JERUSALEM– It is hard to imagine that anyone in the Levant or the broader Middle East managed to sleep on Saturday night, as Iran launched hundreds of drones and ballistic missiles toward strategic sites in Israel and Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Almost all of the drones and missiles were intercepted before reaching their targets, as a result of a coordinated effort by the United States, Israel, Jordan, and the United Kingdom. The trigger for Saturday’s attack was Israel’s bombing of the Iranian consulate in Damascus on April 1, which killed 13 people, including several high-ranking members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. This act, a clear violation of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, compelled the Islamic Republic to respond.
Iran chose to strike Israel directly, a decision likely driven by a desire to defend its national pride following the attack its consulate, which, according to the Vienna Convention, is the Islamic Republic’s sovereign territory.
Paradoxically, this dangerous escalation presents a unique opportunity for a regional ceasefire – potentially ending the war between Israel and Hamas, preventing a direct military showdown between Israel and Iran, and stopping the Yemeni Houthi attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea. With both sides having demonstrated their military capabilities, and assuming that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu heeds US President Joe Biden’s warning not to retaliate against Iran, the region could revert to an uneasy equilibrium. As the Cold War showed, a balance of terror can act as a powerful deterrent, fostering peace and stability.
But to capitalize on this narrow window of opportunity, the United Nations Security Council must pass a robust, binding resolution calling for a regional ceasefire. In addition to Israel and Iran, this resolution should apply to all the countries of the region and third-party combatants.
Moreover, this binding resolution must address the central issue driving the current bout of regional instability – the war in Gaza. In line with its previous March 25 resolution, from which the US abstained, the Security Council must demand an immediate cessation of Israel’s ongoing bombardment of Gaza and the release of all Israeli hostages and detainees. By requiring both parties to “comply with their obligations under international law in relation to all persons they detain,” the resolution could also facilitate a release of Palestinians detained by Israel.
Contrary to the claims of some US representatives, the March 25 resolution was binding. But given the risk of an all-out war, the Security Council must immediately draft and vote on a new resolution, under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, covering the entire region. The new resolution should aim to facilitate a permanent and just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, providing a detailed roadmap for establishing an independent Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders. As Saudi Arabia has stated, a credible “pathway to a solution” is a precondition for normalizing relations with Israel.
Over the past six months, the Biden administration has backed Israel unreservedly, even at the cost of losing political support among progressive and Arab-American voters. Now, US policymakers must make the Israeli government understand that they will not tolerate further delays or gamesmanship when it comes to pursuing peace.
To be sure, rebuilding Gaza will take years and require a significant international effort. But achieving an effective, enforceable regional ceasefire is a crucial first step. Anything short of that risks perpetuating an endless cycle of war and suffering that benefits no one, especially not the Palestinians and Israelis, who are tired of this decades-old conflict.
The bombing of the Iranian consulate and Iran’s retaliatory attack on Israel underscore the potential cost of a regional war. Failing to seize this critical opportunity for de-escalation could hold the region back for decades. Securing an immediate regional ceasefire must be the international community’s top priority.
MELBOURNE – It is time for Israel to recognize the force of the rapidly growing international movement to recognize Palestinian statehood, not as the final outcome of a political settlement but as a path to achieving it. Were Israel to get serious again about pursuing a two-state solution, it would not be rewarding Hamas, but benefiting itself.
The awful reality, as the horrendous attacks of October 7, 2023, made clear, is that without a political solution that satisfies legitimate Palestinian aspirations, Israel will never be free of the specter of terrorism.
My decades of experience with conflict prevention and resolution, including years of talking to all sides in the Middle East, have drummed home the truth that despair can all too easily turn into rage, and then into indefensible outrage. By the same token, the threat of violence diminishes rapidly during those periods of genuine hope for a just and dignified settlement.
To understand the roots of October 7 is not to justify the slaughter of innocents, then or ever. Israel was undoubtedly entitled to respond with all the force that international law allows. But for Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s government – and those who blindly support it – to remain in denial about those roots, and to offer no political way forward, is simply to invite more of the same. This is especially true now that so many ordinary, decent Palestinians have been displaced, traumatized, and angered by the disproportionate savagery of the Israeli response.
As I have argued elsewhere, the moral, legal, and political case for recognizing Palestinian statehood has always been strong. Some 140 United Nations member states – albeit nearly all of them from the Global South – have already done so. The Gaza war has now lent the issue new relevance and urgency. More and more countries see Israel’s intransigence as not only perpetuating Palestinian misery but also guaranteeing its own.
Australia, in a pathbreaking speech by Foreign Minister Penny Wong on April 9, became the latest of a host of formerly cautious countries – including the United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, Norway, and even the United States – to make clear that it is actively considering early recognition of Palestinian statehood. True, the timing is an issue. With UN votes on full membership for Palestine expected at the Security Council and in the General Assembly this month, the US and some others may not yet be willing to issue formal declarations. Nonetheless, the direction of travel is clear, and momentum is building.
Many argue, nonetheless, that recognition of Palestinian statehood is an empty, quixotic gesture. Practically, a two-state solution now looks unattainable, owing to the territorial fragmentation created by Israel’s increasingly unrestrained West Bank settlement-building program. And Israeli hostility to a two-state solution, and Palestinian support for its own one-state solution, have both grown steadily and likely become more entrenched since October 7.
All true enough, but the dream of a two-state solution must be kept alive, not only because it remains overwhelmingly the preferred policy internationally, but also because it is so obviously in Israel’s own long-term interest. As many commentators over the years have pointed out, Israel potentially can be a Jewish state, a democratic state, and a state occupying the whole of historical Judea and Samaria. But it cannot be all three at the same time. (This was a favorite line of my old boss, Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke, in offering tough love to the Jewish community here.)
The argument for recognizing Palestinian statehood is that doing so is vital to restore a balance that has tipped overwhelmingly in favor of Israel. No peace negotiation can succeed if the parties at the table are completely mismatched. For the foreseeable future, the best – and possibly the only – way to counter the current mismatch is to show that Palestine has legitimacy not only in the Islamic world and the Global South, but globally, including in traditional pillars of the Global North, like the UK, Australia, and other US allies and partners.
While it is not necessary for a state to be recognized as such to have a government in effective control of its entire territory, the issue is made more complicated by governance problems on the Palestinian side. The Palestinian Authority is a gerontocracy in desperate need of reform, and Hamas has dealt itself out of any international acceptance with its military wing’s terrorist excesses.
Constructing a viable pan-Palestinian government – preferably with the support of key regional players – will certainly be a long haul. I am among those who have long believed that the imprisoned Palestinian activist Marwan Barghouti – popular in both Gaza and the West Bank – could be the Mandela-like unifier that Palestinians desperately need. But for precisely that reason, persuading Israel to release him will be a Herculean task, at least as long as Netanyahu remains in power.
Regardless of whether the two-state solution proves to have any life left in it, conferring Palestine the extra legitimacy, leverage, and bargaining power inherent in recognized statehood would help achieve for both sides a future that is better than the awful status quo.
If it does still have life, as we must all hope, Palestinian leverage will be crucial in producing just and sustainable solutions to the big outstanding issues, including those concerning boundaries, credible security guarantees for both sides, the protection of holy sites, and the fraught question of refugee rights.
But even if the only remaining option is to negotiate a new, democratic, non-apartheid single state (in which Palestinians enjoy fully equal rights alongside Israel’s Jewish population), giving Palestinians more legitimacy and heft at the bargaining table serves the goal of securing a sustainable peace.
At a time of dramatically heightened tension with Iran, and all the renewed sense of insecurity that comes with it, it has never been more important for Israel to defuse the visceral anger of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. Most of the rest of the world is now telling Israel that the best way to start is to accept the force of Palestinians’ claim to statehood. If Israelis really want a more secure future, it is time for them to listen.
WASHINGTON, DC – The Iranian-Israeli war has now emerged from the shadows with the barrage of over 300 drones, rockets, and cruise missiles Iran launched at Israel. Along with the US military and other partners, the Israel Defense Forces were able to intercept 99% of them.
Once again, the Israeli military demonstrated its superb capabilities, but US support was essential. Although Israel takes prides in being able to defend itself, circumstances have changed. When facing threats on seven fronts, as the IDF acknowledges, it is important that Israel had the help, and Israelis should recognize the value of being part of a coalition as they face Iran, its proxies, and their Russian backers.
If nothing else, Iran’s attack should remind the Israelis that their war with Hamas is not being fought in an international vacuum and support from the outside matters. That war is now in its seventh month. Israel is succeeding in a tactical sense. It is dismantling Hamas’s military infrastructure, and it has destroyed it as an organized fighting force, with 19 of 24 Hamas battalions no longer existing.
That is an important achievement. Regrettably, this tactical success has come at a high cost in Palestinian civilian lives and to Israel’s image internationally. So, while Israel may be succeeding militarily, it is losing politically.
Clausewitz’s famous maxim that “war is the continuation of policy with other means” does not seem to be guiding Israel’s strategy. Yes, Hamas forced this war on Israel; and, yes, Hamas posed an unprecedented military challenge by being embedded in hundreds of miles of tunnels beneath Gaza’s civilian population. But Israel required a strategy whereby it could defeat Hamas militarily without losing the world’s sympathy in the process. A military campaign with the political objective of ensuring that Hamas could neither threaten Israel again nor remain in power rested on a central premise: to have the time and political space required to defeat Hamas, Israel would need to meet Gazans’ humanitarian needs and minimize their suffering.
There may have been no way to avoid the cruel dilemma that Israel faced: how to defeat Hamas as a military force without Palestinians dying in terrible numbers. But there were viable options for creating humanitarian corridors for evacuations from northern to southern Gaza in the first two weeks after October 7, when Israel launched an intense bombing campaign. Following that, it was essential for Israel to ensure deliveries of the humanitarian assistance needed to address Palestinians’ housing, food, water, and medical needs. And, if Hamas acted to divert that assistance, as it did, Israel had an obligation to stop that and provide security for the distribution of aid.
This was not just a moral obligation; it was a strategic imperative that the international community not come to believe that Israel was indifferent to Palestinian suffering. And yet that perception has taken hold, with the result that Israel is held solely responsible for stopping the war. It is as if Hamas has no responsibility, when Hamas leaders should have been pressured by the United States and the international community to leave Gaza to spare the public. For too many, the recent Israeli airstrike that killed a group of World Central Kitchen aid workers was not a tragic accident but the result of a campaign that too often seems prone to hitting military targets regardless of the costs to Palestinians.
A few weeks into the war, I wrote that I did not favor a ceasefire, because it would allow Hamas to survive, reconstitute itself, and try for another October 7. Those who said Israel should not respond other than in a limited, targeted way failed to understand that the perception that Hamas had gotten away with inflicting such a terrible price on Israel would have invested its ideology of “resistance” (and commitment to the destruction of Israel) with enormous credibility throughout the Middle East.
Regardless, Israel still needed a strategy that not only minimized the humanitarian suffering but also was tied to a clear and achievable objective. Bad statecraft is always tied to objectives that can neither be achieved nor framed in a way that makes support for them possible. Elimination of Hamas was never in the cards, any more than the elimination of ISIS has been for the US. Rescuing the vast majority of the Israeli hostages held by Hamas since October 7 was never possible by military means.
But the permanent de-militarization of Gaza – so that it could never again be a platform for attacks against Israel – was possible. It still is, and it needs to be Israel’s strategic objective. In its discussions with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his war cabinet, US President Joe Biden’s administration should focus not just on how to deal with the remaining four Hamas battalions in Rafah but on reaching an agreement on how much is enough to achieve demilitarization. In reality, Israel is not far from being able to declare success, end the war, and get its hostages back while many remain alive.
Israel should condition its definition of sufficient demilitarization on the creation of mechanisms by which the US, European donors, and Arab states ensure that all aid flowing into Gaza is monitored from entry to storage to end use. The Israelis can condition all reconstruction assistance (as opposed to humanitarian aid) on Hamas not being in power – no one will invest in rebuilding if it is – and on the credible functioning of the monitoring mechanisms.
Ensuring that Hamas can never return to power requires a Palestinian alternative to it in Gaza. The Palestinian Authority is too weak and too corrupt to play that role soon. Once credibly reformed so that it has the capacity for decent governance, however, the PA can and must fill the void.
With Hamas essentially defeated militarily and the public in Gaza wanting life restored, Arab states could play a transitional role in administration and providing security. From my conversations with a number of Arab leaders, I know that they are prepared to play an unprecedented role in Gaza, including by deploying troops, provided that their involvement is a bridge from the end of the war to a viable Palestinian alternative. They don’t want Hamas to come back, but they also don’t want to be in Gaza forever.
With the exception of the extreme right, no one in Israel wants to be stuck in Gaza, responsible for 2.4 million Palestinians, and facing a likely insurgency. Israel can end this war soon and save those hostages who are still alive, having demilitarized Gaza and set the stage for an alternative to Hamas.
And it needs to do so. It is bad enough that 55% of Americans disapprove of Israeli action in Gaza. What is worse is that this war is becoming a crucible for how the next generation thinks about Israel. Given that, and given that Iran has again demonstrated that it is the issue, Israel needs to bring the war in Gaza to an end. Its military defeat of Hamas allows it to do so soon.
BERLIN – With Iran’s drone and missile attack on Israel on the night of April 13, the war in the Middle East has taken on a new dimension. For years, the conflict between Iran and Israel had been a “shadow war” in which both sides avoided direct military strikes on each other’s territory. Instead, the conflict reached furtively into the streets of Tehran, where there have been assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists and engineers, and into war-torn areas of Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and Gaza. In those hot spots, the so-called Axis of Resistance – comprising Hezbollah (in Lebanon), Hamas (in Gaza), and the Houthis (in Yemen) – receives extensive support in the form of Iranian money, weapons, and training.
The current war started on October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched an attack on Israel that claimed 1,200 lives and 253 hostages. Israel soon hit back, and the war has been raging in Gaza ever since. As a result of the Israel Defense Forces’ campaign to eliminate Hamas once and for all, more than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed, and the enclave has been laid to waste.
Despite these horrors and the appalling conditions in Gaza, the war is the latest chapter in a bloody conflict that Israelis and Palestinians have been fighting over the same stretch of land for almost 80 years. By contrast, Iran’s direct attack against Israel represents something new. To launch a strike from Iranian territory, rather than operating through proxies, is to invite retaliation against Iran itself. The Iranian regime either must feel very sure of itself, or is under enormous pressure to make a show of strength, even if that means risking “open war” not only with Israel but also with the United States.
The immediate trigger was Israel’s April 1 strike on an Iranian consulate building next to Iran’s embassy in Damascus, where several members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, including two high-ranking commanders, were killed. Though these were hardly the first casualties of Iran’s “shadow war” in Syria and Lebanon, the Iranian leadership nonetheless felt compelled to respond.
True, Iran did reportedly let the US know through informal channels that its counterattack was imminent, and no one was particularly surprised when it came. Nonetheless, the implications of the move are profound. The war is no longer an Israeli-Palestinian one over the same stretch of land; it has been regionalized – even globalized.
Looming ominously in the background is the potential threat posed by the Iranian nuclear program. Given the latest developments, this existential threat to Israel is becoming less hypothetical by the day. Will Iran take the final steps to cross the nuclear threshold, and does the mere possibility increase the odds of a war with Israel and the US? That is now the big question for the entire region.
Moreover, we know that Iran’s aims extend beyond achieving regional predominance. The regime would welcome the replacement of the US-led international order by a more multipolar system in which great and emerging powers compete. To command a powerful position in this new international order will require nuclear weapons, access to state-of-the-art technology, and an end to the economic isolation implied by far-reaching Western sanctions. All this now looks to be within reach through its deepening ties with China, Russia, and parts of the Global South.
Iran’s theocrats know that they are in a fraught position domestically. Large-scale protests led by women, young people, and ethnic minorities (in Kurdistan and Baluchistan, for example) have discredited the regime, as has rampant corruption among the ruling elite. The country’s aging leadership no longer has any legitimacy; it is merely surviving through outright repression. But while relying on truncheons and bullets may work for a while, it is hardly a recipe for long-term success.
In geopolitical terms, however, the situation is completely different. Iran’s theocratic regime is among the big winners of the transition away from the US-led world order. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran’s nuclear program has advanced further than ever, putting it on the threshold of enriching enough weapons-grade uranium for a bomb. One also should assume that Iran has the technological know-how to build a nuclear warhead and the systems for delivering it.
In an increasingly favorable geopolitical landscape, Iran’s marriage of convenience with Russia and China is of paramount importance, not least because it will allow the regime to escape its decades-long international isolation. As new and emerging powers seek to develop new multilateral structures beyond the reach of Western hegemony, Iran will almost inevitably benefit.
The war in the Middle East must be understood in this broader context, which also includes Ukraine and Taiwan. We are witnessing increasingly bold and ambitious efforts to topple the old Western-led order through any means necessary – even outright war.
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