Yair Hirschfeld
During the months, weeks and days before the Hamas terrorist attack, three complementary peace efforts were underway:
1. The USA, Israel and Saudi Arabia were negotiating a regional peace understanding; 2. The European Union started at the UN an intense dialogue with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Jordan—combined with a parallel separate dialogue with Israel and the Palestinian Authority aimed at creating the national infrastructure for Palestine as part of a wider regional stability building effort; and 3. An unofficial Israeli-Palestinian dialogue aimed at reaching first territorial understandings for Palestinian state-building aimed to change realities on the ground, restart a process of mutual trust-building and pave the way for the renewal of a well thought out peace-building process.
On the global level, the multi-layered peace effort aimed at normalizing relations between Israel, Malaysia, and Indonesia would bring most of the Arab and Muslim world into the Abraham Accords. This effort threatened the interest of Hamas, particularly of its military wing, as well as the interests of Iran, its proxies, and Russia and became the motivation for Hamas to start this war.
Since 2007, Hamas has held their own people, Israel, and the region hostage. Their message of hate has helped to foil the peace efforts of 2007-2008, the 2014 framework agreement, and more lately also a preliminary understanding reached with Abu Ala in 2020-2021. The human cost of breaking the Hamas rule over Gaza will undoubtedly be very high, but still essential. We have to plan for offering humanitarian relief and assistance to the many displaced Palestinians.
It is essential to plan for the necessary peace building the "day after." Detailed plans are being prepared even now.
Raphael Cohen-Almagor
There is little doubt in my mind that Iran knew about and supported the attack. Iran has been a supporter of Hamas since its establishment. Whether Iran wishes to increase its involvement directly or via its proxies in Lebanon and Syria is presently an open question. President Biden warned Iran not to interfere and backed his words by sending carriers to the region.
Hezbollah, until now, reacted symbolically to show its solidarity with Hamas. Hezbollah’s firepower is significant. Its large rocket arsenal can target every place in Israel with greater precision than Hamas. Israel has mobilized 300,000 reservists to secure its borders in all directions. There is also fear that some Palestinian factions in the West Bank will exploit the situation to wage an attack.
Qatar, Turkey, and Egypt are willing to be involved in prisoner exchange negotiations between Israel and Hamas. One can presume that the three countries are concerned about the fate of the Gazans as they are facing heavy Israeli retaliation and yet another humanitarian crisis. Benjamin Netanyahu enlarged his coalition and included Benny Gantz in his war cabinet. A decision was made to open a ground offensive against Hamas aiming to destroy it completely. The war will be painful for Israel and Gaza. I asked Ambassador Karim Haggag, a career Egyptian diplomat for over 25 years and Director of the Middle East Studies Center at the American University in Cairo, whether Egypt will open its border to refugees from Gaza. His answer was NO. He explained that the first concern of the Egyptian government is its own security and safety, and it will not do anything that might put these considerations at risk.
Is there a silver lining? Perhaps the war will bring a positive change in Gaza and solve the Hamas problem, paving the way for a peaceful resolution with the PLO.
David Ottaway
There is little love lost on Hamas among the biggest Arab states and, so far, the Arab street has remained remarkably restrained in showing support for the radical Palestinian faction. If Israel does manage to quickly wipe out Hamas, then at least one major obstacle to Saudi-Israeli normalization would be removed, making it easier for Saudi Arabia to strike a deal.
The prospects for this scenario, however, appear exceedingly dim. Rather, Israel is moving back into a political and military quagmire (which is why it decided to get out of Gaza in 2005). Hamas will likely suffer a military defeat eventually but inflict a heavy cost on Israeli occupying troops in the process. Israel may try to install the far more moderate Palestinian Authority (PA) in partnership with Israeli security forces, but the PA is militarily weak, its leadership decrepit, and its reputation badly tarnished in Gaza. If the fighting rages on for months, all Arab leaders are likely to come under increasing pressure from the street to show support for Hamas. Even if defeated militarily, Hamas will remain enormously popular across the Arab world: the new icon of Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation.
In this atmosphere, it becomes extremely risky for Saudi Arabia to embrace Israel, even for its headstrong crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) who, until the Hamas incursion, was showing every sign of moving toward striking a deal with Netanyahu. Now, the Israeli leader will have scant popular or political support for making any concessions to the Palestinians. In any case, he will be too busy fighting for his political life to risk doing so. But even MBS has been insisting upon this in return for establishing diplomatic relations with the Jewish state.
Joe Macaron
There is a growing concern that Hezbollah would open another front against Israel in parallel to this latest round of conflict in Gaza, which prompted the Biden administration to a carrier strike group to the Eastern Mediterranean as a deterrence to Iran and its allies. However, while Hezbollah and Israel have been pushing the envelope on the border, they have not stepped beyond the rules of engagement set since the conclusion of the July 2006 conflict between Israel and Lebanon.
The exchange of fire between Hezbollah and Israeli is expected to continue, as Hezbollah keeps Israel on its toes as a psychological deterrence to any ground invasion of Gaza. The Biden administration aims to have Iran and its allies idle, so Israel can have the space and time to retaliate against Hamas while Washington is trying to keep the Israeli government in check by not to going overboard in its reaction. The question is to what extent can Hezbollah be patient if an Israeli ground invasion begins, or the Palestinian death toll significantly increased in the next days and weeks.
It is a balancing act for all actors involved as south Lebanon and Gaza became somehow entangled. There has long been a myth about the idea of multiple fronts of Iranian proxies against Israel, but the connectivity of these fronts is not coherent, and each has its own calculations and local dynamics. Tensions are running high between Israel and Hezbollah, they are both in a state of alert wary of each other’s intentions and of every move, but they are still within the limits of their rules of engagement. Once the conflict in Gaza eventually winds down, Israel and Hezbollah will go back to business as usual, managing the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 that still stands until further notice.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not express the official position of the Wilson Center.