Whether Washington can de-escalate tensions will determine the future of its regional authority.
The United States has probably never been under so much pressure to solve the problems of the Middle East. The war in Gaza threatens to spill across the region, and whether Washington can resolve, or even simply contain and de-escalate, the tensions surrounding it may well determine the future of American authority in the Middle East. Whatever the outcome, the current imbroglio is almost certain to mark a turning point for Washington’s role in the region.
That’s why Secretary of State Antony Blinken has set out on a grand tour of American allies in the Middle East with a portfolio of interlocking diplomatic proposals. Blinken’s first objective, and that of U.S. policy more broadly, is to keep the current conflict essentially contained to Gaza, wind it down there, and use the opportunity to construct a more stable Middle East in the aftermath, on the bedrock of Israeli-Saudi relations and Palestinian statehood. But Washington will have a hard time selling this agenda to its adversaries—and an even harder time selling it to its Israeli friends.
The most urgent of the proposals Blinken is pressing relates to the hostages and a pause in the fighting. The United States crafted the plan with significant Israeli, Egyptian, and Qatari input, and finalized it in Paris on January 28.
The Paris proposal reportedly requires Hamas to relinquish all of its remaining hostages, thought to number at least 100, in exchange for a pause of at least 40 days in the fighting. The militants would first release the remaining civilians; then, if the truce holds, soldiers and corpses. But whether Israel will also agree to release any Palestinian prisoners in return remains unclear; certainly no one on Hamas’s wish list of prisoners, which includes senior fighters, is likely to be freed, and Israel will not let go of the popular jailed Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti unless it is ready to finalize a long-term peace agreement with him, much the way South Africa did with Nelson Mandela.
During his visit to Qatar, Blinken revealed that Hamas has responded to this proposal. And it appears to have done so with a substantial counteroffer that almost surely will be a nonstarter for Israel: It calls for a 135-day cease-fire and negotiations to end the conflict in exchange for a three-phase release of all remaining hostages. An addendum demands the release of 1,500 Palestinian prisoners, including many whom Israel considers among the worst terrorists it has ever faced.
Of course Hamas wants a full cease-fire and the withdrawal of Israeli troops. But the 40-day pause in the Paris proposal, if Hamas accepts it, could allow enough humanitarian aid to enter Gaza to save countless civilians from starvation and disease. Refusing that opportunity could be politically costly for Hamas, and in any case, the militants could use the pause to quietly regroup and brace for a resumption of hostilities. In fact, if Hamas played its cards wisely (which is admittedly a long shot) by respecting the pause and focusing on delivering humanitarian aid, planning for reconstruction, and releasing all of the prisoners, it could deprive Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of a plausible rationalization for resuming his all-out war when the 40 days elapse.
But at this point the hard-liners in Gaza seem tempted to carry on fighting, which will be great news for Netanyahu. The Israeli prime minister has made clear his opposition to establishing a Palestinian state of any kind and his desire for Israel to reassert total security control in the West Bank, nullifying the Oslo agreements and eliminating the Palestinian Authority. No doubt this is one reason President Joe Biden has reportedly described Netanyahu as a “bad fucking guy,” as virtually all big-picture U.S. visions for the region depend on the eventual establishment of a Palestinian state. The Biden administration is even considering a radical move in this direction, such as recognizing a Palestinian state in embryo, or the absolute Palestinian right to a state. Netanyahu’s intransigence may finally force Washington to develop a policy toward the Palestinians that is genuinely bilateral and not completely refracted through Israel’s lens.
Read: Israel is walking into a trap
Blinken and his Arab counterparts agree on the necessity of eventually establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel. They also share the view that any such state will require Palestinian political leadership, and that this is best secured by strengthening and reforming the Palestinian Authority, which currently governs the West Bank. Otherwise, Hamas and other Islamists are likely to remain in power in Gaza, and Israel will believe that it has no better option than to fully reoccupy the urban centers there. Anyone who wants to see Hamas defeated politically as well as militarily understands that this requires supporting and strengthening the secular-nationalist Fatah party, which dominates the PA.
This shared Western and Arab vision is the content of another of the proposals Blinken has gone to the Middle East to discuss, laying out a long-term settlement linked to regional integration. Here the primary obstructionist is not Hamas but Israel. Long before the October 7 attack, the Israeli cabinet had not only ruled out Palestinian statehood but was moving rapidly toward unilaterally annexing the West Bank (to be fully effective, this would probably involve another wave of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians). The Biden administration and its Arab allies are hoping to induce Israel’s cooperation by dangling the prospect of normalization with Saudi Arabia. But under the current circumstances, Israel appears even colder to this idea than Hamas is to the hostages for-a-pause proposal. Hence Biden’s alleged outburst.
And then there are the other flash points. The administration has sent a special envoy, Amos Hochstein, to negotiate between Israel and Hezbollah. According to Israeli sources, these talks may have made some progress on a plan to pull back Hezbollah forces that are within 10 kilometers of the Lebanon-Israel border and replace them with Lebanese and United Nations soldiers, allowing evacuated civilians on both sides of the border to return to their homes. To close watchers of the Middle East, securing such a deal would be an extraordinary achievement by the Biden administration.
Hezbollah has substantial reasons to agree. The group is under heavy pressure in Lebanon not to involve the country in a pointless and avoidable war. Moreover, Tehran does not want to waste Hezbollah, which it sees as its primary deterrent against any U.S. or Israeli strike inside Iran, on the war in Gaza. And ultimately, Hezbollah’s real leverage against Israel is not its elite commandos at the border but its arsenal, widely estimated to include some 150,000 missiles and rockets, many with precision guidance. This agreement wouldn’t do much to weaken that hammer, and by reducing the distance from the 29 kilometers that Israel has demanded to only 10 kilometers, it offers Hezbollah a face-saving way to pull back its forces without appearing to capitulate to Israeli ultimatums.
Read: Lebanon’s January hangover
Not every tension in the region appears susceptible to U.S. diplomacy, though some may prove manageable by other means. The United States will not be negotiating directly with pro-Iranian extremist groups operating in Iraq and Syria, but Iran could wind up restraining those actors. Kata’ib Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed militia in Iraq, killed three U.S. service personnel and injured dozens more with a drone attack in Jordan on January 28. Iran responded by rushing to emphasize that it did not want a broader war. Eventually, Kata’ib Hezbollah announced, rather bitterly, that it would suspend all of its military activities and complained that Iran “does not understand the way in which we conduct our jihad.”
The militia had evidently crossed a red line for Tehran by killing Americans, even if just by a so-called lucky strike. Iran has its own national-security interests to safeguard: An uncontrollable regional conflict could easily result in American or Israeli strikes inside Iran, particularly against the country’s nuclear facilities, which have been making progress since October 7 under the cover of the region’s crises. The relatively restrained U.S. retaliatory strikes will therefore likely meet with a muted response from Iranian proxy groups and their masters in Tehran.
If any group is likely to disregard Iranian pressure, however, it will be the Yemeni Houthis. Houthi piracy in the Red Sea could continue for many years, just as Somali piracy persisted from 2000 to 2017. If one of the missiles the Houthis continue launching toward Israel or other sensitive targets should happen to “get lucky,” like the Iraqi drone did in Jordan, Washington could find itself drawn into the Yemeni conflict, which many Americans bitterly opposed when Saudi Arabia’s coalition was doing the fighting.
Washington’s hopes for a stable Middle East rest on turning the current moment into an opportunity for breakthrough diplomacy that demonstrates its ability to restore order. But for now, and granted that even the most ambitious plans involve small initial steps, the simplest agreements are probably the only plausible ones. An understanding regarding the Lebanese border seems most in reach. Biden’s broader agenda will probably have to wait: Particularly in an election year, the U.S. president is bound to be cautious in pressuring Israel, which shows no signs of throwing off Netanyahu’s leadership, and anyway might not replace him with anyone more forthcoming toward the Palestinians. But Biden does seem to be intent on forcing Israelis to understand that most of what they, and especially their American friends, want strategically and diplomatically depends on their willingness to make a reasonable compromise with the Palestinians.
Great transformations frequently begin with small steps. If Biden can orchestrate two deals—one that frees the hostages and allows for a humanitarian pause that ratchets down the Gaza war’s intensity, and another that cements an understanding between Israel and Hezbollah—he will have demonstrated that U.S. leadership remains not merely viable but indispensable in the Middle East.
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