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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu smiles as he prepares to testify in his trial on corruption charges at the district court in Tel Aviv on Dec. 10, 2024.
Israel strikes Syria, Netanyahu goes to court
Israel has launched over 350 airstrikes this week targeting naval bases, ships, ammunition depots, and weapon facilities across Syria, devastating the Syrian Army’s remaining capabilities, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Israel claims it has destroyed most of Syria’s strategic weapons stockpiles and says the strikes were designed to prevent weapons from falling “into the hands of extremists.”The UN has also raised alarms over the security of chemical weapons stockpiles that are currently unaccounted for.
“If this regime allows Iran to re-establish itself in Syria, or permits the transfer of Iranian weapons or any other weapons to Hezbollah, or if it attacks us … we will exact a heavy price,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned.
The IDF also confirmed that it seized a 155-square-mile buffer zone inside Syria to prevent attacks in the aftermath of Assad’s ouster. Qatar, Turkey, and Egypt have all condemned Israel’s actions while the US and UK support them, with UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy saying “there are legitimate security concerns for Israel, particularly in the context of a country that has housed ISIS, and al-Qaida.”
Back in Tel Aviv, Netanyahu took the stand on Tuesdayat his corruption trial. He’s facing charges of fraud, bribery, and breach of trust that will demand six hours a day of testimony, three days a week for several weeks, raising questions about Bibi’s ability to run the country. Netanyahu called the charges “an ocean of absurdness,” while protesters outside labeled him a “Crime Minister.” Verdicts are not expected before 2026 and could be appealed to the Supreme Court. If convicted, the 75-year-old Netanyahu could face several years in prison.
Israel's next move
And secondly, the US Treasury Department has announced additional sanctions against tankers that have shut off their transponders and are helping the Iranians to illegally export significant amounts of sanction-breaking oil. Prices can go up on the back of that. An unusual thing for the Americans to do a few weeks before the election, but shows just how concerned they are about potential escalation in the region. So let me give you some context here. First point. On the one hand, the Americans have sent THAAD systems to Israel before. So it's not like there aren't any American soldiers on the ground operating in Israel. This is not such a game-changer. In fact, such a decision was made not only years ago, but also after October 7th. But it is notable that it comes a year later on the back of potential significant escalation, both in the Northern front that we're already seeing and with Iran that we might be.
Second point is that the oil prices continue to be a little bit under 80 bucks. OPEC has a lot of spare capacity they could put on the market. China continues to have pretty poor numbers in terms of demand. So this isn't likely to have the American move to hit more Iranian oil, isn't likely to have a lot of impact in terms of oil prices. But if the Americans could have stopped what is right now 1.5 million barrels of Iranian export if they could have taken that down and the Iranians are using that money to pay for the Axis of Resistance that's targeting not only Israel but targeting ships in the Middle East, targeting American and UK military assets, why did Biden wait? Why is it only being announced now? And why is it only being announced now in a way that seems to be a gimme for the Israeli Prime Minister and his government in return for not engaging in significant retaliatory escalation against the Iranians?
This is a US policy that continues to look very weak, that continues to be out of step with most of its allies at this point. You see even French President Macron saying that he doesn't want to provide any more military support for Israel. Of course, it's easy for him to say that. He doesn't provide much to begin with. If it was a significant export, I'm sure Macron wouldn't be saying that. But nonetheless, the Americans are on really one very isolated side at this point compared to the rest of the international community, whether you like the United States or you don't. And their ability to influence the Israeli government appears to be virtually zero. And that has been shown with the recent attacks by the Israeli Defense Forces against UN peacekeepers in Lebanon. And we've seen that on the back of those attacks that the United States, France, Spain, Italy, which is a strong right-wing government, but also has a thousand peacekeepers on the ground in Lebanon, all strongly condemning the Israelis for making these attacks.
But not prepared to actually do anything in response and certainly not making the Israelis feel like they need to stop. Now the Israeli perspective is these peacekeepers have not been capable of upholding Security Council resolution that required that Hezbollah pull back from the border area, a buffer zone, that they've been launching military strikes against Israel. And that also Hezbollah fighters are essentially using the presence of the peacekeepers as shields. And that they're operating not on the peacekeeper's bases but in proximity, which makes it harder for the Israelis to go after them. That certainly doesn't justify firing directly on the peacekeepers base, which has happened, and which now the IDF says a mistake. In return, the Israeli Prime Minister has called on the UN Secretary-General to withdraw the peacekeepers. I find it implausible that the Israeli Prime Minister doesn't realize that the Secretary-General has actually no authority over the peacekeepers.
They're sent there on the basis of the Security Council. So in other words, if the Israeli Prime Minister wants to make a demand, he's making it of the permanent members of the Security Council like the United States and China and France, the UK and Russia. He apparently doesn't want to make that statement. But again, the point here is the comparative impunity, and the major headlines, of course, are in the last 24 hours, around four Israeli soldiers that have been targeted and killed, as well as a large number of injuries on Israeli military bases by Hezbollah drones. Hezbollah is much more capable than Hamas has been, and there will be more significant Israeli casualties as this war continues. But most of the casualties, of course, even though it's not most of the headlines, will be among the Lebanese, among the Hezbollah fighters, and among the Lebanon civilian population, of which we've seen about 2,000 killed so far.
And that is because the military dominance in the region, again, both offense and defense and intelligence and surveillance, is overwhelmingly in the hands of Israel. So if there's going to be significant escalation in the war going forward, that escalation will be decided overwhelmingly by the Israeli government. And so that's what is particularly interesting to watch over the coming weeks. I am not expecting very much against Iran, frankly. The fact that the Israelis have already waited for a couple of weeks takes a lot of the urgency out of that. The fact that the Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has said, "It will be the time of our choosing and what we do, they'll know that it was us, but they won't know how we did it," implies something that is a much more targeted attack than lots and lots of bombs raining down against, you know, sort of a nuclear facility or against oil production.
It would not surprise me if it was a high-level assassination, for example, against the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the IRGC. Especially because we already saw that when the Trump administration assassinated Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian response was virtually nothing. So there's precedent for that, and the Iranians have very little at this point that they can do that wouldn't hurt them a hell of a lot more than they can hurt Israel or Israel's allies. So that's where we are right now. A war that continues to escalate with a lot of suffering on the back of it. An incredibly ineffective US policy in the region, and everybody else pretty much sitting on the sidelines.
How October 7th changed Israel and the Middle East
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: A Quick Take to kick off your week. It is October 7th, and that means one year since Hamas perpetrated the worst terrorist attacks since 9/11. Almost 1,200 Israelis dead, mostly civilians, and still a hundred plus held hostage from that day a year ago. Not much progress on that latter front or on a ceasefire. Not much progress in the region since then. What it did do, of course, on October 7th, is it outraged and unified what had been a very divided Israeli population, divided with massive internal demonstrations on domestic political issues. And suddenly the only issue that mattered was responding to, redressing those attacks, whether you're on the left or the right in Israel and being able to defend the Israeli homeland and get the hostages back.
On the former, they've certainly been effective, hitting back as hard as possible. We've seen that Hamas today is a shell of what it was on October 7th a year ago. The leadership mostly dead. The weapons caches mostly destroyed. The tunnels mostly sealed. Hezbollah, the most powerful non-state military actor in the world, has been damaged critically, and they started rocket attacks against Israel a day after the October 7th terrorist attacks. Israel has now opened up a second front, really the primary front now in the war, and after a couple of weeks of that war, Hezbollah's leadership is dead. Their communication capacity was critically destroyed. The war is ongoing but is certainly not going well for Hezbollah. On the one hand, you've seen a major escalation from the rockets and the bombing happening in Gaza to a ground war across the entirety of that territory now to Lebanon and with significant shots fired missiles and the rest military operations with Iran's other proxies, the Houthis and Yemen, Shia militants in Syria and Iraq, and of course involving Iran itself.
On the other hand, the capacity of these proxy organizations to escalate in return is now far, far less capable, far less serious. Hamas cannot threaten Israel the way they could on October 7th. Hezbollah certainly far, far diminished in their ability to escalate even if they want to. Two big questions are remaining. First, Iran. They are a country that still has all sorts of capabilities to escalate if they wish, possibly not effectively against Israel itself, but against the West, against the world. If they wanted to, they could completely disrupt oil tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, and as a consequence, ensure that much of the oil that comes out of the Middle East, not just Iran's one and a half million barrels a day of export but from the Gulf states is stuck in place. And that would mean oil prices towards $150, even in a depressed demand environment as we see now, and a global recession.
So Iran's capacity, if they want to escalate, is far, far greater than that of Hezbollah or Hamas or anyone else in the region. And they have shown themselves to be quite risk-averse in response to Israeli strikes against Iranian leaders across the region, military leaders, and also against Hamas leadership in Tehran. And that was true back in April, and that was true back a week ago. But still, we are awaiting what is almost certainly going to be an Israeli response, a military response, against Iran for the 180 ballistic missiles that they launched against Israel with no fatalities in Israel. One in the West Bank of a Palestinian, but nonetheless, certainly could have caused a lot of people to be killed. And we will see if that the Israeli response leads to further Iranian escalation. I am at this point hopeful, and I would even say optimistic, that it does not, but optimism feels like exactly the wrong word to describe any of this in the region.
Then the second big question remaining is about the devastation on the ground. In Gaza, for the last year, a million and a half Palestinians are now living on the back of humanitarian aid of on average 125-ish trucks coming in a day. That's compared to 800 to 1000 on average before October 7th. As well as all of those tunnels which have now been sealed, they brought a lot of arms and illicit goods in. They also brought things like food, luxury food stuffs, and other things that you could buy on the gray market in Gaza. Those are closed, and there's no Gaza economy. There's no local Gaza agriculture right now. So the 1.5 million Palestinians are living in an absolutely unimaginable condition on single-digit percentage calories, many of them, in terms of consumption from what they would have been living on before October 7th.
Then you have the West Bank, which has been indirectly involved in the fighting. There's been a lot of skirmishing, a lot of shooting, a lot of people getting killed. And then also Israeli settlers and the IDF taking and securing more land from the Palestinians there. Then of course, in Lebanon in the last two weeks, you have over a million Lebanese who have been displaced from that fighting. Far more will be displaced in all likelihood in the coming weeks. All of this from a humanitarian perspective unacceptable by any yardstick. The United States seen by most of the world as complicit in watching it and not providing the either restraint on Israel or the humanitarian support effectively to help ensure that the suffering is reduced. And of course, this is going to cause hatred and radicalization for generations. And antisemitism was already way too high and on an upswing before October 7th, certainly only greater in this environment a year later.
And of course, with all of this, we don't know what's going to happen with upcoming elections. Kamala Harris came out on "60 Minutes" and described the United States as the best friend of the Israeli people around the world, refused to say whether or not the US was an ally of Prime Minister Netanyahu himself. A very strained relationship between the United States and the Israeli Prime Minister today. While former President Trump came out publicly in the last few days and said that the Israeli government, the Israeli military, should actively take out Iran's nuclear capabilities. So frankly, I would say between Harris and Trump, their policies, their orientation specifically on the Middle East and the Israeli wars in Gaza, in Lebanon, and the fighting we're seeing with Iran, probably the biggest difference on foreign policy between those two candidates would be on this issue. And we will find out in a month plus who is going to lead the United States, but utterly critical as we think about the future of this conflict in the region.
So that is where we are a year after the October 7th terrorist attacks, and now very deep in expanding war that is affecting much of the region. And I will continue to talk about it and follow it for you. So I hope everyone's going well, and I'll talk to you all real soon.
- Iran's next move: Interview with VP Javad Zarif ›
- Israel, Hamas, and Hezbollah: Fears of escalation grow ›
- Israel’s geopolitical missteps in Gaza ›
- Ian Bremmer: Understanding the Israel-Hamas war ›
- Israel-Hamas war: Who is responsible for Gaza's enormous civilian death toll? ›
- Podcast: The State of the World in 2024 with Ian Bremmer - GZERO Media ›
People react inside a damaged residence following an Israeli raid, in Jenin, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, on Sept. 6, 2024.
American woman killed at protest in West Bank
The IDF said it was “looking into reports that a foreign national was killed as a result of shots fired in the area,” adding that the "details of the incident and the circumstances in which she was hit are under review."
The fatal incident comes at a rocky moment in US-Israel relations, with the Biden administration at odds with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over his approach to the war in Gaza and support for settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank, among other issues.
The tragic news came hours after Israeli forces withdrew from Jenin and its refugee camp, a militant stronghold, following a nine-day operation there.
We’ll be watching to see how Eygi’s killing impacts the already tense dynamic between the White House and the Jewish state.
The White House in a statement said it was “deeply disturbed by the tragic death of an American citizen,” adding that it’s reached out to the Israeli government “to ask for more information and request an investigation into the incident.”
Israelis push Netanyahu for cease-fire after Hamas kills hostages
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: A Quick Take to kick off your week and the work year. I want to talk about the Middle East and big demonstrations, the largest social dissent we have seen since the October 7th terror attacks, since the war in Gaza has started in Israel. And the proximate reason for this was the Hamas execution of six Israeli hostages in Rafah, likely before those positions were overrun by Israeli Defense Forces. The broader point anger with the way that Prime Minister Netanyahu is continuing to prosecute the war.
And it's a big deal, it's a general strike of the largest labor union in Israel, just as everyone in Israel is coming back from vacation. And so large scale action and certainly has an impact on the economy. The anger in particular with demanding a cease-fire deal and demanding the release of the hostages who have been held now for almost a year.
This has not been seen to be an adequate priority of the Prime Minister by a majority of Israeli citizens. This is not because there are large numbers of Israelis that are in favor of a two-state solution. For the Palestinians, that's not the case. It's certainly not the case that there's any sympathy for Hamas or that the Israelis are angry that a lot of Palestinians have gotten killed. That is not the issue either. It is that they want an end of the fighting, they want the hostages back, and they want a deal done, and they're tired of the way this war has been prosecuted, especially because the Israeli defense minister, the head of the Shin Bet, other senior military officials have broken themselves with the Israeli Prime Minister and said that they do not support what the Israeli leadership is pushing for on the ground in Gaza.
There are other fights about an Israeli budget. There's the long-standing fight that was before October 7th on the independence of the Israeli judiciary itself, very strong in Israel. There's the question of enlistment and the exceptions for the Hasidim, for the far-right Israeli ultra-Orthodox, all of these things in a very divided, very fragmented Israeli political system are creating plenty of folks that are angry with the Prime Minister, but he is still there and there is no way in the near term to take him out.
Now, I don't think this labor union strike matters all that much. It was not on the basis of a labor dispute, it was a political action. And in that regard, the Israeli government took them to court. The courts ruled that they had to shut that action down. The Labor Union agreed and shut it down. There's a lot of Likud, Netanyahu's party, oriented political leaders among the labor union's leadership and so it is unlikely, I think that you're going to see a lot more of this over the coming weeks and months, but you could still see a lot more social instability, a lot more unrest. And now that you've had hundreds of thousands on the streets, which had not been occurring, while the war is on, you've kind of taken off this restriction on, well, as long as there's a war, we all need to be hanging together. We need to be supporting this Israeli war cabinet. The war cabinet's had resignations and society is back to its fractious and very loud and boisterous self in Israel.
Now, the Knesset is coming back in session, the Israeli Parliament in October, and as that happens, there's going to be a lot more fighting against Netanyahu's position, and you could possibly see a no-confidence vote to bring down his government. One of the reasons why we don't have a cease-fire is because Netanyahu understands that the way he stays in power is by keeping his coalition intact with the far right, and they strongly oppose and have consistently strongly opposed any agreement that would allow for long-term ending of fighting on the ground in Gaza. They also want continued control, some level of Israeli occupation over Gaza. They don't want self-governance of the Palestinians there. And again, we're not talking about Hamas, we're talking about any Palestinian organization.
That is, politically, you have to say that Netanyahu has done an extraordinary job in being able, a masterful job politically, in being able to maintain his position under such an extraordinary level of pressure. And with such unpopularity among the Israeli population. More broadly, there's the fact that the United States looks feckless on this issue. Biden has now come out and said that Netanyahu is not doing enough for a cease-fire. And Netanyahu's response was extremely strong, saying, publicly, both Biden and the Secretary of State and others have consistently and repeatedly said that the Israelis have accepted extremely generous terms for Hamas, it's Hamas that's refused and now Biden's saying that they're not doing enough, what's changed? Only that six hostages have been executed, and after that you're putting more pressure on Bibi. You can imagine that that makes Biden look extremely weak. And the issue here is that Biden has not been willing to be critical of Netanyahu publicly, he's only put a little bit of pressure on the Israeli leadership privately, and that makes him look weak publicly when Netanyahu makes those claims.
All of the efforts to try to get a cease-fire by the United States are going nowhere, in part because Hamas refuses the terms, and in part because the terms that the US says Netanyahu accepts he doesn't really accept when they are having private discussions. And so the US is trying to paper over a chasm between the two fighting sides. Everybody else wants to paper that over too. I mean, if you look at who wants a deal here, you would say the majority of the Israeli population, the Gulf States, the Egyptians, the Europeans, heck, the Chinese and the United States, but not Bibi's government and not Hamas.
And that's why we continue to have this level of fighting. That's also why we continue to have the Houthis attacking oil tankers, including a Saudi-flagged tanker, clearly by mistake, in the last 24 hours in the Red Sea. You've got American military, UK military, others in operation across the Gulf, and yet incapable of preventing this ragtag group of militants from Yemen to continue to disrupt global supply chain. You continue to have militants in the So-called Iranian-led Axis of Resistance attacking US and other allied targets across the region. And so it's very hard to see this war coming to an end. It's very hard to see Netanyahu leaving power in the near term. It's certainly hard to see any option for the Palestinians that would de-radicalize them in the near future.
Kamala Harris has been doing her best to say very little on this issue because of course, she is not in a good position to try to carry water for a policy that clearly has failed for the Biden administration heretofore. And that's specifically to end the fighting, to get the hostages freed, to create at least a temporary but hopefully longer-term cease-fire and to create a two-state solution. None of the things that the Biden administration has said that they want on the ground in the region are happening, and that means that Kamala has a lot of vulnerability on that policy. That's interesting because where she would clearly like to be would be in coordination with US allies. And one of the reasons why US policy on Ukraine has been much more successful in the Middle East is because it's been in lockstep with everyone in NATO, sometimes moving too slowly, but nonetheless, all these countries are agreeing on the sanctions, on the diplomatic efforts, on the military support for the Ukrainians, the training, the intelligence all being done together.
That's not true at all. You've got the new Labour government in the UK now saying that a number of weapons systems being provided to Israel would be likely used in the commission of war crimes by the IDF, and so the UK government has said that those specific weapons systems will no longer be provided to Israel. Now, most weapons systems will still be provided by the UK, so it's not like the reality of UK policy and US policy towards Israel are all that different. This is a fig leaf by the Brits, but the point is these countries are all freelancing. They're making policies by themselves, that makes it much easier for the Israelis to focus on the United States and to also take the actions they want to. If you had a more coordinated policy by the United States and all of their allies on Israel, it would be a strong policy and it would be a policy that would protect those countries politically to a much greater degree.
That's not where the US or NATO is right now. I do think that's something that Harris would want to accomplish if she were to become president come January, but we are still many months away from that possibility.
So anyway, a lot going on right now in the Middle East, certainly not working out in America's favor and not working out in the Israelis' or the Palestinians' either. That's it for me, and I'll talk to you all real soon.
Israel hostage rescue and the worsening human toll
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here and a Quick Take to kick off your week.
Lots of things going on right now, but perhaps, the issue that's gotten most of the news around the Middle East conflict and the issue of the hostages being rescued. Four hostages, some eight months now, being held. Over 100 still that we know of by Hamas in Gaza.
But four of them were rescued by an Israeli Defense Forces operation over the weekend. Not released, as some including, in a chyron, an interview I was in over the weekend, were saying released. No, rescued. Hamas has not released anyone, and there is no agreement going forward, and unlikely in the near term, despite lots of efforts from everyone around the world to get an agreement.
Neither the Israelis or Hamas are coming to one. Now, news beyond that, is that in order to get those hostages out, there were between about 100 and 300 Palestinians killed. Depending on who you talk to, the numbers are completely unclear. How many of those people were civilians? How many of them were Hamas operatives? How many were women and children? That's still unclear. But obviously, the numbers were really, really high. And lots of things to say about this and you should say all of them. First is that Hamas is keeping these people in civilian homes and among a densely populated civilian area specifically to make it harder for Israelis to rescue them without having large numbers of Palestinian civilians killed.
That is indeed the strategy, and both the fact that Hamas continues to hold these hostages, civilian hostages illegally, and the fact that they are using Palestinian civilians as a part of their strategy is that these are war crimes; these are acts of terrorism. And they need to be held accountable for that.
At the same time, Israel has been way too indifferent to civilian casualties. And we've seen that broadly in terms of the war in Gaza, and we've seen it specifically in terms of the events of this weekend. And the fact that the Israeli prime minister celebrated, and understandably so, the rescue of the hostages but didn't mention, didn't even mention the minimum scores of Palestinians that were killed and quite plausibly far more than that, implies that that's not worth mentioning. On the Israeli side, those people don't matter. They don't count. Beyond saying that Hamas is responsible for all of their deaths, which is an extreme statement. The Israelis also bear accountability. But if you don't mention it, it's not even worth a mention is the point. And I think we've gotten to a point in the war of dehumanization where if you are supporting either the Palestinian side or the Israeli side, that the humanity of the people on the other side is no longer a thing for you.
And that is likely to persist for a generation, given the atrocities that we are seeing and have seen on October 7th and in the war since. Let's also focus on the asymmetry. These two actors, Hamas and Israel, do not play by the same rules, right? They also can’t play by the same rules.
I mean, in the sense that if Hamas played by Israel rules, they would have been destroyed by now. I mean, if they weren't trying to intentionally target Israeli civilians and if they weren't intentionally putting Palestinian civilians constantly at risk, there would be no more Hamas because the Israelis are overwhelmingly more powerful militarily, their offensive capabilities, their defensive capabilities, and of course, their intelligence capabilities, which forces a level of greater inhumanity and asymmetry in fighting strategy on Hamas than if they had greater military capabilities. Now, of course, on the other side, if Israel didn't have the incredible military capabilities that they had, they wouldn't have a state, they wouldn't be able to defend it against those that believe that they don't have a right to exist, as a state.
So, I mean, none of these things answer the question of what do we do? And none of these justify, in any way, the behaviors that we've been seeing on the ground from the Israeli Defense Forces in fighting this war from Hamas, in taking these hostages and holding them and putting their own civilians at risk. But it is, I think, incumbent on us as we see this continue to play out that what we're missing and what we need is humanity.
Right now, there are no angels that are fighting. There is only suffering, and there's only dehumanization. We also can't talk about all of this without having an effective deal on the table, and there isn't a deal on the table. And everyone is sort of responsible for that, right? The Israelis have refused a deal with all of the hostages in return for an eventual permanent cease-fire because the Israeli position is, “until we destroy Hamas, their leadership, their military capacity, there can be no end to the fighting.”
And indeed, Benny Gantz, leaving the Unity war cabinet and now leading the War Cabinet to look basically just like the Israeli government, which means Bibi, the PM, and the far right, which puts you farther from any plausible breakthrough agreement than you were even over the past weeks. Hamas has also refused a cease-fire agreement that is on the table.
They've had an agreement on the table for a six-week cease-fire in return for a significant number of hostages being released and also more Palestinians being detained by Israel being released. And then there would be further discussion and negotiations. Hamas has refused that deal. When you're reading about this in the media, you will see people talking about Israel refusing the deal.
You'll see people talk about Hamas refusing the deal. Very rarely will you see people talking about both Israel and Hamas refusing the deal, because they have both set red lines that are mutually incompatible. And that is by design because they don't want a breakthrough that leads the other to be intact and in any way fulfilled. Look in any negotiation, if both sides are dissatisfied, it's probably not effective negotiation. We are not at the point where both sides are prepared to accept that. We're not close.
In fact, I think what we've seen over the weekend, with the hostages rescued, with lots of Palestinians killed, and with Gantz leaving the war cabinet is, we are farther today from a diplomatic agreement, even with Secretary of State Tony Blinken yet again in the region, we're farther from an agreement than we were a week ago, a month ago, two months ago. And we're farther from containing the war, as the potential of this war expanding into the north with Hezbollah and also continuing, of course, on the ground in Rafah and more broadly in Gaza. I think that that is your baseline expectation for the coming weeks and months.
So not great news. And, you know, out of the Middle East these days, it really is. But that is where we are. I hope people find this worthwhile. And I'll talk to you all real soon.
- Israel rescues hostages, Gantz resigns ›
- Does Hamas have the Israeli hostages? ›
- Israel’s geopolitical missteps in Gaza ›
- Israel-Hamas war: Biden's second foreign policy crisis ›
- Ian Bremmer: Understanding the Israel-Hamas war ›
- Israel-Hamas war: Who is responsible for Gaza's enormous civilian death toll? ›
- ICC war crimes charge strengthens Netanyahu's position in Israel ›
Biden's Israel-Hamas cease-fire plan is trouble for Netanyahu
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here and a Quick Take on the Middle East.
Latest on is there or is there not a deal that can get done between Hamas and the Israelis, at least creating a short-term cease-fire? The United States has been relentlessly pushing this, in part because Biden has lost a lot of support domestically as the wars continued.
And, of course, because around the world, pretty much every other country wants to see this war over. But easier said than done when you're talking with an Israeli government that overwhelmingly wants to destroy Hamas, whatever exactly that means before they end it. And Hamas, that intends to continue lobbing rockets at the Israelis and is continuing to hold a large number of hostages. A near-term agreement, for at least a temporary cease-fire and hostages being released, has been done once and could be done again.
That's been discussed continuously over the past several months. The details have been challenging in how many hostages would be released and how many are still alive or in a position that Hamas would be able to give them back to the Israelis. But there's a big question about what happens then, and Biden's announcement that there was an Israeli deal that was agreed to that would eventually lead to a permanent cease-fire is not exactly what Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has said. I mean, the same text has been agreed to, but the way it's being presented internationally and to domestic audiences is very, very different. The United States thinks that there's utility, therefore, in being ambiguous about the actual text and about what happens and how one gets to a permanent cease-fire, but that's not acceptable to the Israeli prime minister, who loses his support domestically and his far-right allies if he does that.
Also, he wants Hamas to say no, he wants them to be responsible for the Israelis continuing to fight. And he's become more popular with the Israeli population over the past weeks as he's taken that position. The issue is that, you know, you can have six weeks in response for lots of the hostages being released, but the Israeli position and this is broader than just the prime minister, is that they are not yet done taking out Hamas, that there are thousands of fighters that continue to exist on the ground. And until they destroy their ability to mobilize and attack, they're going to continue. The Biden position is that Hamas is no longer capable of organizing an October 7th-style attack, and that should be sufficient. That is absolutely not the Israeli position. And that's why we don't yet have a deal that Hamas is likely to accept for the long term.
So, you know, all of this is to say that over the coming weeks, there's lots of effort to try to get Hamas to come to yes, but will Hamas say yes? And are they credible if there is every intention of the Israelis to continue to destroy the organization they're negotiating with? And, look, it's hard to negotiate with terrorist organizations in the best of times. This is very far from the best of times. So I would still be reasonably willing to bet that the deal is not going to happen. And if it does, it is only short term; in other words, we are not at the precipice of maybe a sustainable cease-fire that would lead to governance in the region among the Palestinians.
Having said all of that, Bibi himself is under a lot more pressure. Benny Gantz, member of the War Cabinet, a three-man War Cabinet, is willing to leave, gives him an ultimatum to the Prime Minister if there isn't some plan for what to do with Palestinian governance after the war is over.
And Netanyahu has been kicking the can on this, just like he's been kicking the can on under what conditions the war in Rafah will be over. Meanwhile, the Israeli far right has said that the deal as it stands is unacceptable and they are out if the government accepts it. Now, the center opposition Lapid has said that he would support Netanyahu if he loses his government.
But is the Israeli prime minister willing to do that, willing to accept what's going to be a much weaker governance position for him and his country going forward? Probably not. Also, he sees that his support is more likely to come from a Trump presidency, even though Trump doesn't like the Israeli prime minister personally, than it would from Biden. You got $100 million just been given from Miriam Adelson, who was Sheldon's widow, to Trump PAC, and all of that is in support of a far right-wing Israeli political stance. So he certainly understands that giving something to Biden right now is not in his interests. And meanwhile, he has been invited to come and give a speech to a joint session of Congress, Democrats and Republicans, all four running the House and Senate, extended that invitation.
Biden really didn't want that to happen. But since he's no way politically to be able to oppose it in his election process right now. And so more cards are presently being held by the Israeli prime minister than by the American president. That is the reality. And it's one of the reasons why a deal is at this point, in my view, unlikely.
Anyway, complicated stuff. Super challenging in the Middle East, super challenging for the American elections. And I'll talk to you all real soon.
Israel & Hamas extreme positions move them even further apart
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here back in New York City and a Quick Take to kick off your week.
We are talking yet again about the war in the Middle East continuing to escalate. Certainly not the news that anybody wants to hear right now. Israel with tanks now rolling into central Rafah.
This is the warning that the Americans had given the Israelis for over a month now, not to invade that area. The Prime Minister and others on the War Cabinet have said that they will persist until Hamas is destroyed, and that critically includes Rafah. This comes after roughly 1 million Palestinians have fled the area, having been warned by the Israelis that they're going to attack it. Over the past couple of weeks, of course, it's not clear that they have anywhere safe to go. Certainly, nowhere with infrastructure or with adequate humanitarian support. Comes after airstrikes by Israel hit a camp for people displaced from Rafah that killed over 45, mostly women and children, as well as two Hamas officials. Prime Minister Netanyahu referred to that as a tragic error. They've been a lot of those over the course of the past months. The United States, as I said, strongly opposing the invasion and calling it a red line, sort of. I mean, that red line also came with all sorts of caveats that the United States wanted to ensure that aid was going to be able to get in.
And part of that was the Americans building a humanitarian pier that they set up and which is falling apart because of bad weather, choppy seas, and no aid has been delivered from it despite all of the money and all of the effort to do so to the Palestinians. Also, with the idea that the Palestinians have to be gotten out and indeed, most of them have now gotten out, those that aren't military age, fighting age men. But whether those plans are considered adequate by the Americans, especially given where they're fleeing to, seems very unlikely. So Biden's red line is certainly going to be seen as having been transgressed by the Israeli government, by the Israeli War Cabinet. What exactly he plans to do about that? Still very, very challenging.
Hamas, of course, is itself still holding hostages nearly eight months later, military hostages and lots of civilian hostages. How many are still alive? Nobody knows. Hamas is still raining missiles on Israel, not causing casualties given Israel's extraordinarily strong capacity to defend itself, but still showing Hamas military capabilities surprisingly resilient despite months and months of intense Israeli war fighting across Gaza.
So if the Israeli intention is they're going to keep fighting until Hamas is destroyed, we're pretty far from that on its face. The Israeli view is that the killing of Palestinian civilians, and again, we've seen, you know, tens of thousands of deaths among Palestinians, a majority of which are civilians, is 100% the responsibility of Hamas, both for October 7th and for willingness to target Israel and for operating in civilian areas. Now, that is not just the view of the Israeli prime minister or the War Cabinet. That is the view of the majority of the Israeli citizens.
At the same time, it is not the view of any other country in the world which makes Israel increasingly isolated. And also it makes Biden, who was a strong supporter of Israel still, and that's not going to change, and is also by far the most important ally of Israel, puts him in a much more difficult and vulnerable position internationally and at home in his upcoming election. At the same time, Hamas and the so-called Iran-led axis of resistance, their view is that Israel has no right to exist, and that is not the view of any other country in the world.
And so you have these two polar extremes that are implacable enemies of each other. No overlap in the circles of the Venn diagram, no ability to effectively negotiate a cease fire, never mind a sustainable peace on the ground as a consequence. And the rest of the world, opposing both of their positions. That is not to create a moral equivalence between a terrorist organization and a democratically elected government.
But it is to say that in as far as the fighting of the war is going, the position of the axis of resistance and the position of the Israeli government literally are not aligned with or supported by anybody at this point on the global stage. And that makes the likelihood of this war going on, and escalating and expanding further beyond its borders. Also, the likelihood of this war having a real impact on the US election in November and undermining Biden is growing and growing and growing. You see why this isn't getting any better, and you see, why all of the efforts by the Gulf states, by the Egyptians and the Jordanians, by the Europeans, by the Americans, by the United Nations, by others to try to reduce the conflict, to try to contain the conflict, to try to lead to a cease fire, have so far led to not, and unfortunately, looking forward, it is very hard to see in the near future, any end to the fighting, either in terms of the Israeli ground invasion into Rafah and more broadly, the bombings across Gaza, and also in terms of the responses by Hamas, by Hezbollah, by other members of the axis of resistance and by a likely expansion of terrorist attacks against Israel and against the West around the world. This has to be one of the most depressing topics for me to be updating on out there.
And I wish I had better news to offer, but it's not about my preferences. It's about the analysis. And that's where we are. So, I hope everyone's going to have a good week. And I'll talk to you all real soon.
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