Thread by @MouinRabbani

THREAD: As predicted, no sooner did Antony Blinken arrive in the region than hostilities erupted again. The first killings, numbering in the dozens, resulting from Israeli air raids and artillery barrages throughout the Gaza Strip have already been reported.

Israel claims the truce ended because a Palestinian rocket was fired from the Gaza Strip. If true, also unconvincing. Several days ago, claiming to respond to a series of Israeli shellings in the Gaza Strip that killed several Palestinians,

the latter set off explosive devices that wounded a number of Israeli soldiers, and the truce continued. There are larger forces at work. It’s at this stage unclear whether Israel, the Palestinians, or both are flexing their muscles prior to resuming the truce on improved terms,

or whether there has been an Israeli decision to resume its offensive with full fury. I suspect it’s the latter.

Several dynamics are at work. The truce that expired on the morning of 1 December local time comprised an exchange of captives, whereby the Palestinians would release child, civilian woman, and foreign captives from the Gaza Strip,

in exchange for Israel releasing woman and children from the much larger pool of such Palestinian captives it holds, at a ratio of 1:3.

Additionally, the United States and Israel permitted a limited volume of essential supplies (food, water, medicine, fuel) into the Gaza Strip. The latter has been presented by USAID Director Samantha Power as a major US policy victory,

as if the US had nothing to do with either the 17-year blockade of the Gaza Strip or the medieval siege of the territory since 7 October.

As Elliott Colla so presciently put it, “Little did we know that [Power’s bestseller], A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, was a HOW-TO book.”

There are two conflicting dynamics at work. On the one hand, there appear to be few women, children, and foreign captives left in the Gaza Strip.

This means that subsequent prisoner exchanges will require the release of a different category of captives from Gaza (e.g. male youths and older men whose age makes them ineligible for military service) in exchange for a different category of Palestinian captives

(e.g. those with terminal diseases and the thousands arrested in the West Bank since 7 October). An agreement therefore requires not just an extension of the existing truce in order to continue with exchanges of captives pursuant to the previously agreed formula,

but further negotiations about categories, numbers, duration, and the like. In effect a new agreement, particularly since each party is also introducing additional demands.

For Israel, primarily ICRC visits to the remaining captives. For the Palestinians, Samantha Power’s consent to an increase in genocide-preventing essential supplies, and the release of Palestinian prisoners who hold Israeli citizenship.

The second dynamic concerns Israel. Rather than responding to its failure to achieve anything of decisive military significance during the past 55 days by searching for an offramp, it appears convinced that where overwhelming force has failed, even more force will succeed.

It is in this respect important to recall that 7 October represents the most catastrophic military and intelligence failure in Israel’s (admittedly short) history,

and that Israel’s security establishment is desperate for achievements that it believes, falsely in my opinion, will at least partially remove the stain from its reputation.

Parenthetically, I would take reports, such as in the NYT Thursday, that Israel had precise intelligence preceding the 7 October attacks (including all relevant documentation produced in secret by Hamas), but failed to properly act on them, with a large helping of kosher salt.

In addition to prosecuting Operation Swords of Iron against the Gaza Strip, Israeli leaders are no less intensively engaged in Operation Cover Your Ass. Suddenly, everyone and their brother knew exactly what was about to transpire,

and it happened only because someone else failed to recognize the significance of the intelligence in their possession.

It’s also a way for Israel to broadcast to its adversaries, its allies, and clients of its military-intelligence industries that despite their abysmal performance Israel’s intelligence capabilities are second to none.

Israeli leaders have indicated that their renewed offensive will continue for several months, perhaps even a year, until each of its unattainable objectives is achieved.

Highly unlikely. Israel will face significantly more difficult military, political, and diplomatic challenges compared to the previous fifty days.

If it decides to enter into the heart of Gaza City and other Palestinian urban areas it has not yet reached, as opposed to terror bombing them from the skies, its air force will be of increasingly limited utility,

and its mediocre ground forces will be confronting increasingly entrenched Palestinian forces. It’s not going to be a cakewalk, to borrow a phrase.

Politically, the expired truce has already demonstrated that Israel can retrieve captives through negotiations, if not exclusively through negotiations,

and we may see greater pressure on the Israeli government to return to the negotiating table from both Israeli public opinion and the international community, and perhaps even from some Western governments as well.

Additionally, the damage to the Israeli economy is mounting, and will deepen further as this confrontation continues. Diplomatically, there is already a solid consensus within the international community against Israel’s slaughter of Palestinian civilians.

We are now also seeing several European governments responding to popular pressure by – at least verbally – withdrawing their unconditional support for Israel’s mass killings.

(That said, no European leader has yet so much as acknowledged that a serving Israeli cabinet minister recently advocated deploying a nuclear weapon against the Gaza Strip).

The United States is much less responsive to popular pressures due to its more superficial democracy, in which the political class is bought and paid for by the donor class.

(Opposition to the war in the US is of course vital, given its central role in this war, but results will take time to materialize, and it’s important not to get disillusioned by the absence of immediate results.)

Add to the above the fanatical support of Israel of many of its leaders (e.g. Biden, Blinken, Sullivan, McGurk), and their conviction that Israel’s success or failure will reflect on Washington’s geopolitical position,

and it becomes clear that Israel doesn’t need Karim Khan to perpetrate war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide with impunity. The protective embrace of the Biden administration is sufficient in this regard.

In recognition of the ever-increasing US complicity with Israeli crimes, there’s an established tradition in Israel that every outgoing US president is – accurately – described as the best friend Israel has ever had in the White House.

I think it’s fair to say that the next US president will be facing an extraordinarily high bar and may be the first to leave office without this sordid accolade.

What will restrain Western and particularly US support for a continuation of Israel’s war is threats to US interests. These could take the form of regional escalation, which seems all but certain at this stage;

threats real or perceived to the security and stability of regional client regimes; threats to US installations in the region; global partners opting out of the West’s rules-based international order; or other forms.

So even in the unlikely scenario that Israel is prepared to expend the blood and treasure required to achieve objectives that most have already concluded are unattainable,

the escalating damage its war is inflicting on Western interests – in significant part because Western states are such enthusiastically active partners – is likely to limit the time Israel has available before the clock starts winding down.

That said, we are likely to see extraordinarily perhaps even unprecedentedly vicious and lethal days ahead.

Finally, it’s also important to recognize that Israel can legitimately be characterized as an irrational state. Not just radical, but irrational. This has only partly to do with its knee-jerk resort to extraordinary levels of violence, routine genocidal statements by its leaders,

and the like. Primarily on account of the West’s consistent refusal to confront Israel with any consequences for the policies of its increasingly radical and fanatic governments, Israel has become ever more radical and fanatic.

To the point where it is a state that is no longer capable of inhibition or self-restraint. This is most evident in how it treats its closest allies.

Most recently, it has accused the leaders of Belgium and Spain of supporting terrorism. Its representative to the United Nations donned a yellow star, with his entire entourage dutifully following suit, in the Security Council,

and proceeded to demand the “immediate resignation” of the UN Secretary-General on account of his pedestrian observation that there is a conflict in the Middle East, with similar snarls directed at other senior UN officials.

During Biden’s vice-presidency, it would announce a major settlement expansion on the eve of each of Biden’s visit to his favorite state.

And Israel sought nothing of converting its greatest strategic asset, solid bipartisan support in the US Congress, into a partisan political issue.

That’s just scratching the surface. The point is that those engaged in “day after” scenarios also need to take into account the irrational nature of the Israeli state. END