it will be playing into the dreams and interests of Iran, Hezbollah, and all who wish Israel ill in the Middle East and beyond.  Getting drawn into a bloodbath in Gaza in which very doable, practical, and eminently possible measures to minimize civilian casualties and keep civilians fed, hydrated, and overflowing hospitals powered up are simply not taken or only minimally implemented is exactly what Iran, Hezbollah, and all of Israel’s enemies want to see or believe Israeli will do.  Like Friedman writes, Israel should be asking itself, “What do my worst enemies want me to do — and how can I do just the opposite?”  How can Israel prove the cynics and haters wrong?  Israel can hope to influence, but cannot control, the actions of other parties, but it can control its own.

The below picture is a of pair of twins who were just born in Gaza after their mother fled Israeli bombardment.  The world they grow up in—if they even survive—will be largely defined by what Israel and other states and factions decide and do in the coming days, weeks, and months.  If the measures I have suggested are adopted, there is a good chance worthy of a big bet that world will be less awful than if they are ignored, that the dynamics driving decades of conflict will be lessoned significantly by Israel in reducing its own contributions to them regardless of what its enemies do or do not do.  By seriously adopting these six measures, Israeli will serve its own interests and see the obstacles to peace weakened, the rays of hope largened and brightened, with a lot more people actually alive to see the improvement over time, not only many Palestinians, but also plenty of Israelis.

See all of Brian’s work on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict here.

© 2023 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

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Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) May 27, 2021; also published May 31, 2021, on The Times of Israel Blogs; see my related article: Death, Stupidity; Rinse, Repeat: What Is New, What Is Old in Latest Israeli-Palestinian Tragedy

SILVER SPRING—When horrible things start happening around the world—especially in the Middle East, and especially in Palestine and Israel—it often seems as if the U.S. cannot win when it comes to the cries of various mobs, both in the street and online, claiming—sometimes accurately, other times not—to represent various factions: “America, how come you don’t to more to stop X horrible thing by Y horrible people, do more to help Z people?” often concurrent not only with opposite cries switching X and Y but also “America, why don’t you just stay out of such-and-such conflict, all you do is make things worse” and even “America, why don’t you just completely stay out of the entire region?”

Practically Speaking

To be fair, it would be an understatement to note America has made grievous mistakes in the Middle East, from former disgraced President Donald Trump’s rapid betrayal of the Kurds in late 2019 to assisting the horrific Saudi-led war in Yemen and the cataclysmic 2003 invasion of Iraq.  But a fairly consistent, longer-term problem has been America’s unbalanced position in the Israeli-Palestinians conflict, in particular, not doing enough to stand up for Palestinians as a people and allowing certain Israeli abuses of Palestinians to continue with impunity (abuses that are also self-destructive for Israel and Israeli Jews).

With any of many outbreaks in violence (Israeli-Palestinian or otherwise), real-world practicality demands that the priority be bringing about a swift end to violence in an effort to save as many lives as possible.  There are some well-meaning but idealistically naïve or blinded folks who will demand, before we even talk about stopping the violence, that we settle the root causes—even calling for a complete surrender of one side on all core issues about which it is fighting—but this is an obscene waste of time while fighting is erupting and the focus needs to be on immediately prioritizing individual human life.  During longer wars, negotiations over longstanding core issues are, of course, to be encouraged, but with individual rounds of bombs falling or gunshots ringing around civilians, the exact same issues that have driven the conflicts of which they are a part will almost invariably be there when that particular round of violence stops.

The only serious exceptions to this are when overwhelming force can actually bring about a decisive end to most of a conflict, but this is rare and in the case of Israel and Palestine, no glorious Saladin-like armies from Arab states will destroy the Israeli state—certainly Hamas has no such capability—while Israel invading and occupying Gaza in a bid to totally wipe out Hamas would certainly not go as Israel would intend and would see such terrible level of casualties and an inflammation of tensions and violence in the region that pressure for it to stop short of such a goal would be unlike anything we have seen with any of Israel’s other major campaigns against Palestinians.  So Israel is not going to wipe out Hamas in Gaza and neither Hamas nor any Arab or Muslim state (let alone any other) is going to invade and dismantle the Israeli state, nor end by force Israel’s control over holy sites in Jerusalem, military occupation of the West Bank, or siege of Gaza.  Thus, the idea that violence is somehow going to address the root causes is absurd.

So, again, it is not that dealing with the root causes is not essential, is that they are going nowhere fast during any particular round of violence and ending the violence is, therefore, both the moral/ethical and practical consideration that must take precedence.  Having said that, once the violence has stopped, the imperative very much should be to then focus on the root causes to avoid further violence and achieve justice, security, and peace for the greatest number of people.

What Biden’s Critics Miss

I have followed President Joe Biden’s career for decades (I even interned in his Senate office in 2006), and I do not think any of this is lost on him.  My gut feelings on this are at least partly validated by the heartening conduct of his Administration throughout the eleven-day crisis between Israel and Hamas and its spillover conflicts between Israeli security forces and other Palestinians and between Arabs and Jews in Israel’s internationally recognized, pre-1967 borders.

A good chunk of the media coverage has framed Biden and his team as haplessly overcome by events in the Middle East, with some takes stating that he is all but ignoring the plight of Palestinians and is simply reflexively supporting Israel and still others that Biden’s supposedly weak support for Israel or even supposed hostility to it is to blame for the latest round of violence.  All of these are deeply myopic takes that cannot see the forest for the trees at best or are bad-faith propaganda and disinformation at worst.  In fact, Biden’s approach seemed relatively fairly balanced and nuanced in ways that, more important than anything else, yielded results and saved lives.

First, let us be clear about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: he has had no problem defying or embarrassing American presidents and senior officials in the past, including this one in the month before the recent hostilities, when he rejected repeated criticism from Biden Administration officials—including National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan—for plans to dispossess Palestinians in East Jerusalem and expand and create Jewish settlements there and in the West Bank (the very day before Hamas began its rocket fire into Israel, Sullivan expressed to his Israeli counterpart that the White House had “serious concerns” about efforts to unjustly evict Palestinian families in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem, part of a larger campaign of demographic engineering by Israeli right-wing nationalists).

With the reality that Netanyahu and his country have increasingly embraced right-wing nationalism, if Biden had publicly and loudly chastised Netanyahu and Israel, Netanyahu would have felt compelled to not look as if he was cowing to American pressure and would have only continued Israel’s military operations longer to demonstrate his independence and strength to his domestic audience (remember he is in the fight of his political life to hold onto power while he is simultaneously on trial for corruption).  This would have meant the Israel Defense Forces (Israel’s military, or IDF) killing and wounding many more people and possibly causing the conflict to both intensify and spread while also risking more Israeli lives, even if far fewer.  And Biden has known “Bibi,” as Netanyahu is often called, for decades, knows him relatively well, and has a far better sense than most politicians of how the embattled Israeli prime minister will and will not react to things, including public pressure.

Yet many foreign critics and those to Biden’s left vocal in their anger about his support for Israel—the left’s sometimes raucous “progressive” crowd (Progressive being a much older label for a far more productive historical movement)—seem not to understand this.  Their outrage that Biden was not more vocal in condemning Netanyahu betrays their lack of understanding of basic politics and diplomacy, missing how there is usually far more to politics than speeches and noise (that should not surprise considering that Bernie Sanders is essentially their spiritual mentor and the tactic of screaming at and shaming Democratic voters into nominating a “progressive” for president in 2016 and 2020 failed miserably; to Bernie’s credit, his crushing loss in 2020 seems to have humbled him into a more practical and productive approach).  After all, America is one of the few counties where public opinion favors Israel strongly, so even as support for Palestinians has increased significantly (especially on the left), there is not the political support for a sharp turn away from or reducing support for Israel and such a move could not only cost Democrats the House in midterm elections, but the White House two years later, rendering any major shifts by a Biden Administration moot as a new Republican administration would surely undo those changes and become even more pro-Israeli and less supportive of Palestinians, as was seen under Trump.

Speaking of, to his right, Biden’s critics insanely claim he and his policies are the reason for the outbreak of violence when Biden has done very little other than restore formal diplomatic relations and to reinstate some $235 million in humanitarian, economic, and development aid to Palestinians—aid that the Trump Administration, led by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, had cruelly, spitefully, and needlessly cut—while also separately adding COVID-19 aid.

If any American approach has failed recently, it is the incredibly one-sided “pro-Israel” policy of the Trump Administration—including Kushner’s “absurd” “peace” plan—that has deepened the anger, resentment, and helplessness already pervasive among Palestinians while letting Israel feel it could act against Palestinians with impunity, furthering overall division, which intensified and accelerated the dangerous dynamics that exploded over the past few weeks, as I noted just recently.

Biden’s Practicality and Early Results

If anything, critics to both Biden’s left and right seemed to not be aware of what was really happening behind the scenes even as they missed some very public cues.

Instead of starting a public feud with a longtime (if very problematic) ally, Biden refrained from antagonizing Netanyahu in ways that would have been counterproductive and resulted in more death and destruction and instead had himself and his administration act in ways that worked to preserve and exercise leverage over Israel while working intensely when they felt the time was right to rapidly bring about an end to the violence.  In doing so, they consciously tried avoiding what they now saw as a counterproductive approach taken by the Obama Administration during the last major Gaza conflict in 2014 (which I analyzed in detail at the time).

Early in this most recent flare-up, Biden publicly asserted that “Israel had a right to defend itself”—for all the flaws of any particular nation, virtually no nation would not respond with military force against a terrorist group firing rockets into its cities—even while he and top officials also early on expressed a desire for a quick end to the Israeli operation (Biden himself said “My expectation and hope is this will be closing down sooner than later)” and that it was their position to “urge…de-escalation of violence” (this from Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken) and to still pursue a state for Palestinians.

Top officials also early on framed the conflict as very much in part about the systemic issues faced by Palestinians, especially the evictions going on in East Jerusalem, which were raised in conversations throughout (in spite of the efforts of some Israelis to pretend or delude themselves into thinking that the structural issues had nothing to do with the latest round of violence).

As the conflict dragged on, other concerns about civilian casualties and the safety of journalists in Gaza were publicly aired by the Biden Administration, and specific calls for lessening Israeli restrictions on and increasing freedom for Palestinians were also made.  Eventually, calls for a cease-fire—at first gentle, then firmer—made clear that Biden and his people felt it was time for Israel to let up.  And Biden has long made clear he generally did not intend to air America’s dirty laundry with Israeli in public.  That there even were these milder public statements, then, made it clear there was serious pushback going on behind the scenes, and the softer public statements were concurrent with a series of calls—six between Biden and Netanyahu and many others between American and Israeli officials—that were the key parts of the more private pushback.  This was not unqualified support or one-sided; far from it, and throughout and after there were statements along the lines that Palestinians, too, deserved safety as well as dignity and freedom and that reiterated American commitment to the two-state solution (by far the most sane of the various “solutions” that are bandied about) that would result in a Palestinian state, a long-held U.S. position Trump, Kushner, and Blinken’s partisan-hack-predecessor Mike Pompeo had all but abandoned.

Having long made clear he would not lean towards slamming Israel in public, Biden effectively worked behind the scenes to pressure the right-wing Netanyahu—who has not shied away from crisis exploitation and punishing military operations with heavy civilian casualties—to wind down military strikes on the eleventh day when Netanyahu’s security cabinet voted unanimously to agree to a cease-fire; if you think Biden’s quiet but strong diplomacy did not play a major and leading role, consider two points here: one, that Israel’s government is pretty right-wing and anti-Arab in policy and sentiment, and two, that the a plurality to a vast majority of Israelis were against a cease-fire and wanted the IDF to continue operations against Hamas in Gaza (in three Israeli polls, Israelis opposed the cease-fire 72 to 24, 47 to 35, and 48 to 40 percent).  Taking all this into account—that Netanyahu and many of his people would not be generally inclined to keep the IDF operation as short as it ended up being, that stopping it as early as they did was actually a liability domestically when it came to public opinion, and that the cabinet vote was still unanimous—it is hard to argue that Biden Administration’s role in the timing of the cease-fire and shortening of the conflict was not decisive.

And since the cease-fire has taken hold, Biden and his top diplomat Blinken have continued to emphasize America’s commitment not simply to Israel but to “equal” treatment and respect for Palestinians.  As Biden noted in his address just after the cease-fire took hold:

“I believe the Palestinians and Israelis equally deserve to live safely and securely and to enjoy equal measures of freedom, prosperity, and democracy.  My administration will continue our quiet and relentless diplomacy toward that end.  I believe we have a genuine opportunity to make progress, and I’m committed to working for it.”

The next day, Biden was even more specific: “We still need a two-state solution.  It is the only answer. The only answer.”

Focused on rebuilding America after a devastatingly bungled pandemic response under the Trump Administration, Biden has not been keen in his first few months on the job to dive into dramatic foreign engagement on the part of the U.S., but now that America is beginning to hit its stride again amidst his administration’s exemplary handling of the pandemic and with a crisis erupting between Israelis and Palestinians, he and his competent people have shown themselves capable of addressing sudden crises and of recognizing that such crises demand U.S. engagement not only to calm the waters but to take serious if not rushed or frantic steps to try to address root causes.

Thus, just months into his presidency, Biden has passed his first major international security crisis with a deft yet subtle approach, the type of qualities that were utterly lacking in the White House for the entirety of Trump’s residence there.  And rather than treat the crisis as a distraction, he has, as noted, rightly recognized it as “a genuine opportunity to make progress,” dispatching to the region his top diplomat in Blinken, who is already working to restore a sense of balance after the clear failure of Trump’s gratuitous neglect of Palestinians.

As case in point: Netanyahu does not want to hear anything about the two-state solution, which he has worked for decades to undermine, but that is exactly what Blinken doubled down on after meeting with Netanyahu and in Israel and, later that day, Palestinians President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank:

“Ultimately, there’s a possibility of resuming the effort to achieve a two-state solution, which we continue to believe is the only way to truly assure Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state, and of course to give the Palestinians the state they’re entitled to.”

He also made clear that America will seek “to address some of the underlying causes that could, if not addressed, spark another cycle of violence.”  Furthermore, Blinken met with Palestinian activists, pledged significant new aid to Palestinians, reiterated strong opposition to the Sheikh Jarrah evictions, and announced the reopening of a U.S. consulate in Jerusalem that had been closed by Trump and was a significant venue for separate engagement with Palestinians.  Few of these moves are welcome ones to Netanyahu or many other Israeli officials or citizens, so, despite claims to the contrary and accusations of being one-sided, the Biden Administration is sharply departing from the extremist approach of its predecessor and will do a lot more to stick up for Palestinians even if many Palestinians would desire further, more immediate, more dramatic action.

Too Early to Write off Biden’s Efforts; Cease-fire Orchestration Reason to Hope

Cynicism, understandably, abounds when it comes to the struggle between Israeli and Palestinians, but Biden’s critics miss the mark in failing to see his and his administration’s major role in shortening this latest round of fighting and in taking both symbolic and substantive steps away from Trump’s one-sided policy towards far more engagement with and support for Palestinians.  Additionally, the commentary that Biden will do little-to-nothing to address the deeper issues is wildly premature, just like the initial commentary on his involvement (or supposed lack thereof) during this latest round of fighting.

Both in clear public actions (if not dramatic or bombastic) and in even more “intense,” to use Blinken’s word, behind-the-scenes efforts, we are seeing Biden and his administration engage in this most intractable of issues and he may yet surprise us with far greater results over time regardless of the verbal gymnastics of critics to his right and left, of Palestinians and Israelis alike as well as their supporters unhappy with his approach.  For most of these critics, a lesson in how real diplomacy works has just been given by Biden and his team.

© 2021 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here), and be sure to check out my podcast interview with Georgia election officials Brad Raffensperger and Gabriel Sterling, both cited in Trump’s second Senate trial!

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse April 28, 2018

by Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter@bfry1981) April 28th, 2018

Support Brian and his work by donating here

AMMAN — Israeli public opinion is, to quote The Economist, “a remarkably forgetful and fickle force.” The same can be said for Israeli politics in general. So it is hardly a stretch to say that measuring Israeli public opinion’s effects on Israeli policy is a significant challenge. And one of the most controversial of all of Israel’s policies over the years has been that of creating and expanding Jewish settlements in Palestinian territory over several decades. Especially given what a lightning-rod issue the settlements are and, in typical Israeli fashion, how complicated everything about them has become, this is a question worth asking.

Challenging Data for a Challenging Question

Almost as soon as I began this project, I knew there were many challenges that would make it impossible for any kind of definitive, clear, unqualified conclusions to emerge from this exploration, in the sense that public opinion cannot simply be said to be Variable A affecting settlement policy, Variable B, in such-and-such a way.

Such simplicity is as elusive as the “Two-State Solution” itself.

For one thing, Israel is a small country, and though it is powerful for its size, it is subject to a remarkable amount of factors from within and without, and its sensitive reactions to these factors are often intense, with Israel’s increasingly volatile neighborhood (and often volatile involvement in that neighborhood) only compounding these effects. Therefore, rather than look at public opinion and settlement policy as some sort of isolated factors, it is essential to account, at the very least, for some of the other major forces that can account for shifts in policy and opinion. Thus, when I was assembling my data points, I knew it would be essential to frame shifts in both Israeli public opinion and Israeli settlement policy against the backdrop of the more salient events affecting Israel, generally, those that could generally affect the feelings of Israelis and, specifically, those that could affect settlement policy. This approach should be more than obvious in the dataset I have uploaded here (this will be an ongoing project, so check back frequently for changes).

As time went on and I looked more and more at the different surveys, I also realized that measuring public opinion in Israel carries a unique set of challenges in contrast to studying similar subjects in the United States. 

The U.S. is a huge country, with hundreds of millions of people spread across a continent; Israel has far less than even ten million people squeezed into a tiny sliver of the Mediterranean coast. During major U.S. elections, political polls are ubiquitous, and even not during election cycles, major issues are polled often. Whatever the polls, there are usually long histories of polling by that firm and other major polling firms, asking relatively similar questions and often the same questions.

Israeli political polling is another beast entirely: there are far, far fewer pollsters, and there is little consistency in how questions are phrased between pollsters and, sometimes, even with the same polling outfit. Also, because there are far fewer data points the polling data must be taken with much more of a grain of salt than American polling.

We simply don’t have ten or even twelve years of data that says “Do you approve or disapprove of Israeli settlements?” What this means is that there is a broad array of approaches to categorizing the data and presenting it. The only agenda I pursued in my presentation was one of simplicity, and I take responsibility for the costs such an approach carries. For example, instead of a question asking “Are you for or against evacuating settlements?” a question might ask “Are you a.) for removing all settlements b.) for removing most settlements except major ones near the Green Line [i.e., 1967 borders] c.) for removing settlements from the Green Line and illegal outposts d.) for removing illegal outposts e.) against any removals?” In this case, I would (and basically did) combine a.), b.), and c.) to refer to serious support for full or partial settlement removal, ignored d.) as not really being conclusive of sentiment supporting settlement removal in general, and took e.) for being against removal. Other may have found it more beneficial to include all these nuances or created different categories and groupings. I opted for the ones I chose, again, for the sake of simplicity, but I welcome comments and suggestions.

Even with the limitations and subjective approach I took, I still feel there is value in looking at this data thus arrayed, and I can say with confidence that no one else has undertaken a similar effort as comprehensive as mine, at least not in English but also not likely in Hebrew, either. As imperfect as the data may be, it can still help to give a relative sense of the forces at work. See the dataset here (data does not include East Jerusalem)

The Inconsistent Effects of Public Opinion on Israeli Settlement Policy

Looking at my (provisional) compilation of the data, in the years just before the Palestinians’ First Intifada (uprising) at the end of 1987, over half of Israelis (as high as 57%) were inclined to annex Palestinian land in part or in full, therefore making many or all the settlements permanent Israeli communities, and support for “land for peace” initiatives was below 50% (as low as 39%). In reaction to the (relatively moderate-to-low-scale) violence of the Intifada, public opinion reversed: sentiment supporting “land for peace” began to steadily increase, and support for annexation dipped below 50% and continued to decline as the Intifada continued. By 1991, the positions has essentially reversed, with one poll showing 58% for “land for peace” style ideas and only 40% for annexation.

Yet with the exception of a small dip in 1989, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s hardline government continued with steady settlement population increases and construction expansion, with the highest settler population increases in 1987 and 1991, which also had dramatically higher percentage increases in settlement construction (over 144% and over 314%, respectively). Though the latter coincided with the peak years of the Soviet-Jewish Aliya (immigration) to Israel, U.S. president George H. W. Bush still felt that Shamir’s government was going far too far on settlements, and exerted heavy pressure on him and Israel to curtail settlement growth and construction. Along with changing public sentiment, this helped precipitate the rise of Yitzhak Rabin’s pro-peace Labor government in 1992, which would severely curtail settlement construction, though not so much settlement population growth. 

Here would be one of the times that Israeli public opinion on settlements seemed to lead and push Israel, its politicians, and its government on settlement policy. 

The year before and year of Rabin’s assassination were two of the deadliest years in all of the 1990s for Israelis in terms of Palestinian violence, and, according to one survey, sympathy for settlers among the Israeli public rose in the year after Rabin’s assassination, even as settlement activity was being curtailed. This same year was when Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud, pro-settlement forces pushed Labor out of power, and it is ironic that under Netanyahu’s three years in power, sentiment (with some vacillation) seemed to increase and remain high for “land for peace” (60s and high 50s) initiatives and for evacuating settlements (high 60s/low 70s), while support for annexation was far lower than before (mid-20s). Yet Netanyahu—who had himself hold the housing ministry responsible for settlement construction along with the office of prime minister for the entirety of his prime ministership—pushed ahead robustly with settlement expansion.

This may in part help to explain the rise of Labor and peace candidate Ehud Barak’s government in 1999, under whose watch public opinion in several surveys increased sharply against settlements and rise sharply for “land for peace.”

But this would be short-lived. Under the intense diplomatic efforts of U.S. President Bill Clinton, Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat engaged in intense U.S.-mediated negotiations in 2000, and settlement expansion activity by the Israeli government accordingly fell sharply. But these talks fell apart, with some encouragement by Barak’s rival, Likudnik Ariel Sharon, who could have been fairly said to have helped instigate the Second Intifada late in 2000. Amidst a dramatic rise in violence—far worse than anything during the First Intifada and the rest of the 1990s—Sharon, the famously harsh warrior, toppled Barak’s government amid plummeting support for “land for peace” and settlement evacuation, a pessimism that was only reinforced by the 9/11 attacks in America.

Previously, Labor had ridden waves of anti-settlement and pro-“land for peace” sentiment with Rabin and Barak, and Likud had tried (but failed) to lead public opinion with Netanyahu. Sharon, it seems, would succeed where Netanyahu had failed. But Sharon would have a unique and surprising agenda: even while crushing the Palestinian uprising with overwhelming force, Sharon would shepherd his people towards a historic disengagement, a sort of a “land for peace” led by an archconservative, much like strong anti-Communist Nixon would credibly able to normalize relations with Mao’s China.

Under Sharon, Arafat died and the settler population steadily if moderately expanded, even as Sharon withdrew all 8,500 Jewish settlers from Gaza in 2005 (even allowing for that, both the settler population and settlement construction saw a net increase that year), though Sharon’s government definitely curtailed construction of new units.

The pullout from Gaza caused a rift in the pro-settler Likud party, so much so that Sharon broke off and formed a new, centrist Kadima party, which led a new government that would significantly curtail support for settlement expansion. 

But the next year, Sharon would fall into a coma, while Hamas would win elections in the evacuated Gaza Strip and Israel would become embroiled in an embarrassing and controversial war in Lebanon. Amidst these developments, Israeli anti-settler and “land for peace” sentiment fell sharply, even as Sharon’s Kadima successor, Ehud Olmert, would risk major peace talks with Arafat’s successor, Mahmoud Abbas in 2008. When these fell apart, more conflict in Gaza ensued and set the stage for Netanyahu’s comeback as prime minister. Since then, opinion has been conflicted, with volatile opinions on whether settlements should be evacuated and a tightening of pro/con land-for-peace sentiment and an increase in pro-annexation sentiment up until the major conflict with Gaza in 2014. Sentiment on settlements under Netanyahu remained divided up through 2014, so it seems ironically fitting that in his right-wing, pro-settler government, a moderate has been giving the housing ministry. The major declines in government support for the settlers during this period coincided with Obama’s first-term pressure on Israel to freeze settlement activity and his second-term peace effort, led by John Kerry.

Conclusion: It’s Complicated

In summary, there is no overall consistent effect of public opinion on settlement policy. In the 90s, Labor seemed to chase public sentiment as it turned against settlements and for “land-for-peace,” but violence and an assassination meant this did not lead to any long-term peace deal or long-term change in settlement policy. Likud tried twice—first, failing, second, succeeding—to shape public opinion and succeeded, but that led to a strong-willed Sharon forming a new party, and his coma mirrored Rabin’s assassination attempt in seeing efforts fail before new leadership acted to halt new trends in government policy, in both cases, Netanyahu. Thus, it would seem public opinion is at best only as strong a factor as individual leadership, violence from Palestinians, American pressure, and other x-factor events, and that opinion is highly susceptible to all of these factors. It is public opinion that is more variable then, when compared with relatively consistent settlement policy, perhaps best exemplified in the net increases in settlement construction and population growth the same year Sharon took about 8,500 settlers out of Gaza. 

Thus, whether public opinion shapes settlement policy depends on a number of factors, and is hardly the most dominant of factors affecting that policy.

© 2018 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Brian E. Frydenborg is an American freelance writer, academic, and consultant from the New York City area currently based in Amman, Jordan. You can follow and contact him on Twitter: @bfry1981

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If people thought 2015 was bad, 2016 shows no sign of letting on up on risk.  The Middle East, China, Europe, Central Africa, even the United States will all raise serious questions about risk in 2016.

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse January 7, 2016  

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) January 7th, 2016 (Altered version posted on Global Risk Insights January 26th)

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AMMAN — The year 2016 will pose a number of major risks for the international community, and many of these risks were already major issues in 2015.  Not only typically high-risk areas like the Middle East and Africa are highlighted, but also China, Europe, and America.  Here are five of the largest ones that will be headlining the news throughout the year.

1.) Middle East Morass

Pat Bagley/Salt Lake Tribune

The greater-Middle East will continue to present a number of challenges to the world in 2016.  While the situation with Iran moving towards de-escalation over nuclear tensions and a lifting of sanctions that could happen as early as January is indeed welcome, there is little else occurring in the region that is reassuring.  The general Sunni-Shiite divide will continue to present problems.  Though ISIS has been gradually pushed back throughout the year and lost some territory in Iraq (including, most recently, Ramadi) and Syria, there is no guarantee that ISIS will not be able to retake what it just lost as the dynamics in its spheres of operations are incredibly complicated.  There is reason to fear that Russia’s recent foray into Syria will continue to bolster Assad’s brutal regime and make things worse for non-ISIS rebels as well as Syrian civilians, all while having at best a minimal effect on ISIS itself; Putin has not shown any indication as of yet that he will be changing what Russia’s military forces are doing there. 

Not much will come out of Turkey’s shooting-down of a Russian military jet that will have larger effects beyond either country, except that both Putin and Erdoğan will be able to use this to bolster their support at home.  With Turkey having long been an example of secular democracy of a sort in the Middle East, the world can only disappointingly expect the recently further empowered Erdoğan to continue his country’s march towards increasingly Islamic and authoritarian single-party rule (he just recently cited Hitler’s Germany as an “effective” political system) as well as conflict escalation with Turkey’s own and the region’s Kurds.  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also seems set to continue his country’s slower march to eroding liberal democratic values in favor of more theocratic, Jewish-ethnocentric laws, practices, and regulations while simultaneously provoking Palestinians into higher-levels of violence with increased settlement building and occupation coupled with no serious attempt to engage with Palestinians on a two-state solution.  This, in turn, will eventually provoke more serious military responses from Israel, which will only further empower extremists like Hamas or worse at the expense of the apparently crumbling Palestinian Authority and its president, Mahmoud Abbas, in turn only further empowering Israeli extremists.  As if also reading from a similar card, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi seems set on pursuing a path of oppression against Islamists which will only see further violence and escalation in an already escalating mini-insurgency of sorts.  Former Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki was cut in the same vein as these leaders, but thankfully the Obama Administration, Iraqi Shiites, and even Iran all worked together to nudge him aside in favor of the far less sectarian Dr. Haider al-Abadi in 2014.  The retaking of Ramadi—without civilian-casualty-intensive tactics—by Iraq is a significant victory for Abadi’s government, but it remains to be seen if this success is one that can be maintained and to what degree if any Abadi’s situation stabilizes enough for the Iraqi government to make any further gains, let alone prevent fresh losses, though as of now the trends are positive, and Ramadi could be a sign that Obama’s strategy for dealing with ISIS is beginning to pay off; only time will tell and the most difficult fights are yet to come either way. 

Jordan and Lebanon have done a surprisingly good job of holding togetherunder the enormous pressures refugees have been exerting on their state systems, but there is no guarantee 2016 will not produce a tipping point or points for either or both of these smaller states.  Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and its coalition seem capable only of mismanagement in their Yemen war, where they have been careless in inflicting civilian casualties, while Libya, too, remains problematic and is now having to deal with a growing ISIS presence in its territory.  And refugees keep pouring not only into places like Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey, but also, now, into Europe.  Which brings the reader to the next big risk issue for 2016…

2.) Big tests for Europe’s Union

Sean Gallup/Getty Images

While talk of the European Union’s demise is incredibly premature, 2016 opens with the EU facing several challenging trends, and its response to them could well define it for years, perhaps decades.  The welfare-state system as it now exists has shown itself to be unsustainable and there are more than a few ailing economies that present problems for the whole Union, Greece, of course, being the worst but not the only economic thorn in the EU’s side. 

Just these economic problems alone would be an enormous challenge, but, unfortunately for the EU, it is also facing several other crises.  The influx of refugees into Europe, including many Syrians, comes at the worst possible time.  Before this new wave of refugees, Europe was already seeing a rightward tilt politically speaking; a smattering of terrorist incidents in 2015, which peaked with the spectacular attacks in Paris this November, have only naturally added a large dousing of fuel to the right’s fire of anti-immigrant demagoguery.  Unsurprisingly, the tinder of anti-immigrant sentiment and fears of terrorism have created quite the pyre for rightists to illuminate themselves attractively to European voters, and all over Europe right-wing parties are gaining significant power or are even coming to lead governments.  This is making it exceedingly difficult for the European Union to come up with any sort of a coherent policy on refugee migrants, and when leaders and governments try to accept more refugees, the political cost is a zero-sum one that penalizes them and rewards the right-wing parties with more public support (and this from the continent that has been the banner carrier for liberal values for some time). 

If all this was not enough, voters in key EU economic trouble spots like Greece, Spain, and Portugal seem to be rejecting the EU’s economic prescriptions and a degree of political chaos is ensuing.  If the EU cannot collectively create and enforce policies on major issues like refugees and the economy, and if its efforts to do so are soundly rejected by voters in key EU nations, 2016 will likely raise serious questions about what the EU actually is and what it wants to be in the future.  However, political chaos is hardly limited to the eastern side of the Atlantic Ocean…

3.) America’s semi-chaotic election year

REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

Between Europe and America, Democratic systems are hardly playing their A-game these days.  The rise of Donald Trump and the more unhinged wing of the Republican Party supporting the likes of him and obstructionist (and demonstrable charlatan) Ted Cruz (a first-time senator largely responsible for the 2013 government shutdown who has caused much political chaos and has no serious legislative accomplishments under his belt), as well as Dr. Ben Carson (a medical doctor with no relevant political experience or expertise), have made this political race the most unpredictable in recent memory.  Many accuse Trump of being racist and bigoted, but a more astute observer would look at similar politicians in Europe and see that he is playing a very smart game, leveraging Americans’ inflated fears about both terrorism and immigration to channel populist angst and ride that wave for all it is worth.  Sadly, this is as American as apple pie; even President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a champion of liberal values and the architect of victory over both the depression and the Axis powers in WWII, interned well over 100,000 residents and citizens of Japanese descent; Trump even cited this action of FDR’s as a precedent. 

Such outside the system wild-cards like Trump, Cruz, and Carson looking more and more likely to become the Republican Party’s nominee for the president of the world’s oldest and most powerful democracy is hardly a reassuring thing for the rest of the world.  Many Americans seem to have always naturally had a disdain for the political class throughout American history, but this election cycle may see the most dramatic materialization of this trend in American history.  Though likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton seems quite likely to defeat such a challenge, nothing is certain in American politics these days, and the unraveling of one of America’s two political parties cannot be shrugged off; even if Clinton were to win, America’s two-party system does not function when both parties are roughly the same size and one is not interested in governing (just ask Barack Obama).  What this means for the global economy and for international relations is one huge question mark of political risk.

4.) Asian economic woes

Reuters/VOA

The slowing of the Chinese economic juggernaut to its lowest officially announced growth since early 2009 was a big surprise in 2015; perhaps less surprising was Japan coming very close to entering a recession in the third quarter of this year (only escaping this label after revised numbers were released), struggling with an ageing population and low birthrate.  How the two economic giants of East Asia (and two largest economies in the world after the U.S.) tackle their economic challenges—or fail to do so—will be big narratives for the year 2016.  While nothing catastrophic is expected to happen in terms of Japan, if there is little good news coming out of that nation in 2016, that will not help the rest of the world deal with its economic funk.  China, though, is of larger concern: if things were to get dramatically worse, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which has already had a difficult time dealing with public unrest from democracy-oriented mass protests in Hong Kong to worker dissatisfaction to Muslim Uighur unrest in Xinjiang will have a tough time keeping order with a Chinese public that has grown to be bolder and more frequent in voicing dissatisfaction with the government over the past few years.  There have already been tremendous ripple effects from China’s economic downturn, not the least of which is contributing to the falling price of oil since China’s enormous demand for that energy source has weakened along with its economy, but if China’s stability were to even remotely become an issue, investors and markets around the world would react far more negatively than they already have.  CCP officials have done a fine job of transitioning China from the anarchy of the Cultural Revolution in the 1970s to the wild success of its economy over the past few decades, so there is some reason to hope for a competent response; at the same time, that this is happening at all suggests CCP leaders are not so sure about how to manage this crisis, and it remains to be seen if 2016 will see the situation improve or become even worse.  And, of course, there are the concerns over the how various territorial disputes with other Asian nations and with Taiwan could factor into a politically less stable environment….

2016 has already started off very badly for China; just today, China halted stock trading for the day (for the second time this week!) as Chinese stocks fell more than 7% in just 29 minutes.

5.) Recipe for conflict in Africa’s Great Lakes region

REUTERS/Jean Pierre Aime Harerimana

If Rwanda’s internal ethnic problems served as a catalyst for the series of conflicts known as Africa’s World War (the deadliest conflict in the world since WWII and one that is still ongoing), current problems that are spiraling rapidly out of control in Burundi threaten to plunge the region into conflict again.  In Rwanda in 1994, that country’s Tutsi minority was almost wiped out in a genocide carried out by the majority Hutus.  The government that came to power in the subsequent revolution led by Paul Kagame was one of Tutsis, and Kagame is still in power now.  He has shown a willingness to aggressively project Rwandan military power outside of his own borders, and the UN even accused his forces of possibly committing a countergenocide against Hutus.  Kagame successfully changed his system be able to keep himself in power after pledging he would step down, something Burundi’s Hutu President Pierre Nkurunziza did by running for, and winning in July, a third term in violation of that country’s constitution.  When protests erupted in Burundi in response, the government began a crackdown that just this December began to look a lot like Tutsis were being targeted.  Burundi’s military is led by both Hutus and Tutsi officers, but recently Tutsi officers have been forming rebel groups and the president has been pushing Tutsi officers out of major positions of power or has sidelined them from more important missions.  Tensions are already rising between Burundi and Rwanda, and if Burundi erupts into civil war, Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda may find themselves sucked in in one way or another, and the simmering but quieting Congo conflict, involving Hutus and Tutsis in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, could also flare back up as well.  Ethnic conflict and hatred could well embroil this region again if events continue on their current trajectories.

*****

There are certainly other trends to watch in 2016, but these are very likely to dominate headlines for quite some time in the new year.  Only time will tell if these trends will improve or get worse, but for now, there are appropriately-high degrees of concern and worry about these trends.

Related article: 2015 Year in Risk Review: Risky Business

If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to me! Please feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow me there at@bfry1981)

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse October 26, 2015 

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) October 26th, 2015

AP Photo/Nasser Shiyoukhi

AMMAN — As the sadly predictable violence suffered by both Israeli and Palestinian civilians seems to spiral out of control into something approaching an uprising or sorts (maybe a Third Intifada, maybe not, only time will tell) it is important to know who to blame so there can be accountability and way forward.

Blame must necessarily be placed more heavily where there resides more power. Keeping this in mind, first and foremost, we must blame Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his conservative coalition governments, in power for over six-and-a-half years, since March 2009.

Netanyahu has for years never been enthusiastic about the peace process; he even bragged about actively undermining the Oslo Accords while Prime Minister from 1996-1999, helping to set the stage for the Second Intifada; he was against the 2005 Gaza “disengagement” plan of then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, quitting his cabinet post in Sharon’s government in protest; and all through Obama’s presidency, he has resisted serious peace talks, participating only reluctantly and has been unwilling to discuss major final-status issues, in particular the final borders with a Palestinian state. All the while, he has been a champion of illegal Israeli settlement expansion on what is legally Palestinian territory, the final status of which is supposed to be determined in negotiations, and he has refused intense requests from the Obama administration to fully halt settlement expansion during peace talks, undermining whatever good faith could have existed. He even allowed his government to repeatedly announce plans for settlement expansion at the most inopportune moments, leading one of his senior ministers in his own government to accuse his government of deliberately undermining negotiations. Netanyahu used the horrific murder and kidnapping of three Israeli teens in the summer of 2014 as an excuse to pursue an agenda of political repression against Hamas, even though Hamas as an organization was not responsible for the lone-wolf atrocity.

At this time, Hamas had also been observing a cease-fire since November 2012 for a year-and-a-half, and all throughout that period Netanyahu did nothing to alleviate the harsh blockade of Gaza in the long-term despite Hamas’ dutiful observation of the cease-fire. The crackdown against Hamas was the largest security operation in the West Bank since the Second Intifada ended ten years earlier and was seen by Hamas as a provocation after it had been on its best behavior in years, refraining from engaging in terrorism and violence against Israelis. Netanyahu continued the crackdown, and Hamas responded with rocket fire.

The main point to make here is this: Israel has almost all the power in this situation. It has the real sovereignty over the whole West Bank and de facto sovereignty in Gaza, where Israel totally controls the airspace, coastal waters, land crossings, population movement, controls most of its taxation, and still occupies almost 17% of Gaza’s land. Netanyahu makes bold demands of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, his governing party of Fatah, and Hamas, but deliberately disempowers them to the degree that they are not generally capable of meeting his demands. Palestinian officials, whether of Hamas or of Fatah, have little control over anything and that control is totally at Israel’s discretion. Fatah renounced violence and basically kept to this for years now. Hamas has not. If Netanyahu had a productive strategy, it would be rewarding areas controlled by Abbas’s Fatah for nonviolence by ending the occupation—in place since 1967—in some of these areas. This would in turn pressure Hamas to become less violent as the Palestinians living under Fatah control would see the benefits of non-violence and cooperation while those living under Hamas control would become jealous.

What does Bibi do instead? He makes no major concessions or serious reductions of the occupation at all to Fatah and continues with massive settlement expansion in areas under Fatah control despite years of security cooperation that has been praised for years by Israeli security officials; when Hamas is non-violent for over a year and half, Netanyahu also does nothing to reward this behavior. As the major power broker, Netanyahu at the helm of the Israeli government sets the stage, and has the ability to reward and encourage non-violence; when he does not do this, he is essentially encouraging violence and is empowering Hamas and undermining Fatah and Abbas. Hamas can point to Fatah and the leadership of Abbas, and say “See what cooperation with the Israelis gets you? More occupation, more settlements!”

This was Netanyahu’s approach from the moment he took office through today, including the many anguishing months of fruitless talks led by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and in the run-up to last summer’s Gaza conflict and in his lack of initiative in the year since leading up to this current round of violence. In his actions Netanyahu has shown that he not only does not care to seek real peace in the form of a two-state solution with the Palestinians, he has also shown no inclination to reduce or end the oppressive occupation. He is also no stranger to divisive rhetoric, most recently on display in his trying to shamefully and falsely claim a Palestinian inspired Hitler to carry out the Holocaust, inspiring condemnation from many Israelis and historians.

But on another level, we can—and should—blame everyone.

The Israeli people had chances and came close to removing Netanyahu from office twice in recent years; they did not. They have continually empowered him, no doubt out of an understandable sense of fear, but in doing so they are helping to perpetuate this conflict. And how is there room in the Israeli public space for incitement and right-wing mobs that attack Arabs (sometimes Jews are mistaken for Arabs and attacked by other Jews) and even Jewish leftist dissenters, and for significant numbers of settlers (supported by the IDF!) to attack Palestinians and their property?

The Palestinians understandably are now turning away from Abbas, who has been unable (through little fault of his own) to produce any results to show for his cooperation with Netanyahu. This may be understandable, but it, too, is unwise. To turn towards violence and Hamas and intifada is not a recipe for success, it is a recipe for more bloodshed, and, as always, the vast majority of those dying will be the Palestinians themselves. We are seeing young children forming groups to throw rocks at Israeli security personnel, groups of young women too; where are their parents? How are they allowed to participate in riots and violence on such a regular basis? When will the incitement of violence and glorification of Palestinians who attack Israeli civilians stop?

Bibi has had the power to help nudge both societies away from such behavior, but has done just the opposite. He is the director for a staged play awash in violence and conflict, but most of the actors in Israeli and Palestinian society are all too willing to play their part. Israelis and Palestinians who advocate peace and coexistence are increasingly marginalized by their respective societies and are devoid of meaningful political power. This latest time the curtain has risen for a show of predictably increasing violence, there is plenty of blame to go around, indeed.

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If you can’t understand that Obama’s overall Middle East strategy is starting to work, you don’t know what you’re talking about

 Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse May 21, 2015   

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) May 21st, 2015

This piece was The Russian International Affairs Council’s (RIAC) “Post of the Month” for June/July, and was also published by Stupidparty Math v. Myththanks to Patrick Andendall and by Tuck Magazine.

The cocks who crow “failure” every time the sun rises about the Obama Administration’s overall Middle East strategy—and we will be hearing their mindless crowing at its highest decibels since the competition within the Republican Party for the Party’s presidential nomination is now officially underway—have no sense of strategy themselves and dangerously substitute tactical-here-and-nows and pointless posturing for real strategy. That’s not to say some of the Obama Administration’s Middle East policies aren’t lacking, but overall the Administration has more progress and sound approaches to point to than failures and mismanagement. Below, all of the Obama Administration’s major Middle East policies are broken down and given a letter grade. Here, then, is a look at all the major efforts of the Obama Administration in the Middle East, and as it covers a lot of territory this has been broken up into three parts, this being Part I and covering the U.S.-Muslim world reset, Iraq, and Israel/Palestine.

Other articles in this series:

Grading Obama’s Middle East Strategy (Sensibly): Part II: Syria

A tense triumvirate in September, 2009- Doug Mills/The New York Times

AMMAN — Well, here we are again. Far too many “experts,” from the far leftto (especially) those who lean right and even many non-Americans, are ready to claim that Obama is practically starting the apocalypse with his foreign policy. While hysterical, laughable claims about possible nuclear warover Ukraine and many other issues fall into this category, the Middle East situation in particular inspires a remarkable number of myopic and dim-witted exclamations not only from the Republican White House hopefuls, but also many in the commentariat and the Twitteratti. Never mind the track record of this commentary-class who are naysaying Obama’s moves (and to a degree lack thereof, but more on that later), and never mind that the generally ill-informed Twitteratti emerge practically every day with some new hysterics that that there is barely time to call them out on their hysterics of old. These Chicken Littles of all levels proclaim that the sky is falling so often, that one must marvel that there is any sky left for us to enjoy at this point if even a fraction of their panic-mongering can be taken seriously. What is particularly amusing is that many of the people who are blaming Obama for the imminent collapse of the world order and Pax Americana are the same people who blame him for U.S. economic woes, as if things were great in January 2009 and America was not in the midst of the worst economic and financial crisis since the Great Depression. Still even more amusing and amazing are that many of these people are both the people who led America into the Great Recession and into invading Iraq.

Having said this, I will am quite happy to repeat that I find the Obama Administration’s foreign policy to be far from perfect, and have made some of my own disagreements with it quite vocally and publicly on matters from Syria to Israel/Palestine, among others. So I write this neither as an apologist nor as a hater, but as someone who has studied the Middle East for much of the past fifteen years (including some studying abroad in the region and, most recently, actually living in the Middle East). Rather from a position of ideology, I simply try to look at each situation, country, organization, etc. in light of whatever current issue is at hand, and try to see who is trying to make things better, who is disrupting for less-than-altruistic reasons, and how successful these various parties are in their efforts and whether or not such efforts actually help people or hurt people in both the short and long-terms.

A few basic points, though, need to be reiterated before we launch into a discussion here:

• Obama took office in January, 2009, and had to deal with a Middle Eastthat had become an overall festering disaster from the actions of the Bush Administration but also from the terrible policies of local rulers, from Hosni Mubarak in Egypt to Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel, from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran to (the recently departed) King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and also from the actions of a number of other foreign patrons, like Russia. While some of the American disasters had been partly mitigated by some competent self-correction (see Secretary of Defense Gates, General Petraeus, and the 2007 “Surge”), it is still undeniable that Obama inherited a situation in the Middle East that was probably worse than any previous American president ever had to deal with before. And those who say the situation got worse for a while under his watch may be right, but that is a statement of fact that in no way includes presiding over with responsibility, as this would be like blaming Lincoln for the Civil War or FDR for WWII. Rather, events were in motion and grievances raw and waiting to explode long before January 2009, it just took some time until after that for it all to boil over.
• The crises of the “Arab Spring” and its offshoot situations in Libya, Yemen, and most of all Syria had little to do with anything Obama did, and those trying to place primary blame for any of these local revolutions and wars are way off the mark. Locals were just as surprised as Americans at the Arab Spring, as well.
• As far as Israel/Palestine, Obama inherited a Bibi Netanyahu who had little-to-no desire to take the steps necessary for peace and an emasculated Palestinian Authority led by an emasculated Mahmoud Abbas, with the emasculation largely by Israeli design not just over the past few years but over decades.

Now that we have reminded people that the Middle East was not Vancouver or Switzerland before Obama took office, we have to think about what Obama’s major goals have been for U.S. policy in the region, why he has these goals, and how successful he has been in moving towards or fulfilling these goals. We can then give a letter “grade” on each of these for Obama and his Administration’s efforts so far.

In no particular order, let’s go through these major goals:

1.) Resetting U.S. relations with the Muslim world

I think we all remember Obama’s lofty Cairo address at Al-Azhar University, merely months into his presidency. At that point, Muslims were still in the “he’s not George W. Bush, he’s black, and his father was raised in a Muslim family” mode. However, escalation of U.S. military efforts in Afghanistan (a.k.a. Obama’s “surge”), Obama’s (wise) overall policy of not shying away from the use of drones in principle to go after terrorists training, plotting, and operating in ungoverned spaces, the taking out of Osama bin Laden by violating Pakistani sovereignty, still failing to fulfill his promise to close the U.S. prison at Guantánamo Bay over six years into his presidency, and lack of progress for the Palestinians achieving statehood combined with continued(and increasing) U.S. support of Israel have all led (unfairly, but quite understandably) to a feeling among Muslims that there was little to distinguish between George W. Bush and Barack Obama. The fact is that the lofty rhetoric and high idealism of the (now somewhat infamous) Cairo speech was not matched with much of the action that Muslim publics wanted to see from a U.S. President: an end to drone strikes and military operations, the closing of Guantánamo, and real, substantive pressure on Israel and a lessening of U.S. support for Israel on behalf of Palestinians. While it was not realistic to expect any U.S. president to take away most of or all military options for dealing with terrorists in many of the weak states of the Muslim world, based on his own rhetoric Obama would have to be guilty of raising expectations on both Guantánamo and on Israel and the Palestinians far beyond what he has delivered and far below the amount of effort that should have come after such a speech.

Grade: D+ overall; more recently: C-

We don’t give Mr. Obama an F here because we are talking about the Muslim “world,” which, although mostly the people, also includes leaders and governments. This is because, despite his unpopularity on the street-level, the coalition he has put together to confront ISIS includes several Middle Eastern Muslim nations not just financing operations, as has been standard operating procedure in the past, but actually taking part in hostilities in a significant way. So one can say that recently, Obama has shown to have increased his ability to work with Muslims leader, if not endear himself to their people. In this way, then, Obama resembles George W. Bush’s father, George H. W. Bush, who was able to include a wide array of regional Muslim nations in the 1990-91 Gulf War, more George W. was able to include in his 2003 misadventure. So even if Obama remains deeply unpopular among Muslims publics in many parts of the world, he deserves credit from getting more out of Muslim leaders recently than his predecessor.

2.) Ending U.S. combat involvement in Iraq while maintaining the U.S. role of a key ally and supporter of Iraq

Here is a goal that no one should be surprised about: Illinois state senator Obama, U.S. Senator Obama, Democratic presidential primary candidate Obama, and Democratic presidential nominee Obama all made it clear his goal was to end the Iraq War, specifically to end the U.S. combat role there. The fact that he opposed it more vocally than, and before, Hillary Clinton, who had voted for the authorization to use force in Iraq, was arguably the issue which most distinguished Obama from Clinton, and which propelled him to a Democratic primary victory over her. I will state here that I was, in much of the period before he was elected President, concerned about this position of his. While it was clear to me that Iraq had been a disaster and that the decision to invade was wrong, I felt that we owed the Iraqi people a lot for invading them erroneously and destroying their society through a combination of carelessness, incompetence, stupidity, and hubris. Yet before Obama was running for president, we had been able to improve the security situation greatly through some major changes in leadership and the accompanying “Surge,” as I have noted a few times before, but there was still a lot to be done and while I was more and more doubting the ability of the U.S. to achieve its goals in Iraq, I had not yet come to the position where I was comfortable with a withdrawal of U.S. forces from a combat role. In other words, I didn’t even want to go into the store, but having broken the merchandise once we were in the store, I felt we had to fix things and couldn’t just leave (see Colin Powell’s so-called “Pottery Barn” doctrine). In some ways, Obama struck me as a bit naïve and idealistic in his articulated foreign policy, and that was one of many reasons why I was a strong supporter of Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries. I was particularly nervous that he was going to pick a vice presidential candidate who was very light on national-level and foreign policy experience, someone like Virginia Governor Tim Kaine or others who were rumored top picks at the time. John McCain’s long experience as a moderate “maverick” Republican who was willing to stand up to his party and to do so often, allowed me to consider voting for him at this juncture, in the summer of 2008. But when Obama nominated Joe Biden as his vice president, my fears of a radical, naïve foreign policy were assuaged and I felt the pick sent a clear signal that Obama would not do anything too quickly and too drastically in Iraq that would cause a catastrophic, sudden power vacuum. Conversely, McCain’s picking of the almost cartoonishly buffoonishneophyte Sarah Palin to be his vice presidential nominee made it clear to me that the aging maverick was unfit for the presidency.

As events in Iraq continued to show no serious political progress despite our security gains, the Bush Administration and the Iraqi government, in the midst of the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign to determine Bush’s successor, completed negotiations and agreed on a withdrawal of all U.S. combat troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. And let’s just repeat that tidbit from the last sentence, for all the world and especially American conservatives to see: the administration of George W. Bush committed the U.S. to withdrawing its combat troops from Iraq by the end of 2011, which is exactly the same time frame in which Obama would eventually do just that. Years later, Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State in 2008 and a major player in the negotiations, maintained that the Administration’s intention was for that deadline to be renegotiated and/or for a “residual force for our training with the Iraqis,” but the Bush Administration—again, this is key—found itself unable to come to agreement with the exact same issue the Obama Administration found was its primary obstacle to negotiating for this same residual force: immunity of U.S. troops from prosecution by the Iraqi government, standard in any such agreement, known as status of forces agreements (SOFAs). And what is not to be missed here is that the Bush Administration, in agreeing to the 2011 withdrawal timeline mere months before it would be out of office, punted the responsibility to changing that agreement to what it actually intended it to be to the next president’s administration. So basically, regardless of any intent to change or add onto the Bush Administration’s 2008 agreement later—and betting on a future round of negotiations is always a risky bet since you cannot ever guarantee the same leaders or conditions—the Bush Administration still set the stage and the timetable for a withdrawal of all U.S. combat troops by 2008 through its own choice, through its own actions, by failing to obtain any agreement on a residual U.S. force because the Iraqi government would not agree to grant U.S. troops immunity from prosecution (which is exactly why the Obama Administration was unable to come to agreement on the very same issue!). By putting the onus on a future administration to either undo or change the agreement they had negotiated just before leaving office, those senior Bush Administration officials involved in the 2008 agreement who are criticizing Obama’s not coming to SOFA agreement on a residual force in Iraq are criticizing Obama’s team for what they themselves were unable to do. It is impossible to take any such criticism coming from them seriously, which can only be considered absurd or hypocritical at best.

Around the same time the 2008 Bush Administration agreement to withdraw from Iraq was finalized, I was starting to become comfortable with the idea of a gradual, eventual withdrawal from Iraq, and with Biden’s selection as VP, Obama’s subsequent elaboration on his ideas on Iraq, and the selection of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State once Obama had been elected, I became more confident that Obama’s team would not conduct a withdrawal hastily or irresponsibly. Still, I was torn on the issue of a withdrawal itself, but as Obama’s early years in the White House unfolded and the security situation in Iraq improved without any major political agreements being forged by Iraq’s Shiite political leadership—led by Iraq’s Prime Minister, Nouri Kemal al-Maliki—with the Sunni or Kurdish minorities, agreements that would be key in creating any lasting stability in Iraq, I became convinced that there was little more that U.S. forces could accomplish in Iraq. Having helped establish a dramatic improvement in security in 2007 with the surge compared to the previous year, and seeing each year U.S. forces remained in Iraq have a significant reduction in violence and Iraqi civilian casualties, the U.S. had succeeded in giving Iraq and its leaders the security space necessary to negotiate politically without concurrent violence dictating terms to those threatened by such violence. Even once U.S. forces had totally withdrawn in December 2011—and the withdrawal had been going on since 2010—the year 2012 saw virtually the same level of dramatically improved security as 2011 and 2010, with all three years being the safest in Iraq since before the 2003 U.S. invasion. Yet Maliki, Prime Minister since before the 2007 “Surge,” and his supporters squandered very real, very workable opportunities from during and after the surge over the course of over five years—which is more time in office than some U.S. presidents—and set the stage for rebellion in 2013 instead of reconciliation, as I have previously written. If Maliki was not going to use the massive gains in security in from 2007-2011, while American troops were still in Iraq, to make the necessary compromises in order to calm down angry Sunnis and Kurds and to put Iraq on the path away from sectarian division and civil war and towards stability and reconciliation, what was the point of having U.S. troops there anymore, shoring up a government that was unwilling to govern in the interests of all Iraqis? If anything, having U.S. forces there to support and protect his government when he was unwilling to compromise gave Maliki more cover to avoid reaching out to Sunnis and Kurds.

So by the time the Obama Administration completed the withdrawal of U.S. troops in December 2011, I had come to agree that, having spent blood and treasure to give Iraqi politicians breathing room to make politics work—the explicit stated objective of the “Surge”—while having seen no serious effort at politics on the part of Iraq’s government, having seen that our leverage and influence (being eclipsed by Iran) was clearly no longer high enough in Iraq produce meaningful results, and having seen Iraq clearly align itself with Iran over America, it made sense to get out. The “Surge” and subsequent maintaining and improving of its security gains may not have 100% fulfilled our moral and ethical responsibility for all the damage we caused and contributed to in Iraq from 2003-2006, but in 2011 especially it was clear there was no point in staying at all, especially if Maliki would not give U.S. troops immunity. So the right decision had been made, but the Bush Administration deserved some credit as well for agreeing to the initial timetable to which Obama stuck. And, as will be discussed below, he handled the ISIS in Iraq debacle in a way that very much aided Iraq’s long-term interests.

Grade: A+

Obama withdrew from Iraq and was ahead of the curve compared to many in realizing American troops could not bring about the politics necessary to stabilize Iraq, but he did so in a responsible, gradual way that no sane person could say caused a drastic power vacuum or directly caused Iraq’s more recent woes. Just like Bush (and like any U.S. president would have), he chose not to agree to allow a U.S. residual non-combat force to stay and train/support Iraqi forces when Maliki would not grant them immunity. Nothing to complain about here, and I agree that a residual force would have been better but that is 100% on Maliki not granting immunity and having already committed to his Iranian allies that he would see our troops out in 2011. We will come to ISIS (and Obama’s mild military reengagement in Iraq) and Syria as separate issues.

3.) Israeli/Palestinian Peace

Here, one may be tempted to make more of the efforts of the Obama Administration than they actually represent, but at the same time we should not minimize them.

To be sure, Obama has publicly and in speeches, beginning especially with his big Cairo speech (see above) months into his presidency, highlighted the plight of Palestinians and the need for Israeli settlements to stop expanding into what is supposed to the core of a Palestinian state. Obama tried (perhaps too hard), and failed, to get Israel to agree to a full stop, or freeze, in settlement construction early in his presidency as a way to build up badly needed faith on the Palestinian side that Israelis were serious about negotiations, instead meekly settling for a “partial” Israeli freeze from late 2009 through much of 2010 after applying no substantive pressure to Israel beyond speeches and meetings. Even while the Obama Administration was trying shore up support for the talks, Israel announced the construction of 1,600 settlement housing units to be built on illegally occupied, disputed land in East Jerusalem (which was occupied in 1967 along with the West Bank and Gaza and which Israel has held in defiance of multiple binding resolutions of the United Nations Security Council over the decades since, beginning with the unanimously-agreed-upon Resolution 242 that included a “yes” vote of the U.S.). Moreover, this announcement came as Biden was visiting Israel to lead the charge for making the peace talks happen. This is equivalent of two people negotiating over splitting a pizza, and one side eating slices the other is claiming during negotiations, and eating this pizza right in front of the sponsor of the negotiations. Even after the partial freeze was agreed to, Israel continued building in in East Jerusalem and allowed thousands of announced “exceptions” and some unannounced exceptions that were in violation of even the limited freeze to which it had agreed. In addition, Israel also allowed a much higher than usual number of settlements to be approved before it agreed to the partial freeze so that, even while new construction was not authorized for some time, the pace of building hardly changed at all, and the pace only increased greatly after the nominal freeze.

Despite such disingenuous behavior on Israel’s part, at no time did the Obama Administration publicly even raise the prospect of reducing Israeli’s billions in military aid. In fact, throughout Obama’s entire presidency, U.S. aid has increased every year Obama has been in office, with the exception of a minor reduction in 2013 due to mandatory across-the-bard budget cuts imposed by the sequestration process, the outcome of Congressional inability to agree on a budget. And yet, when the recent hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for Israeli and joint U.S.-Israeli missile defense systems, including the highly effective Iron Dome system used to great effect against Hamas and others’ rockets in the Gaza conflict in the summer of 2014, is considered part of U.S. foreign aid to Israel (it is formally part of the U.S. defense budget and not classified as foreign aid), 2013, like every other year, saw an increase in aid. In addition, the Obama Administration has made many moves to block actions against Israel in the United Nations Security Council before they even came to light, and was the only “no” vote(which also served as a veto, given the U.S. position as a permanent veto-wielding member of the Security Council) against a resolution condemning Israeli settlements at a crucial juncture in February 2011 after talks between Israeli and Palestinians had broken down. Rather than pressure Israel substantively to stop settlement expansion and begin substantive talks, with its veto the U.S. instead encouraged Israel’s course of intransigence, occupation, and settlement expansion, even as it publicly condemned such action but only with mere words. The veto was not only hypocritical, it undermined the stated policy of every U.S. president since 1967 beginning with Lyndon Johnson and needlessly undermined the Obama Administration’s own concurrent efforts. Even with well over three more years of Israeli defiance on the settlements issue, the most substantive action the Obama Administration has taken to date was to merely delay for a short period of time some arms shipments last summer at the height of Israel’s grossly disproportionate assault on Gaza.

In other words, Obama sent Benjamin Netanyahu, then (and still) the Prime Minister of Israel, a clear message: “Go back on your agreements, play words game and with technicalities, completely undermine the spirit of an agreement, provoke the Palestinians by building on land you are supposed to be negotiating over, and we will complain publicly but still happily, freely, and increasingly give you lots of money and assistance, as well as diplomatic cover. I am too timid politically to actually threaten anything substantive against you even if you disrespect my Administration and even my Vice President personally, so, though you are the junior partner in the relationship, feel free to do anything you want, to ignore what me and my team say, and to not worry about your billions in U.S. aid. In fact, get ready for that aid to increase…”

Now, this is not what the Obama Administration intended to convey. It certainly did not say this, and there has been a valiant effort first by Obama then especially by Secretary of State John Kerry to try to help Israel see that its settlement policy not only harms Palestinians but also harms Israel’s interests by keeping millions of West Bank Palestinians under Israeli control and forcing the Israeli Jewish-majority democratic state of Israel to either become an Arab-majority country that outvotes Israel’s Jewish minority or to become a non-democratic, apartheid-like state which denies equal rights to the Arabs under its control in order to preserve Jewish control of the government. Other options that would forcibly remove millions of Palestinians from the West Bank or Israel would cause Israel majorproblems with the international community and seem not highly possible in implementation or probable.

Thus, to America’s credit, it has tried being a friend to Israeli in emphatically pressuring it with public speeches and in private meetings, including some unpleasant and animated meetings between Kerry and Netanyahu during the last round of failed talks which precipitated the violent confrontation in Gaza last summer. Senior U.S. officials—including Kerry and, apparently privately, Obama—and many others—Including Tzipi Livni, one of Israel’s own chief negotiators—have made it clear, as I have pointed out, that Netanyahu and the Israeli government bear the majority of responsibility for the lack of progress in peace talks with the Palestinians. So, let’s be clear: that is not Obama’s fault, nor that of his Administration.

What Obama can be blamed for is for not using any of his real leverage with Netanyahu and Israeli hardliners: the what is now well over $3 billion in annual aid to Israel and the U.S. veto power of what would be binding United Nations Security Council resolutions against Israeli actions regarding settlements and its occupation and control of Palestinian territory. All carrot and no stick over a long period of time is not a recipe for success. By leaving this leverage untouched and essentially rewarding Israel for its stubbornness and settlement expansion, the Obama Administration, despite any words or speeches, has encouraged Israel’s (self-)destructive policies, empowered Israeli’s right-wingers, and weakened Israel’s left, a left which is more serious about peace. In a very similar way, U.S. actions have also undermined Palestinians moderates like Mahmoud Abbas and Salaam Fayyad and empowered extremists like Hamas, as I have previously pointed out.

While, again, Netanyahu and the Israeli government are the most responsible for driving the dynamics, U.S. policy has not helped, and, overall, has only made things worse. And even as senior Israeli officials outlandishly disrespected Kerry when he was in the midst of leading talks in 2014, even as Netanyahu just delivered a major speech to a joint session of the U.S. Congress—wholly unprecedented because both a foreign head of state was invited by the American domestic opposition (Republicans) without the involvement or approval of the White House or the State Department in a blatant violation of protocol (a violation publicly criticized by over 180 former Israeli security officials for damaging Israel’s relationship with the U.S.) and because this foreign head of state delivered an insulting-to-Obama, not to mention misleading speech before a formal session of Congress to rally support against the Obama Administration’s own policy on Iran (Netanyahu foolishly wants more sanctions on Iran and illogically opposes Obama’s sound framework for, and attempt at reaching, a deal with Iran on its nuclear program, while Obama wants to hold off while negotiations are taking place and close the deal outline by the framework—one must wonder how much abuse and disrespect the Obama Administration is willing to suffer at the hands of Netanyahu’s Israeli government before there are any real consequences or penalty. Because in addition to undermining the whole Israeli-Palestinian peace process by holding back so timidly and encouraging unending chutzpah on the part of Netanyahu, such non-action on Obama’s part undermines the office of the presidency and American standing in the world, as well as humiliates Obama personally, when all can see how America’s supposedly closest “ally” mistreats it when there are serious disagreements on policy and that there are no substantive consequences for such mistreatment.

Grade: D+

Obama deserves some credit for robust public diplomacy consistently condemning Israeli settlement expansion and even condemning the tactics used in Gaza last summer, and as well as the verbal efforts during many private meetings between senior Israeli and American officials including Netanyahu, Obama, and Kerry. That is why an “F” grade is not given here. But, at a crucial time during this conflict when every year without an agreement makes getting to an agreement dramatically harder, not using America’s veto power or billions of dollars in annual aid to Israel as leverage while relying just on words to pressure Israel into saving itself and treating Palestinians humanely has clearly been ineffective throughout the more than six years of Obama’s presidency. To keep doing the same thing over and over again with the same approach is to invite the same result, a result that has not helped defuse a very unstable situation and serves only to increase tension and bloodshed. Basically, Obama has literally failed to put U.S. money where his mouth is, and the interests of America, Israel, and Palestinians have all suffered as a result. In addition, humiliating treatment by Netanyahu & Co. with no serious response from Team Obama has diminished the prestige of and respect for the office of the presidency, not to mention Obama himself.

*****

Continue to Part II

That’s it for Part I, in the next two parts: first the Obama Administration’s policies on the Syrian Civil War, then (overall) Arab Spring, ISIS, reducing America’s dependency on Mideast oil, and Iran (saving the more positive for last). If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to me! Please feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow me there at@bfry1981)