Rumors of ceasefires: Should Israel accept being stopped in place for a 60-day halt?

Is it time to stop moving, or time for Israel’s strategic intrerests to invest in maxiumum movement, especially in Lebanon?

J.E. Dyer, a retired Naval Intelligence officer, blogs as The Optimistic Conservative, October 31, 2021

This will be posted in rough-and ready form rather than polished up to a shine, because it’s time to have The Talk.  The predicates are two sources of information and thought from the last few days; one a summary of the state of affairs by historian Benny Morris at Quillette, the other, news on a new proposal for a ceasefire in Lebanon.

The common thread is a mindset that leans reflexively toward “ending the war” without further gains by Israel in shaping conditions for a post-war settlement.  The ceasefire proposal reportedly includes a provision for Israel to withdraw forces from Lebanon in the first week of a 60-day hiatus.  I’ve also heard that Israel would be allowed to keep forces in Lebanon.  But if hostilities are to cease, Israel can only remain in place for the 60 days, with severe limits on accomplishing anything else in Lebanon.

Rather than explain before laying out my thinking on this, I’m just going to lay it out.  The short version is that I don’t think stopping the kinetic shaping now is in Israel’s best interest.  But here is the proposition, from remarks prepared for another forum on Thursday 31 October.  It’s geared to responding on one thematic point to the Morris article.

Quote:

A thoughtful and intelligent meditation, as I would expect of Benny Morris.  Highly recommended as a way of marshaling thoughts.

I would differ with him in this way:  the emphasis, in discussing the conditions of the war-in-progress state of affairs.

The briefest way to put it:  the current WAR is not what has altered the conditions in which fewer can see their way to a settlement with Palestinian Arabs.  It’s not even true at this point that that settlement is unquestionably the priority.

The conditions were never there for the settlement in the first place, and it has always been a delusion to claim they were.  Israel has destabilized nothing with this war (which was started by Hamas and its partners, Iran and Hezbollah).  Israel is addressing a long-term instability that has been the baseline reality since 1948.  That reality can no longer be papered over by “process.”

Up through Camp David in the late 1970s, the principal “juggernaut” enemy for Israel, and destabilizing factor in the region, was an Arab coalition.  After Egypt and Israel made their agreement for a modus vivendi, the “juggernaut enemy” mantle shifted almost immediately to Iran, with the 1979 revolution.  The proxy warfare, including proto-intifadas, began a few years later; tellingly, Soviet-style proxy warfare to destabilize Israel’s and surrounding nations’ governments and social conditions.

The Soviet influence set a course of methods for both Sunni and Iran-backed radicalism against Israel.  Oslo was actually a triumph of Soviet-style warfare, in that it won Arafat a seat he never deserved at a Western-sponsored conference table.  No such Soviet-style triumph is ever a source of stability.

Of course the more conventional, headline-based thinkers don’t have the same view of where this is going.  They don’t have the same view of where it has been.  (My point isn’t that anyone in particular is such a thinker, certainly not Morris, but rather that I would lead with these factors.  The standard tale of the last 76 years has a misplaced emphasis that serves not truth but current-day politics.)

But Netanyahu is right about what has been up to now his North Star. The war CANNOT, must not, be “ended” with another bandage of false promise.  What it takes to have a better basis for stability and security is what must be done.

FWIW, I think the Abraham Accords are foundational for a workable future.  They facilitate outreaches and common-cause maneuvering that were never possible before.  Making Gaza unusable for Hamas, and breaking the back of the Hezbollah framework in Lebanon, are also essential.

The pressure Israel can bring on the radical regime in Iran – the pressure of inglory, serial humiliation, episodes of defeat and loss – is instrumental in weakening the regime in the eyes of its people, who are already restive and justifiably discontent.  Iran has every capacity to be resurgent as a great nation.  But not under a regime sold out to evil against its own people, and predation against others.

The status quo ante bellum in Gaza must not become reality again.  No tunnel is dug so deep that it can’t be packed back in and extinguished from life as an operational instrument for terrorist guerrillas.  It’s better to repack Gaza than to restore to its people a life as human shields for terror-combat tunnels.  Likewise the other measures necessary to achieve stable security for Israel – and the region.

America could help, with regional leadership in the measures we are strong and do our best work in.  God willing, we will return Trump to office and resume doing that.

[End quote]

I would add to this what regional planners, in other nations as well as Israel, should be focused on.  Again, this is a rough-and-ready list, meant to frame thought and dialogue.

• A Gaza without Hamas (or any renamed Son of Hamas).
• A Lebanon in which Hezbollah can’t gain the upper hand again, and which it might ideally choose to shift away from (probably toward Syria) – with a vision of the terror group withering and fading away from lack of options and loss of energy.  Implementing UNSCR 1701 should not be a static aspiration to be endlessly chopped fine and negotiated with extortion and foot-dragging, after Israel has pulled troops out of Lebanon.  A better outcome than 1701 should be the actual goal. Israel can only achieve such a goal by resetting conditions on the ground in Lebanon now.
• A West Bank resistant to exploitation by outside instigators.
• A long-term vision for Syria, which will probably include a special relationship with Russia and a necessary set of accords with Turkey, but which will not offer either of the latter a path of least resistance to domination of the Eastern Med.
• A region without the radical regime in Tehran.  An Iran under nationalist and legacy-emphasizing governance, respecting and empowering its people and ceasing to pursue caliphate or apocalypse.
• A stabilized, prosperous Jordan, not rent by domestic discontent from constantly-fomented animus against Israel among an unassimilated “Palestinian” demographic that grows by the year.
• A stabilized, prosperous Egypt, treating wisely and in a balanced way with all parties in its unique position at the world’s “Great Crossroads.”
• A stabilized and settled Yemen, operating as an Arabian Peninsula nation and incorporated in a prosperous bloc on that basis, rather than up for grabs by outside powers.

One could go on, expanding outward, but that is certainly enough to start with.  I would say, for example, that issues like the Kurds, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia are important to the region, but the consortium that deals with the first-order issues listed would have to be altered to deal with the ones radiating outward.  Deal with the inner ring first.

An end note:  on Thursday, Netanyahu’s office posted remarks from his address this week to IDF Officers Course graduates, and the thread at X/Twitter is an essential source for his thinking.  Please see the whole thread.  The post highlighted here is what he calls his supreme objective for the IDF:  “to prevent Iran from attaining nuclear weapons.”

What I take from this is that his supreme objective is the priority for strategy and resources.  It sounds as if it takes precedence over reshaping conditions in Lebanon (and even possibly Gaza).  At the very least, if push comes to shove, it will be higher on the list than continuing to shape new conditions in Lebanon.

So I’m not sure what Netanyahu will do in the coming days.  He has as much incentive as anyone to postpone big decisions until the U.S. election has yielded a result.  A Harris victory would be a very different condition from a Trump victory going forward.  A Harris victory would offer little scope for genuinely stabilizing initiative on the part of sympathetic actors that may include Israel, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and even Egypt.  Harris is likely to persist in pushing for the “two-state solution,” and the otherwise reinstituted status quo the Biden administration has held fast to pursuing.

I might see the 60 days after the U.S. election as an opportunity to makes gains in Lebanon while the departing Biden administration’s effectiveness is at a low ebb.  But Netanyahu knows his resources and the internal situation in Israel better than outside observers can.

Feature image:  Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu addresses graduates of the IDF Officers Course in October 2024. Via Office of the Prime Minister, X/Twitter.