Welcome to Home & Away. Here at Home, the big news is the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling that bars Donald Trump from appearing on that state’s primary ballot on grounds the Constitution (in the Fourteenth Amendment) bars insurrectionists from holding public office. What we know strongly suggests that Trump supported insurrection; that said, I am not sure this decision will hold as Trump has not been convicted of it. And then there is the Supreme Court of the United States, not Colorado, which will have to decide whether to hear Trump’s legal challenge and, if it does, how to rule on it. I worry that if the Colorado decision does not hold, it will reinforce Trump’s claim that he is a victim of a politicized justice system and fuel his campaign. So, the year ends with a story sure to dominate the year to come.
Morass in the Middle East
There is something of a Groundhog Day quality to the war between Israel and Hamas and U.S. policy toward it. The United States continues to offer support in principle for Israel but criticism in practice. Israel, for its part, welcomes an increasingly long list of U.S. envoys but largely ignores their counsel, particularly when it comes to advice on how best to fight the war. (That said, Israel has started to show a greater willingness to open new corridors of humanitarian aid for civilians in Gaza.) It is noteworthy that during Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s most recent trip, he said it was a “strategic imperative” for Israel to be more patient, more deliberate, and make better use of intelligence in its military efforts or it would alienate Gaza’s civilian population and encourage a new generation to sign up for Hamas.
Still, what is missing from the Biden team’s approach is any “or else,” such as introducing a resolution critical of Israel in the UN Security Council, conditioning some military exports, and/or speaking publicly (to the Israeli people) about the wisdom of, among other things, exercising greater care in how military force is employed.
Related to all this is Israel’s stated goal for this war and its working definition of success, which tends to come down to eliminating or destroying Hamas. This makes little sense as a military proposition; a far better metric would be to weaken Hamas (and strengthen Israeli defenses) so that nothing like October 7 can ever happen again. And as a political proposition, there needs to be a promising political track so that Palestinians and Arab governments have something other than Hamas to back.
The news that IDF soldiers killed three hostages during a gun battle was a terrible development in a terrible war. It is not just the friendly fire angle that is concerning, but also the more basic question of why the IDF was firing at all at three persons waving a white flag trying to surrender. This raises a broader question regarding the rules of engagement Israeli forces have been using throughout the conflict. The agenda for post-war inquires in Israel is growing.
I expect one result of this tragedy will be renewed pressure on the Israeli government to negotiate a new pause in hostilities in exchange for additional hostage releases, prisoner swaps, and humanitarian aid. On Monday, CIA Director William Burns met with his Israeli counterpart and Qatar’s Prime Minister in Warsaw to resume discussions of a potential hostage deal. Even if they are successful in negotiating such an agreement, I do not think it will alter the basic trajectory of things. We increasingly seem headed toward a prolonged Israeli occupation of Gaza and a continuation of the status quo in the West Bank unless the United States and Saudi Arabia, potentially joined by other countries, introduce a diplomatic dynamic that then gains traction.
In response to the revelations of the cynical, misguided Israeli policy of bolstering Hamas for many years, I wrote the other day that one maxim of the Middle East is that the enemy of your enemy can still be your enemy. My second maxim is that in this part of the world things tend to get worse before they get even worse. To be more precise, the odds of this war widening are going up.
The Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen continue to pose a direct threat to shipping through their attacks in the Red Sea. Given the waterway’s importance to global trade flows, my guess is that Iran is doing this to create international pressure on the United States in the hopes that it will leverage its relationship with Israel to secure an end to Israel’s attacks on Hamas. Then, there is evidence the Israeli-Lebanon or more precisely Israeli-Hezbollah situation is worsening. My guess here is that the Israeli government may decide it needs to act more forcefully to push Hezbollah back from the border so tens of thousands of Israelis can return to their homes in the north. The danger, of course, is that this could very well lead to a Hezbollah response that would open a second front.
The other thing I want to address regarding the Middle East concerns attitudes. In Israel, there are now few, if any, doves. The decline of the left was long underway before October 7, but it has sharply accelerated in the wake of it. Trust for Palestinians is at an all-time low, in part because sympathy among Palestinians for Hamas remains high with some polls reporting that 57% of respondents in Gaza and 82% in the West Bank believe Hamas was correct in launching its October attack. As a result, the Biden administration needs to tread carefully in how it frames the public debate. I would put less emphasis on two-state solutions and final status negotiations and more on what confidence building measures both sides can undertake in the political and security domains to help transition out of the current morass and give more ambitious diplomacy a chance down the road.
I also want to talk about attitudes here at home. For much of the past 75 years support for Israel was broad and deep in this country, an all too rare and welcome manifestation of bipartisanship. This began to change somewhat in recent years as support for Israel started to fade among Democrats and grow among Evangelicals tied to the Republican Party.
The war has accelerated this shift. It is impossible not to be taken aback by polls indicating that nearly three-quarters of voters between 18 and 29 years old disapprove of the way Biden is handling the conflict in Gaza, or that more than half of young people do not see a need for Israel and believe the conflict could be solved by ending Israel’s existence as a sovereign entity and giving its land to the Palestinians.
I was on Fareed’s Zakaria’s CNN show this past Sunday with Ezra Klein. He divided the American population into three tranches according to generation. Biden’s generation, remembering Israel as a necessary response to the Holocaust and as David to the Arab world’s Goliath, is instinctively pro-Israel. But younger Americans in their late thirties through fifties have come to see Israel more as Goliath and take a more even-handed stance. Then there is a third generation in its twenties and early thirties that is sharply critical of Israel, which they see as a colonial power oppressing Palestinians.
I worry about these latter two groups, and the youngest most of all, as they are the future. Behind this is an educational failure, as few of those being polled or marching have any real grasp of the relevant history. Only 47% of students who embrace the chant “From the river to the sea” can accurately identify both the river and sea in question. It is an indictment of our schools for sure, and it is for this reason I prioritized doing something about what we called global illiteracy during my tenure at the Council on Foreign Relations. But this political reality is also an indictment of the American Jewish establishment, which too often ignored the public’s perception of Israel and focused exclusively on appealing to Congress and the administration of the day. They also were reluctant to put any pressure on Israel, and their largely unconditional support allowed Bibi Netanyahu and other Israeli politicians to follow their worst instincts and turn them into policies that have deeply alienated many Americans.
Out with the Auld
This will be the last Home & Away of 2023. Regarding the year, it was one dominated by a painfully familiar war and an unexpected one. The former, between Russia and Ukraine, turned into something of a stalemate; the latter, between Hamas and Israel, has caused a great deal of damage: to human life, ways of life, and diplomatic prospects.
Elsewhere, the U.S.-China relationship had its share of downs and ups. 2023 was another year in which climate change changed the world more than diplomacy changed the climate. It was a breakout year for AI and a good year for populists, the American economy, and both Japan and South Korea. My essay on the year that was (just published in Project Syndicate) can be found here.
2023 was also an eventful year for me. It was a year of personal transition, as after twenty years I left my post as president of the Council on Foreign Relations and arrived here at Centerview Partners. I published The Bill of Obligations (an ideal stocking-stuffer by the way), wrote some articles on Ukraine and the Middle East that I’d like to think influenced policymakers as well as the public debate, and launched this newsletter. Speaking of which, this is the 51st edition of Home & Away if I have counted correctly.
As for 2024, I will ring in the new year in Australia, followed by Singapore. The PBS documentary A Citizen’s Guide to Preserving Democracy based on my book The Bill of Obligations will premiere Tuesday, January 2 at 10:00 p.m. on PBS (check local listings), pbs.org, and the PBS App. The next issue of Home & Away is planned for January 5 and will include my predictions and the like for 2024, along with accounts of my golf experience in Australia if there is anything positive to report. Otherwise, wishing you all a good and safe holiday season and an equally good and safe new year.
As always, some links to click on. And feel free to share Home & Away.
Richard Haass in the news
Sunday, December 17: Fareed Zakaria GPS on the Israel-Hamas war
Monday, December 18: MSNBC Andrea Mitchell Reports on Israel’s strategy in Gaza
Tuesday, December 19: MSNBC Morning Joe on the Israel-Hamas war (audio-only; begins at 7:40)
Articles:
A Year of War and Little Peace (Project Syndicate)
Podcasts:
Check out The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens