U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken pressures Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to not escalate conflicts. REUTERS TODAY.
After the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, President Biden said that we have to end the war in Gaza, “once and for all.” Democratic Presidential candidate Kamala Harris said, “Hamas is decimated, and its leadership is eliminated….This moment gives us an opportunity to finally end the war in Gaza.”
There is an understandable impulse to end the war immediately, presumably in exchange for release of the hostages. But the opportunity that Sinwar’s death affords Israel and the U.S. will be squandered if we lack the strategic patience to act wisely.
A more nuanced perspective is that of Matti Friedman, who wrote for the Free Press, “Sinwar’s death will hasten the end of the war….Will Israel seize this moment? It now has a chance to begin to orchestrate the end of the Gaza operation after a year of bloodshed.” His emphasis is not on the immediate, but on the beginning of a new opportunity to move towards a sustainable ceasefire without Hamas as the governing authority in Gaza.
Israeli opposition leader Benny Gantz, a Netanyahu opponent, gave an even more realistic assessment that the U.S. administration chooses to ignore.
“We will have to continue operating in Gaza for years,” he said, but he added that this “moment must be seized and leveraged to bring the hostages home and topple the Hamas regime.”
Hamas still has thousands of fighters in miles of undiscovered tunnels. And Hamas, along with its patron Iran, will still demand over a thousand terrorists be released in a hostage deal, including those who participated in the barbaric Oct. 7 rampage of rape, murder and kidnapping.
Such a mass release of jihadists would not only be a stain upon justice, but it would also resupply Hamas with experienced terrorist leaders. The same thing happened in 2011, when Israel released hundreds of terrorists, including Sinwar himself, in exchange for one Israeli hostage, Gilad Shalit. This painful decision is up to the Israelis — whether to take action now to free loved ones, even at the expense of facilitating future kidnappings.
It must also be appreciated that the year-long combat in Gaza is a direct extension of Israel’s 45-year war with Iran. Whatever is decided in a ceasefire deal with Hamas can either weaken or benefit Iran.
The most effective way to begin the next phase of the Gaza and Iranian strategy is for the administration to keep its disagreements with Israel private, putting on a united public face. Publicly airing disputes only encourages Iran and its proxies to be more intransigent, believing that the U.S. will do its diplomatic work for it by pressuring Israel into painful concessions, such as the threat of a weapons supply slowdown.
A great opportunity is at hand thanks to Israeli military achievements, which included the move into Rafah, which Biden and Harris opposed at the time. It should come as no surprise that Sinwar was killed in Rafah.
If the U.S. doesn’t let Israel use its newfound leverage to get the best ceasefire agreement, it will set the stage for a resurgence of Hamas. For no Arab ally of the U.S., nor any uncompromised Palestinians, will dare take the risk of participating in any non-Hamas governance and reconstruction of Gaza while Hamas is still there.
For real progress, the Biden administration needs to pressure Qatar to force the Hamas leaders it is harboring to agree to disarmament of the terror organization in Gaza, in exchange for safe passage of the remaining terrorists to terror-supporting countries such as Iran, Russia or Libya.
Finally, we should use a carrot-and-stick approach for leverage with the Gulf States and Egypt to incentivize them to participate in monitoring and reconstructing Gaza. Hamas ideology is the arch-enemy of these nations, all of which feel threatened by the Muslim Brotherhood. The U.S. has not used the stick of threatening to withhold $1.3 billion of aid to Egypt and has not offered the carrot to Saudi Arabia of a mutual defense pact against Iran.
The death of much of the Hamas leadership — Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh and Mohammed Deif — offers excellent opportunities to create a long-term ceasefire and deradicalization program for Gaza, on Israeli and American terms and concurrent with the release of the hostages. However, we need to adhere to a Middle Eastern timeline and be willing to walk away from counterproductive ceasefire offers that don’t provide the ability to verify and impose immediate consequences for non-compliance.
We all know how verification and sanctions have worked out in the case of Iran — they have turned out to be empty promises, soon forgotten. Israeli citizens, right and left, voting for Netanyahu and voting against him, have had enough of useless paper guarantees for their safety. There was, after all, a ceasefire in place with Hamas on Oct 7, 2023.
The Achilles heel is American impatience, especially with a presidential election weeks away and a lame duck President Biden on a deadline of Jan. 20, 2025. He would like to ensure his legacy before then by ending the war on any terms. The Iranians, Hamas and Hezbollah saw how Biden ordered the U.S. to leave Afghanistan in a hurry. They hope Biden will impose a similarly hurried fire-sale deal upon Israel in order to meet such a deadline.
Instead, we need to help Israel translate its tactical successes into diplomatic achievements, maximizing the leverage it has gained through its costly military achievements. Being patient with Israel signals to our allies around the world that we stand with our friends.
The next three months will determine whether Sinwar’s death is a crucial step toward victory for Israel and the U.S., or just one man’s martyrdom as part of a successful Iranian campaign to inflict pain upon Israel and America that will keep flaring up “again and again.”
This article appeared in The Hill on October 23, 2024.
Eric R. Mandel is the director of the Middle East Political Information Network and senior security editor for the Jerusalem Post’s Jerusalem Report.