Is the Middle East About to Explode?
Is the Middle East About to Explode?
Is the march automatic or can we summon the will be move away from the precipice?
Are we on the verge of a big war in the Middle East? Is the march automatic or can we summon the will be move away from the precipice?
In the last 24 hours, Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh has been assassinated in the Iranian capital Tehran. According to the AI Monitor, Hamas is implying that Israel is behind the act. Iran is vowing revenge. The armed wing of Hamas, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, warned of “major repercussions” for the whole region. Earlier, Fuad Shukur, a Hamas Commander, was killed in the Golan Heights, a Beirut suburb.
Also in the last 24 hours, two Al Jazeera journalists were killed, further inflaming the region. Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent Ismail al-Ghoul and his cameraman Rami al-Refee were killed in an Israeli air attack on Gaza City. “An Israeli aircraft followed them and bombed the car!” Tweeted Ali Mortada. “Two assassinations, one in Beirut and one in Tehran, kill chances for ceasefire in Gaza and instead push the Middle East closer to a catastrophic regional war…all in the vacuum of lame duck government in US,” posted Vali Nasr of the Johns Hopkins SAIS school on X. Not optimistic.
The assassinations follow Netanyahu’s trip to the United States last week to address Congress on Wednesday. He met the President and Vice President on Thursday as well as visiting Trump at Mar a Lago, Friday last. The Prime Minister’s reunion with Trump was probably bittersweet, considering that it was the first time in each other’s company since Netanyahu did the unpardonable — he congratulated Joe Biden on winning the 2020 election. Trump might dispute the characterization of bittersweet, but, hey. According to the AP:
The two men now have a strong interest in restoring their relationship, both for the political support their alliance brings and for the luster it gives each with their conservative supporters.
A beaming Trump was waiting for Netanyahu on the stone steps outside his private club and residence in Palm Beach, Florida. He warmly clasped the hands of the Israeli leader.
“We’ve always had a great relationship,” Trump insisted before journalists. Asked as the two sat down in a muraled room for talks if Netanyahu’s trip to Mar-a-Lago was repairing their bond, Trump responded, “It was never bad.”
Which, of course, is patently untrue. It is well known that Trump considered Netanyahu’s congratulations of Biden as an act of brutal disloyalty, which might be one of the most authoritarian sentiments Trump has ever expressed to a sitting world leader. Imagine the moxy for a second of a former President demanding personal loyalty over the political reality of a democratic election! But it is very on-brand for Trump’s authoritarian selfishness — l’etat, c;est moi! — and seething resentments. "I haven’t spoken to him since," Trump said of the Israeli Prime Minister in 2021, according to Barack Ravid. "F**k him."
Trump, it should be noted, is not the first American leader to eschew the grotty political activities of Binyamin Netanyahu, who never met a far-right settler that he couldn’t “coalition” with, or, more to the point, an American leader to vex. From Aaron Davis Miller of Foreign Policy:
James Baker temporarily banned him from the State Department. Madeleine Albright described him as an Israeli Newt Gingrich (and it wasn’t a compliment). Bill Clinton emerged from his first meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996 (then serving his first term as prime minister) more than a little annoyed by his brash self-confidence. "Who’s the fucking superpower here?" Clinton exclaimed to aides.
Netanyahu is the first Israeli premier to trigger truly bipartisan recoil.
Further, in the region, according to multiple reports, Sudanese military leader Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan survived a drone attack while at a military base in in the town of Gebit, in the Red Sea state. Charles Lister, the founder of SyriaWeekly.com reminds us that over the past week 115 violent attacks occurred in the embattled country, leaving at least 38 dead. And who can forget the unprecedented drone strike by the Houthis, earlier in the month, against Tel Aviv. If the drone — named “Jaffa” — actually crossed the Mediterranean to strike the US consulate, that would truly be an astonishing advance in drone technology as in 2022’s Abu Dhabi attack, the technology was still somewhat backwards.
All in all, the Middle East is on the verge of a big war and it will take sober leadership to bring us back from the brink. Can we summon it in time? In Iran; in Yemen; in Lebanon; in Israel; in Iraq; even Sudan. This has been building for some time and, absent a light touch by Netanyahu, who seems to be temperamentally incapable of diplomacy, its about to blow. And President Biden does not appear to have the strength or the vigor needed to pull us all back from the brink of what is inexorably moving forwards, in slow, horrific motion, towards a terrible denouement.
So, what is Netanyahu’s strategy? Not a ceasefire — at least not yet, clearly. Paul Salem of the Middle East institute goes through some of the Prime Minister’s possible objectives, including the triggering of a larger regional war and dragging in the United States on the outer edges of a worst-case scenario. There is no secret that Prime Minister Netanyahu would prefer Trump to win the election, as Trump is by far a softer touch than Vice President Harris, especially when 45 negated the continuity of decades of US policy regarding Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in one fell swoop. What else could Netanyahu get from Trump, who, though anti-Semitic, is entirely beholden to the born-again weirdos in his party, waiting for the Rapture.
Biden’s exiting the stage of the ‘24 Presidential campaign offers Vice President Harris the best opportunity yet to reset on the Middle East. Without Biden at the top of the ticket in 2024, Harris has the opportunity to release America from the Netanyahu hug. Nearly a year ago I wrote:
Many Progressives within the Democrat Party — including former President Jimmy Carter — equate Israel’s position in the Gaza Strip and West Bank to tantamount to apartheid. From 1948 to the early 1990s, the minority white government in South Africa subjected the indigenous majority to a life nasty, brutish and short. College-educated Progressives largely equate South African apartheid with the Palestinian situation in Israel, at rallies and in letters of solidarity. The far-left, by the way, has always advocated this position, entirely complicating matters in this war, after the murders and the kidnapping. "End All Aid to Zionist, Colonial, Apartheid Israel!," exclaims, breathlessly, the LA Progressive. It is, of course, not quite that simple.
In that context — of viewing Israel as an apartheid state — some Progressives refuse to see what Hamas has done on October 7 as an act of pure and simple terrorism. They either reject the word altogether or quibble with the usage in this case. Even the Anglican Church of South Africa, which directly struggled against apartheid, now characterizes Israel an apartheid state, further complicating life for the defenders of the innocent Israeli civilians killed and kidnapped. Apartheid as a descriptor conjures images of extreme inequality, a state of being under which no government can hope for political stability and peace.
That was written on October 23, 2023, two weeks away from the October 7 terrorist attack. There was still quite a bit of sympathy for Israel at that time and I made pains to try to balance Progressive rage at Netanyahu’s immediate overreaction with the historical context of Israel and the game-changing aspect of the terrorist attacks, which, over time, we have learned involved all sorts of novel asymmetrical warfare techniques, like crypto financing, commercial quadcopter drones armed with explosives and bulldozers to widen gaps in the border fence. Since October 23rd, however, Netanyanu has all but evaporated all of the international sympathy for the Israeli position. So much squandered good will! And the occupation of the West Bank is becoming all but universally acknowledged as “apartheid.”
At the risk of sounding naïve by bringing up international law, it is instructive to look at how the Secretary General of the UN sees the situation. “The Secretary-General believes that the attacks we have seen in South Beirut and Teheran represent a dangerous escalation at a moment in which all efforts should instead be leading to a ceasefire in Gaza, the release of all Israeli hostages, a massive increase of humanitarian aid for Palestinians in Gaza and a return to calm in Lebanon and across the Blue Line,” UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said in a statement issued today. Netanyahu, to be sure, is not interested in a ceasefire, only stalling so that he can inflict more damage and more pain. Saturday nights in Tel Aviv are filled with protesters concerned with the safety of the remaining hostages, to no avail, because Bibi governs only with a hammer. And Israeli settlers are allowed to hijack humanitarian aid with impunity before it reaches the displaced Palestinians. Netanyahu will be in prison before any of these villainous settlers.
No healthy person wishes for war. And yet, by his actions, that appears to be precisely where Netanyahu wants this to go. And to what end? To continue on in power? To avoid prison? To prosecute a massive war that he himself — and all the history books will note — he stoked and fostered, like his own child? The farther away Vice President Harris navigates the United States away from the Netanyahu hug, the entirely ill-conceived embrace of a sick, sick man, the better. But the way that this region is presently heating up — no thanks to Netanyahu’s crystallized bloodthirst — we might see a large scale regional war in the near future, on President Biden’s watch, the same Biden who embraced the Prime Minister when he should have stood with him as an ally and advised him towards international law, but held him at arms length.
“A half dozen streaming documentaries and Lord knows how many true-crime podcasts would ultimately chronicle the courtroom drama through which (Britney) Spears emancipated herself from her indentured servitude. And yet three years after Spears detailed how she was imprisoned in her own home by a battalion of leeches who institutionalized her (at her own expense) in retaliation for attempting to tweak her own choreography, the pop music industry remains more thankless and constricting than ever. Just as summer was beginning, both Jennifer Lopez and the Black Keys were forced to cancel tours in which they had invested considerable sums of their own cash, due to lukewarm demand for tickets that had been priced too aggressively. The prolific hit machine Bebe Rexha unleashed a torrent of social media posts about how ‘hopeless’ she felt working in an industry she claimed had repeatedly conspired to ‘undermine’ her. And Spotify, as if on cue, announced it was tweaking its ‘mechanical royalties’ compensation formula; songwriters could expect to receive $150 million less in 2025 than they had in 2024. The Guardian convinced 12 musical acts, including two with recent album releases that had charted in the top ten, to share their balance sheets from their most recent concert tours. Just one had turned a profit, of only about $7,000 for 29 performances.” (Maureen Tkacik/TAP)
“In a recent piece over at Good Authority I highlighted two important trends that should inform our understanding of ongoing youth-led protests in Kenya. First, over the last 20 years the share of Kenyans reporting an affiliation with political parties has declined from almost 70% to about half. Second, the reported decline in party affiliation has been faster among young people (35 and under) than older people. The share of non-affiliated young people has increased from just over 30% to over 50%. The decline in party affiliation was also reflected in electoral participation, with the 2022 election witnessing a significant decline in youth registration and voting. Young Kenyans’ exit from formal politics — borne out of rightful frustration with a complacent political class — should worry anyone interested in political stability and economic development in African states. This is especially because youth under-participation in formal politics will not necessarily amount to a total exit or loyal acceptance of the woefully suboptimal status quo. As demonstrated over the last month, young Kenyans will likely continue to engage in extra-institutional political action, including through protests.” (Africanist Perspective)
“A group believed to be linked to the far-right English Defense League targeted a mosque in Merseyside, England on Tuesday following a vigil for three children who were killed in a knife attack earlier this week. Police arrested a teenager suspected of carrying out the attack that left seven others injured. 53 police were injured in the rioting. The group coopted the incident for ‘political purposes,’ the town’s local member of parliament said.” (semafor)