Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a joint meeting of Congress (Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)
Shortly after the 2003 invasion of Iraq began, the commander of the 101st Airborne Division, David Petraeus, asked, "Tell me how this ends." Nine months have now passed since Hamas began its war with Israel, and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to Washington this week to tell a joint session of Congress how that war will end.
The simplest formulation he offered was "total victory." Put more concretely, he intends to "destroy Hamas’s military capabilities and its rule in Gaza and bring all our hostages home." Eventually, he would like for Gaza to "have a civilian administration run by Palestinians who do not seek to destroy Israel." He hopes that "with the help of regional partners, the demilitarization and deradicalization of Gaza" can commence. He also made clear that Hezbollah's ongoing attacks on northern Israel, or an Iranian race for the bomb, would elicit a heavy Israeli response. In broad terms, these are achievable goals. But there are two major obstacles on this path to peace.
The first is bringing the regional partners on board. Despite Madeleine Albright’s boast that Americans "see further than other countries into the future," the Washington "blob" is often dismayingly slow to grasp new realities such as Saudi and Israeli cooperation. The two countries have loosely and episodically collaborated against common enemies since Egypt’s war in Yemen in the 1960s, but the makers and shapers of conventional wisdom only cottoned on to the two countries’ shared interests in the last decade or so.
This alignment burst into view during the 2014 Hamas war when the Arab League and the Saudis backed an Egyptian ceasefire plan that was far more pro-Israel than a rival Qatari proposal. There is not much love lost between the Israelis and the conservative Gulf monarchies, but they are all pragmatic enough to realize that a variety of forces, from the old Arab nationalism to today’s Muslim Brotherhood and Shiite alliance, threaten both of them, and they are willing to do what it takes to defeat common enemies and thus ensure their own survival.
The Emirati and Saudi governments have cracked down, so far effectively, on the extremist elements within their own societies, and Bibi’s speech is a thinly veiled invitation for the two monarchies to expand these operations to Gaza. Both are wary of paying too high a political price for overtly aiding Israel, so neither has taken up the offer. They have been holding out for a combination of extra sweeteners from the Americans and freedom to reform and empower the Palestinian Authority. The Biden administration, which is still recovering from Joe Biden’s inadvisable pledge to make Saudi Arabia a "pariah," has been willing to pony up, but so far, the price for Gulf support has been higher than Jerusalem is willing to pay.
The other problem was more immediately visible as Netanyahu spoke. About half of the Democratic congressional caucus skipped the address, as did Vice President and presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. Even some of the attendees, such as Sen. Chris Murphy (D., Conn.), immediately criticized Netanyahu for pointing out that the anti-Semites swarming around the Capitol waving Hamas flags and burning American ones were Hamas sympathizers. The Democratic Party has soured so much on Israel that CNN's John King observed recently "there could be some risks" putting Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro on the presidential ticket because he is Jewish.
Harris has successfully hidden many of her views on foreign policy, but her distaste for Israel's self-defensive war has been evident for some time—just last Thursday, the vice president told Netanyahu she "will not be silent" about Palestinian casualties. At a minimum, her victory in November would likely lead to a redux of the 2014 war, when the Obama administration opposed the Arab League deal and endorsed the one that was more favorable to Hamas.
Joe Biden has been better on Israel than his former boss was, but efforts to slow down and restrict the counteroffensive have helped prolong the conflict, and thus the suffering for both the hostages kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7 and the innocent Palestinians caught in the crossfire. Unless Biden changes course, the horrors will drag on, and the risks for Israel will grow, every day until Election Day. Hence Bibi's call: "Give us the tools faster, and we’ll finish the job faster."
Four years after the invasion, General Petraeus returned to Iraq to implement the "surge" that temporarily stabilized the country. The Democrats then decided to pull out before consolidating the victory, eventually dooming northern Iraq and much of Syria to the Islamic State’s savagery. An Israeli premature withdrawal from Gaza could set off a similar catastrophe—precisely what Bibi is trying to stop.
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