As Israel confronts a week of peril, its enemies navigate tricky waters of their own
The sun sets over the Gaza Strip, as seen from an area close to Kibbutz Sa’ad. Photo by Oren Ziv / AFP / Getty Images
Columnist Dan Perry August 13, 2024
Israel is on a knife’s edge, and this week could determine its fate for the next several months — if not years. These are critical days.
But they are just as critical for the countries and groups that most threaten Israel — which appear to have nearly as much to lose as the Jewish state.
Israeli officials openly anticipate an imminent strike by Iran in retaliation for the assassination of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh. Hezbollah is also widely expected to attack, in retaliation for Israel’s July killing of military chief Fuad Shukr in Beirut. The question is whether they will be in concert. Meanwhile, the U.S. is ramping up efforts to deter an escalation into all-out war, and has threatened Iran with “devastating consequences” should it miscalculate.
In addition, the United States, Egypt and Qatar have ramped up pressure on Israel and Hamas to nail down a hostages-for-ceasefire deal, with talks scheduled for Thursday — although Hamas has said it will not participate.
The mediators’ interests are clear. Amid a highly volatile election, with the Ukraine war escalating, the Americans want the Middle East disaster to wind down, and to move toward an Israel-Saudi peace. The Egyptians’ brittle economy has been very much affected by the loss of hard currency from the Suez Canal, where traffic is way down because of the Yemen-based Houthis’ attacks on commercial ships in the region in solidarity with the Palestinians. Qatar seeks to become a global business hub, a quest in which its association with the terrorists of Hamas is not proving helpful.
The situation is far more murky for the antagonists in this tale. Here’s a look at what each may be thinking, and how a pivot in the plot may affect them.
Anxiously awaiting a strike by Iran…
For a government whose leadership seems to enjoy cultivating an aura of inscrutability, Iran’s primary foreign policy goal is clear: To continue to project power across the region through financial and military support of terrorist proxies that damage Israel, undermine the West and rattle the moderate Sunnis.
The challenge for Iran’s leaders now is how to calibrate a promised attack on Israel without bringing damage upon themselves. The regime is widely understood to be reviled by its people, and many assess that a Western attack on its power centers in retaliation to a strike on Israel could spark a revolution — or even one of the most intriguing possibilities in geopolitics, a palace coup by elements of the Revolutionary Guards.
Iran successfully navigated this delicate balance in April, when it launched an attack on Israel with clear forewarning, allowing Israel — aided by countries across the Middle East — to successfully avert mass casualties.
It’s unlikely it will pull off the same trick twice. If Iran indeed attacks, we will know better the degree to which its leaders are willing to gamble with the patience of the world. Escalation would seem to offer the mullahs diminishing returns — but they march to their own fanatical drum. This week may show just how lucky they feel.
For Israel, an attack that creates significant civilian casualties would bring a major conundrum. It would both create pressure on the government from its own ultranationalist wing to strike back at Iran, and perhaps create legitimacy for such an action. But because Iran is so vast — with about nine times the population of Israel — this is not a potential war that even extremists relish. There will be some maneuvering to get the United States to punish Iran as well, although a strike that is not especially devastating may pave the way for de-escalation instead.
…and by Hezbollah
For some 10 months, Hezbollah’s attacks have displaced nearly 100,000 Israelis from communities near the Lebanese border. To have inflicted such a humiliation on a developed nation with a history of not putting up with very much places Hezbollah at the medals table of “resistance” movements, and has surely pleased its Iranian paymasters — and underscored the deterrent power of its Iran-gifted rocket arsenal.
The complication for Hezbollah, as it ponders a more intensive attack, is that the Lebanese people — especially the one-third who are Christians — are not interested in long-term conflict with Israel, and widely disapprove of Hezbollah’s provocations.
The terrorist group is the strongest military force in Lebanon, but if they attack Israeli in a more forceful way, they will, at least to some, appear to have stopped pretending to be a legitimate force in the Lebanese political environment. The destruction a full war with Israel could invite might well reignite the Lebanese civil war, a situation that could imperil Hezbollah’s survival in the region. Their rockets may deter Israel, but a shooting war on the ground with other forces in Lebanon may be an unwelcome complication for the group.
Israel’s leaders, aware of this internal dynamic in Lebanon, have been warning the Lebanese that they will suffer mightily in a full-fledged war. This week may show whether Hezbollah is prepared to test that theory.
Potential movement by Hamas
Hamas is delighted to have shown that the Palestinians can still set the world ablaze. The group has caused Israel great damage, and even though Gaza has suffered far, far more, Hamas retains considerable popularity among the Palestinians (which reflects the unpopularity of the Palestinian Authority, and the hatred that Israel has understandably earned).
But at this point, Hamas wants the war to end — without, of course, control of Gaza switching hands — even though its avoidance of talks this week might suggest otherwise. And it wants to engineer the release, as part of a hostage deal, of thousands of prisoners held in Israel — including Marwan Barghouti, who is seen as a future national leader. It wants to be accepted into the Palestinian national leadership, and through that avenue, take over the West Bank as well.
If Israel agrees to the deal that appears to be on the table, that will take Hamas a long way toward all these goals. (Hamas backing out of talks is less significant than it might seem; the group traditionally transmits their demands through Qatar, which is participating.) If Israel continues to stall, Hamas will have to decide whether to become more flexible or risk further fighting.
And it is certainly a risk: If the war goes on indefinitely, Hamas will be severely damaged as a fighting force, because it has finite fighters and Israel is vastly stronger. But such violence will certainly cost many more lives, including not only those of thousands more Palestinians, but also of the remaining Israeli captives – who are for Hamas an insurance policy of sorts. (On Monday, Hamas announced that its militants had shot and killed another hostage.) This week may show whether Hamas is prepared to keep sacrificing the lives of civilians in Gaza — and civilian hostages, too.
And a continued need to confront failures in Israel
In many ways, Israel’s enemies are far closer to their goals than Israel is to ending the threats against it, and all of them might be fairly satisfied with calling it a day and going for a ceasefire. That Hamas can even contemplate the concept of satisfaction when so many Gazans have died tells you something about the group. This is what fanaticism looks like.
As for Israel, it is hard to describe the reputational, economic, strategic and societal damage it has absorbed, and brought upon itself. At this stage in the war, nothing will change that. After Oct. 7 there were alternative paths, and at several junctures since then there were exit ramps that the government blew right past, refusing to cut losses and indifferent to opportunities. This is what incompetence, cynicism and idiocy look like.
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