Do not Depend on Messiah: Negotiate Now

At the beginning of the current series of wars, in October 2023, I tried to move the focus to “the end game.”  By that I meant, I was looking for the answer for how to end the war, what could be defined as having achieved the goals of the war.  We who wanted to know how to figure out what the leaders were trying to accomplish watched how at first the Netanyahu government avoided articulating what they wanted, concentrating on fighting back.  Over time, we discovered that there were no clear goals, no plan for how to end the war.  As the days passed, we realized that Netanyahu and his right-wing partners kept moving the goal posts further and further away. Often just as it seemed we were close to a resolution that would bring back our hostages, those still living and those already dead, and leave a defeated and decimated Gaza, we were frustrated by new demands.  Both sides, Hamas and the Netanyahu government raised the ante keeping the conflict going.  Both were aware that peace would lead to their fall from power and caring more about avoiding that than the welfare of their own citizens, both sides avoided an end to hostilities and a return of those held as captives. Israelis were not prepared to organize an alternative authority in Gaza acceptable to Palestinians – the very thing Hamas feared most.  And Hamas was unwilling to lay down its arms and lose its control after its failed war.

In Lebanon, things would have been the same had not the Lebanese government agreed to rein in Hezbollah once it had been decimated by Israel, and also grudgingly and tacitly allowing Israelis to intervene if Hezbollah tried to reassert its military and political power.  For the moment that has held. In Syria, the weakening of Hezbollah led to a remarkable and rapid crumbling of the Assad regime and its replacement by a leadership that refused to serve as a proxy and ally of Iran Islamists.  These may also have happened in the case of the Houthis who have been quiet recently. In all these places there was no need for an end game because it emerged from within these states and was not dependent on Netanyahu’s government reaching a peace treaty or even a truce.

And now we arrive at the Iran/Israel war.  Once again, the military and intelligence victories have been impressive – a far cry from the obvious failures of 7 October 2023.  Yet once again, this Israeli government lacks an end game.  From the initial goal of preventing the development of a nuclearized and hostile Iran, Israel has added the destruction of its air defenses, ability to launch missiles and drones against the Jewish homeland, destruction of its oil refineries, assassination of its military leaders, decapitation of its nuclear scientists, and now regime change while displacing inhabitants of the Iranian capitol and those in places near nuclear and military facilities.  But these are tactical goals; they are not strategies for how to bring peace.  Regime change, seldom a successful plan, could just as easily lead to an even worse eventuality, as Americans discovered in Afghanistan and Iraq. A failure to provide a mutually-agreed-upon end to a war is simply Russian roulette.

War must end with genuine negotiation and agreement.  Without it, the result may be a state of chaos in which disorder can easily lead to a worse alternative.  Netanyahu has benefited from this war so far, though according to a monthly The Tel Aviv University Institute for National Security Studies survey a minority of Israelis trust his government (up from 21% before the Iran war to 35% now).  In contrast, Israeli’s trust in the Mossad, the spy service remains at a whopping 81%.  I suspect the PM will continue to fight to raise those numbers, (and maybe undermine trust in his rival in popularity, the Mossad) but that does not lead to any real resolutions to this war.  Wars can only be called a success if they lead to a negotiated peace between the combatants.  The victors are those who have chosen a realistic goal and one that those with whom they are at war agree to live with. Otherwise, war is suicidal, mutually assured destruction.  Only religious fanatics and messianists – of whom as I have said before, there are to many these days in these two countries – could welcome such destruction. Messiahs tend to tarry.  We cannot afford to wait.