The Middle East’s Dangerous Escalation

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Ever since Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, the Middle East has flirted dangerously with a full-scale regional war. Over the past week, the situation has escalated once again, with strikes and counterstrikes that have put the region closer to the precipice than perhaps any point in the past year. To discuss these latest developments and the future of Gaza, I was joined by Audrey Kurth Cronin, Marc Lynch, Dennis Ross, and Dana Stroul for a Foreign Affairs event on August 1.

Good afternoon, and welcome all to this discussion of the state of the war in Gaza as well as the risk of an escalating war in the Middle East more broadly. This discussion very loosely marks the release of our July/August issue in which one of our speakers today, Audrey Kurth Cronin, has a fantastic piece called “How Hamas Ends.” Audrey is the director of the Carnegie Mellon Institute on Strategy and Technology and also the author of a really definitive book called How Terrorism Ends; we stole the title for the piece. But I wanted to gather this particular group, not so much because of the issue, but because of the work they’ve all done in Foreign Affairs more generally in recent months. I will very briefly introduce them before we get into discussion.

Dana Stroul is now Research Director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. She served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense overseeing the Middle East from 2021 until late 2023. Her most recent piece for us was called “The Dangers of an Ungoverned Gaza.” Marc Lynch of George Washington University wrote an essay, I think in our previous issue, called “The Two-State Mirage,” and also did a fantastic piece called “The Coming Arab Backlash” in the last couple months, and the piece shortly after October 7 arguing against a full-scale Israeli invasion of Gaza, so lots of relevant work. And Dennis Ross, one of the U.S. foreign policy hands with really the deepest experience and expertise on both the Israeli-Palestinian issue and the region more broadly across three or four administrations, most recently the Obama administration. His most recent piece that we have published thus far was making the case for a unilateral Israeli ceasefire in Gaza. He has another coming in a few days that we’ll perhaps preview here.

So, Dana, let me start with you, and let’s go right to the news. We’ve seen a number of rather spectacular Israeli strikes in recent days, one of a Hezbollah commander in Beirut responding to a missile attack that seems to have come to Hezbollah that killed 12 people in a Druze village in Israel earlier this week. There was a targeted killing of a Hamas leader in Tehran a couple days ago, confirmation of the death of another Hamas leader in Gaza. Just stepping back and making sense of this moment, as you look at the risk of escalation in the region more broadly, how high do you rate the danger? What are you looking at? And from a policy perspective, what do you think the key steps that the United States and other key actors should be taking at this point to manage those risks?

DANA STROUL

Well, thanks so much for having me. Pleased to join this esteemed panel and you, and thanks to CFR for all of the support and having me today. Before I talk about the situation we’re in right this minute, let me just take a step back first and frame that after the Hamas attack on October 7, President Biden here was quite clear that the U.S. position was going to be supporting Israel in its campaign in Gaza, but setting the theater and using diplomacy and other tools to prevent the full-scale regional war.

And what we’ve seen since October 7 is while the IDF, the Israel Defense Forces, have worked to militarily dismantle Hamas in Gaza, they have also faced pressure on multiple other fronts. So of course, the one that is very much in the news today is the pressure in Israel’s northern arena, which is Lebanese Hezbollah, which started on October 8 with an increasingly sophisticated weapons and deeper insight Israel level of attacks, which denies Israel the ability to only focus on its military campaign in Gaza.

Then we saw Iran-backed militias and proxies in Iraq and Syria. Both launched drones and missiles toward Israel, but also over 180 attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria, who are there continuing the defeat ISIS mission. And then the Houthis, another Iran-backed proxy group in Yemen, who have both launched a campaign to threaten freedom of navigation and choke off freedom of commercial shipping in the Red Sea, but have also launched a drone attack toward Israel that hit Tel Aviv only a couple weeks ago.

And then finally, of course, we have the Iran direct attack on Israel in mid-April, which was unprecedented. Normally, Iran seeks to impose costs on Israel and the United States through its network of proxies and terrorists. Yet in mid-April we saw a threshold-crossing event, which was Iran launching a full-scale lobby of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and attack drones, violating the airspace of the entire region, all directed at Israel. And also a precedent-setting event was that the United States and Israel were able to work with a coalition of European and Arab allies all together to defend against that attack.

So there’s been different responses to different parts of this morass. What is noteworthy is that, essentially, Iran, to date, has appeared to calculate that while it wants to impose costs on Israel and it wants to pressure Israel and it wants to impose costs on the United States, it seeks to do that below the threshold of full-scale conventional conflict. It appears that Hezbollah, to date, has made the same calculation: maintain pressure but not have the full-scale war. The same thing with the Houthis, and the same thing with the militias in Iraq and Syria.

The big question over the past week: are the events that we’ve seen some miscalculation? Which is Hezbollah launching a rocket into northern Israel at the Majdal Shams town, as you noted, Dan, which resulted in a mass casualty event of innocent kids playing soccer that were killed. And we know that everyone perceived that to have crossed a line, because Hezbollah tried to deny it and the White House had to come out and say, “No, this was absolutely an Iran-supplied rocket launched from areas that Hezbollah controls in Lebanon.” And then the question was, how was Israel going to respond to what was clearly a redline that was crossed?

Now, from an Israeli perspective, what they did was target basically the second-in-command in Hezbollah in Beirut. From their perspective, they are managing escalation because it was targeted, it was precise. It was one building, designed to avoid collateral damage, and avoid mass civilian casualties. This is the same playbook as what Israel did to respond after Iran’s unprecedented direct attack in April: targeted, avoiding collateral damage, and avoiding civilian casualties.

And one could argue the same thing with the killing of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran just a few days ago: precise in appearing to target one apartment within a larger complex, avoiding collateral damage, and avoiding civilian casualties. But the regime in Tehran has been publicly humiliated on the same day as the new Iranian president’s inauguration, and it exposes both Hezbollah’s operational security and Iran’s operational security, that they can’t keep their people safe. Hard to see how they don’t respond.

And the question is, does the assumption and the motivations of the past 10 months, which is to respond and incrementally escalate all below that threshold of conventional conflict—does it hold today, or has Iran’s calculus changed? We’re likely to see something similar to April 13. Again, that threshold has been crossed of this direct state-on-state attack. I’m looking for whether or not there’s another direct state-on-state attack. Is it a one-off, or are there multiple rounds? Is a way that Iran signals its displeasure and rejection of Israeli actions to make, this time, a coordinated attack with other proxies? Could it be an Iran attack together with Hezbollah, together with the Houthis, together with the militias in Iraq and Syria? Is it only directed at Israel, or is it also directed at U.S. forces? Is there collateral damage and civilian casualties or is it more military targets, which is probably what Israel perceived itself to be targeting?

Those are the questions I’m looking for. And based on decisions that are coming out of Iran in the coming hours and days, I think it will determine whether or not we have that full-scale regional war; or again, we are able to manage it below that threshold of full-scale conventional conflict.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Marc, let me put that same topic to you. I mean, you’ve looked at the regional dimensions of this going back much longer than the last 10 months, but certainly since October 7; that’s been a lot of the focus of your writing. Do you see this changing the regional dynamics at all? And how do you see those escalation risks from that regional perspective?

MARC LYNCH

Thanks, Dan, and thanks, everybody. I think Dana laid this out extremely well, and I agree with her assessment of how both Iran, Hezbollah, and the others have all been trying to stay beneath the threshold of full-scale escalation. But I think the other thing which Dana pointed out, which is really important, is that with each redline that gets passed and overcome, it’s not just that we’re moving to a higher level of conflict. It’s also that uncertainty goes up, and that it’s much easier to misread what the intended signal is of a particular kind of action or provocation or the like. And the steady erosion of the redlines really is quite alarming, because I think that does help to prevent escalation dynamics in the past. And right now, that’s really not there.

The other place you have to be looking at escalation risks is not just in the tit-for-tat between Iran, its proxies, allies, and Israel, but also in what this is doing to the regional temperature. I mean, we all know that Arab regimes are primarily interested in their own survival, and they’ve been very, very attuned to the ways in which their public opinion is extremely upset about what’s been happening in Gaza. And they’re not only looking at the risk of war, they’re also looking at the risk of domestic instability, uprisings, protests, and the like.

And the ironic thing here, or perhaps not ironic, is that the temperature had been going down. I mean, if you compare where things are to where they were, say, three, four months ago, I think most of the key Arab regimes more or less felt like they had weathered the storm and that it had settled into something like an acceptable level of discontent that they typically deal with. And I think one of the things they have to be looking at right now is whether that’s about to change.

And because they’re so focused on those domestic issues—and remember, all of these regimes outside of a few Gulf states are living on the edge. Their economies are disastrous. They’re already about as repressive as they can get. And they really are—this is the summer, it’s hot because of climate change; people are thirsty, they’re hot. It’s really easy for things to spiral out of control in a place like Egypt or Jordan or Iraq or any place else.

So what they’re looking at right now is something where they might be forced to take things which are not what we would expect, based on their rational self-interest. Nobody wants to escalate. Nobody wants war with Israel. No Arab regime wants that. But when they’re faced with the possibility of sudden rolling protests that are in their capitals, you might see them take unexpected actions which could then lead to that misperception, miscalculations; because you don’t understand why Egypt’s doing what it’s doing, Jordan’s doing what it’s doing, and the like. And that’s really what I’m worried about right now, in addition to the rational dynamics that Dana was talking about, the real risk that all it could take is one missile to go the wrong way, and suddenly things can look very, very different.

The other thing is, don’t only look at Gaza and Lebanon. The last thing I want to point out is you’ve got to keep an eye on what’s happening in Jerusalem and the West Bank more broadly, but especially Jerusalem, where Israeli politicians are taking very provocative actions, which are also the type of thing that, in places like Jordan and other parts of the Middle East, have traditionally set off large-scale protests. So there’s a lot of tinder that’s smoking right now, independently of the tit-for-tat of escalation.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

A ton to follow up on there, but I want to get Audrey to focus a bit on what these two strikes, one a couple days ago and then the confirmation of the death of a Hamas military leader in Gaza, what this is likely to mean for Hamas going forward, and for the war in Gaza ,specifically. This, in some ways, could be a case study in a future edition of your book. What effect do you expect this to have? Does this get Israel closer to its goal? Does it get everyone closer to the goal of ending the war? How do you expect this to play out?

AUDREY KURTH CRONIN

Yes. Well, actually, as a case study, it probably started 40 years ago because the Israelis have been very much dependent upon targeted killing or assassination, depending on your preferred term, for some years. But let me quickly mention, before I get into the substance, I wanted to express my condolences to you, Ambassador Ross, on the death of Martin Indyk. I know he was a particularly close friend, and it’s a huge loss for all of us. So I’m very sorry for his death a week ago. Condolences to you.

DENNIS ROSS

Thank you, I appreciate that.

AUDREY KURTH CRONIN

So, the question of decapitation and how that plays into a counterterrorism strike—Mr. Netanyahu was addressing Congress a few days ago and he said, “Our fight is your fight.” And so now it appears that the Netanyahu government’s regional war is our regional war. I think it’s alarming the way things are turning. Let’s hope that we have the continuation of some rationality on all sides. I’ve seen terrorist attacks transition into much broader regional wars on more than one occasion. Of course, the most famous is World War I. That’s become almost a trope. But I think that when you use strictly a military response to what is essentially a political attack, and you don’t have a political plan for the long term as to what your theory of victory is or what your theory of success is, this is kind of tit-for-tat getting out of control that is quite common, unfortunately, with state responses to terrorism in their counterterrorism.

So the Israeli targeted killings, as I mentioned before, have been going on for decades, if not actually from the founding of Israel. But had targeted killing been a promising counterterrorism approach, October 7 would never have happened because, of course, the Israelis have had some very high-profile killings; not least the founder of Hamas, [Ahmed] Yassin, in 2004, as well as many other Hamas leaders. So they’ve succeeded now in killing over a hundred leaders. The assassination of Haniyeh leaves them with no one to talk to.

So the other side that I would say greatly alarms me with respect to this development is that it seems to have no emphasis on the fate of the hostages. There doesn’t seem to be a plan, a political avenue through which to get a deal, and getting a deal is the only way to get the hostages back. So the other tragedy I see in all of this is the families of the hostages. It’s quite clear that a Grapes of Wrath–style continued targeted killing, as happened in the aftermath of the 1972 Olympics Munich massacre, is what the policy is. And the difference between taking out all of Hamas’s leaders, including Haniyeh in Iran, and what happened in the aftermath of 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, is that the hostages were dead then.

So I’m quite concerned. I think that continuing with this capturing or killing of the leader, decapitation strategy, which is quite common across many different groups—I’ve studied 457 different terrorist groups—the ones that seem to succeed with decapitation tend to be small, hierarchically structured, characterized by a cult of personality; usually they’re young, less than 10 years old. None of those things describes Hamas. Hamas is a highly networked, older, territorially associated group, very different from any of the groups in any of my case studies that have ended through the use of decapitation strategies. So I find it a shame that our friends, the Israelis, keep trying the same approach. And their stated goal, which is to end Hamas, in my opinion, is getting further and further away.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Thank you, Audrey, for that, as well as for mentioning Martin Indyk, who was a great contributor to Foreign Affairs among many other things. I think everyone in attendance should have gotten a note from me, I hope, earlier, that included, among other things, a really fantastic podcast interview he did a couple months ago, which is still quite worth listening to.

But Dennis, let me go to you. I’m going to wrap two questions into one. First, just your quick sense of the regional risks and whether you share the analysis that others have offered thus far, but also focusing in on Gaza specifically, how you see the prospects for a ceasefire. You, of course, made the case in Foreign Affairs recently that there should be a unilateral Israeli ceasefire; that would be in Israel’s interest in the near term. Things have changed quite a bit since then. Where do you see that negotiation? And what will it take to get that over the line, especially in the wake of what we’ve seen in the last week?

DENNIS ROSS

Well, thanks. Thanks for the easy questions. But there’s, I’d say, two things to start with. One, the greatest single risk right now is the unintended consequences or a failed execution of attacks that one or the other side wants to carry out. I have no doubt—and basically, Dana and Marc’s analysis of the region, I have really very little to quibble with, shockingly.

But the point is, when each side decides that they’re going to signal with the use of force, you always run the risk that you’re going to hit the wrong target. So even if the intention is one way, the execution may produce something not at all intended. That’s what I think we saw on Saturday. Dana put it well. Hezbollah tried to run away from their own attack because they understood this was not the intent, and they feared what the Israeli response was going to be. Israel chose to respond in a way that was designed to still demonstrate, unmistakably, “You crossed a line, we will cross a line. We will attack in Beirut, but we’ll do it in such a targeted, limited way that we’re signaling you what our intent is.”

And the question—and Dana was raising this, and I think Marc was as well. Are we at a point where Iran is going to try to do something that fits that same methodology? The methodology of, “We have no choice because we have been embarrassed, we’ve been humiliated. By the way, our own proxies can’t see us doing nothing in response to this, if we are to retain them as proxies quite the same way.”

So there’s multiple reasons why they want to use that methodology, meaning, “We are making a statement, but we’re doing it in a way where that turns this into maybe a round but not a war.” The question is, how good are their options for being able to do that? Even if they intend to keep it limited, will they hit the targets they intend? From an Israeli standpoint, if there are impacts within Israel, it depends on what’s been hit. It depends if people die. Even highly symbolic targets where there’s very few casualties are likely to, again, produce a kind of response in kind. If I thought this was a science, I would be much more relaxed. I’m not so relaxed, because it’s not a science, and I’m uneasy about the unintended consequences or the poor execution, in a sense, of the operations that they carry out. So that’s where I think there is a risk. So that’s number one.

Number two, in terms of Gaza, one thing that nobody has mentioned—and I say this with a little bit of hesitancy, but I also say it having some appreciation of the psychology of the Prime Minister of Israel and of some in Israel. In a strange way, if you’re going to find a way to end this war—especially since for a long time, Bibi has said, “Total victory.” Now, total victory is a slogan. It’s not an objective. When he was speaking to the Congress, for the first time I actually heard him define it. He said, “We have to dismantle their military capabilities and they can’t be in control of Gaza.”

Now the irony is, that’s actually something that—both those are actually achievable. And they may not be that far from achieving them. But he probably still wants to do this in a way where he has symbolism of, “Look, Israel has reestablished itself. It’s again demonstrated to the region and to the world that it can do the kind of things militarily that nobody else in the region can. This fusion of intelligence and operational capability, nobody can do what we do.” And it’s a way of reestablishing the image of Israeli power.

There is a concern, I know, in Israel, about the fear of the loss of Israeli deterrence—but it’s not just that. It’s a sense that, “Our power was always seen and greatly respected and feared. And because of more than 10 months in Gaza against Hamas, the image of Israeli potency has eroded. So we need to do things that allow us to re-demonstrate that we are who we’ve been. No one can do what we’ve done.”

And in a sense, had they just stopped with the targeted killing of [Fuad] Shukr, my own view is they would’ve already succeeded in that, in combination of what they did in Hodeidah. To carry out an attack 2,000 kilometers away on very short notice, and again with a very interesting kind of operation, that sent a message. And then you’re able to get effectively the number two guy in Hezbollah—a guy who, by the way, from an American standpoint, played a role in 1983 in the killing of 241 Marines. There’s no real concern here, but the Israelis get him in the Hezbollah stronghold. They know where he is very precisely. And as I think Dana said, the combination of both Hezbollah and Iran are going to be completely preoccupied with looking internally. Who penetrated us? Who’s the betrayer? Where are the spies? They’re going to be consumed by a lot of that.

This would have been enough, but I think the Haniyeh brings you back to October 7. It brings you back to the Israeli mindset that, “We’re going to get everybody who, in one way or the other, was responsible for October 7.” If you’re thinking about finding a way to end this, you begin to try to present an imagery of Israel being successful again. And I have a feeling that’s part of what explains this. Haniyeh, they could have gotten at any point. Why now? And doing it in Tehran, it’s: “Look, we can do what nobody else can do.” The problem with it is that if you really want to end the war in Gaza, you really aren’t trying at the same time to trigger a broader war in the region. And I think the Haniyeh move is one that I think creates a risk that, ultimately, I’m not sure the Israelis really want to be absorbing. But I think they’ve, in a sense, opened it up.

I don’t think—and here, I’ll pick up on what Audrey said. If you were interested in getting a hostage deal soon, you would not have done this. This is not something that makes a hostage deal more likely. It makes it less likely. It doesn’t mean you’ll never be able to come back to it, by the way, because in the end, Hamas will make its own calculus. [Yahya] Sinwar will make his own calculus. And he may have some reasons, especially with [Mohammed] Deif gone—he may have some reasons. [There are] 15,000 Israeli troops in Khan Younis right now; can’t be an accident that there’s that many there, unless they think that they’re not that far from getting him. Maybe he has his own reasons to find a way to get a reprieve. But I think the point is in the near term, Iran, Hezbollah will say, “No way, any deals with Israel right now.” And even Hamas for its own reasons, even Sinwar for his own reasons, would probably say, “Wrong time to do a deal.”

So from a hostage standpoint, I would have to say it’s concerning. From the standpoint of winding down the war in Gaza, immediately no deal, but it puts Israel in a position where you approach the hostage issue from a slightly different perspective. The Biden administration’s approach has been based on a strategy that says, “We’ll get a hostage deal. That will produce a pause. That will allow us to take care of the humanitarian situation in a structural way, and it will allow us to do the Saudi normalization deal. That will end the war.” So the ending of the war is derivative of a hostage deal.

You can actually look at it in an entirely reverse manner, where effectively Israel says, “We’ve achieved what we needed to achieve,” the United States commits to doing everything it can to prevent the smuggling or the diversion of reconstruction materials, so Hamas cannot reconstitute itself. And Netanyahu is in a position where he can claim, “We succeeded. Hamas can’t reconstitute itself. It’s not in control of Gaza. There’s now an approach internationally on an inter-administration in Gaza. We are ready now to say we will end the war.” Of course, they have to release the hostages. It’s a way that says, you end the war to get the hostages released, as opposed to, you do a hostage deal to get an end to the war. I wouldn’t discount this as a possibility, especially in this three-month period when the Knesset is out of session and Bibi has less to worry about in terms of whether or not his government could be brought down.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Dana, let me go to you. I guess, starting with that point that Dennis ended on, looking not just at how the war in Gaza ends and all the intended benefits both for hostages and for Palestinian civilians who have been bearing the brunt of much of this in recent months, but also for what happens after then. And your piece, I think, really chillingly warned of what happens even after the war ends, and how many problems start there. What are you worried about as you look to that point, and do you see any progress on the Palestinian side, the Israeli side, the regional side, the U.S. side, in starting to take some of those risks seriously?

DANA STROUL

So first of all, let me just say a few things about the piece I wrote for Foreign Affairs. It’s been very surprising to me, in watching the debate and the planning and the discussions about what a post-conflict recovery and stabilization mission looks like in Gaza, that there isn’t a lot of reflection on the vast experience, and frankly lessons learned and mistakes that the United States has made, that the United Nations has made. And sometimes, if you listened very closely to what Netanyahu said in his address to Congress, he essentially offered a vision that’s the Marshall Plan post–World War II. But there’s been a lot of post-conflict experiences since World War II and the Marshall Plan, and I just don’t think that’s where we’re going to be with respect to Gaza because of how divided the region and the world is, and how isolated Israel is. And this isn’t a question just of an international consensus about what a post-Hamas civilian administration in Gaza should be; Israel gets a veto.

And while I acknowledge what Dennis said to Congress about militarily defeating Hamas and a civilian administration, what Netanyahu also said is deradicalization and demilitarization for Gaza; that’s his vision. Those are probably lovely-sounding words to [many]: “Yeah, that makes sense.” But what does it really mean in implementation?

And here’s where some of my concerns are. So, we know that without immediate planning for a civilian-centric approach in a post-conflict environment, you lose the long war anyway. Even if Israel succeeds in what it has defined as its military objectives, eliminating top Hamas leadership, eliminating and collapsing most of the Hamas battalions across Gaza, and neutralizing the terror tunnels and strategic tunnels under Gaza—if there isn’t an immediate plan for civilians, they’re going to look somewhere else for security.

And it’s already happening on the ground. There’s reports of Hamas shadow governments, of mafia-like business clans that are already offering support. Whoever has the most weapons and the most cigarettes gets to make the decisions at a very local level. And that will take root in such a way that this idea of a deradicalized civilian administration that’s Palestinian-led will be really difficult to get to.

Number two, there is a lot of discussion right now, as Dennis said, about a transitional international mission. And there’s been a lot of reporting about who could be part of that. The United Arab Emirates has actually publicly talked about its willingness to contribute to this mission with certain political conditions. Very difficult to see how Netanyahu and his current governing coalition can get to those conditions to make it acceptable for Arab governments and militaries to participate.

But there’s very basic questions—and frankly, again, the U.S. military learned this the hard way—military policing, law enforcement-centric, delivery of humanitarian aid, is not what we generally train war fighters to do. We train war fighters to shoot and kill, not to protect civilians and facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid. And frankly, the next step after humanitarian aid, which is how to restore communities, get the lights on, get the rubble clear, get the unexploded ordnance out, get kids back in school, basic social services—these are things that we learned the hard way the U.S. military isn’t trained to do, doesn’t have the resources to do, and frankly shouldn’t be in charge of doing.

And in the case of Gaza, this shouldn’t be left to the Israel Defense Forces, the IDF, but there isn’t a lot of planning about what the civilian part of the Israeli government is going to do. We’ve learned the hard way that there haven’t been the right channels with the United Nations humanitarian delivery and NGO community in Gaza. And we have a problem that a lot of the training our Arab partners have done hasn’t been law enforcement, civilian-centric, humanitarian delivery, et cetera. That training should be taking place now. And we’re still talking about the political conditions around such a mission.

And then finally, Netanyahu did talk about a civilian Palestinian administration, but he didn’t say the words, “Palestinian Authority.” And the challenge is there’s just not a better alternative now. And the other part of the conversation that we’re not having right now with Israel, and really in a meaningful way at a regional or international level, is that the Palestinian Authority as it exists today doesn’t really have a lot of legitimacy even for Palestinians in the West Bank.

So if we’re truly talking about a reform effort, or reformed Palestinian Authority, this is a generational effort which will take consistent engagement, consistent pressure, oversight of funding. The United States can’t do it alone. Israel can’t do it alone. There has to be international consensus around it. And the longer this war goes on in Gaza, and especially if we do have a conflagration that escalates, it’s very hard for me to see how there’s international consensus around this long-term commitment that needs to be made both for Gaza and the West Bank, which frankly is in Israel’s long-term enduring security interest.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Audrey, when I take all of that analysis and some of the warnings that came from the study of this specific case, you could say, from Dennis and Dana, and I map it onto your analysis, all of this suggests to me that Hamas, no matter how much success Israel has militarily in Gaza in the coming weeks, that Hamas as an idea that can regenerate and that will garner continued support among Palestinians, whether in political form or as an insurgency, is very likely to be stronger in a few years than it is now. Is that a fair reading of your evidence as you look at this case?

AUDREY KURTH CRONIN

Yes, in a few years. I’m not naive. I’m not saying that there haven’t been a lot of Hamas members who have been killed. But one of the great lost opportunities has been that Israel could have made it very clear that they wanted to support Palestinians civilians. There were lots of opportunities to do that; to allow more aid in, to restore power, to allow fuel to enter, particularly when Hamas cut off the power. And the Israelis didn’t do any of those things. So I think that ultimately, the Israelis would have been better off in separating themselves from what Hamas stands for.

Unfortunately, what’s happened instead is that the Israelis have used overwhelming military repression for reasons that are very understandable. I’m not by any means naive enough or somehow cruel enough to think that the events of October 7 weren’t deeply traumatizing, which they were. But we now have 40,000 [dead] Palestinian civilians—we don’t really know the actual number, but we believe that most of them are women and children. That is a pretty big legacy of this war. And in the West Bank, there’s increased radicalization. It’s not as if you’re going to easily get a strong Palestinian authority in that kind of a context.

Also, any terrorism and counterterrorism contest is all about mobilizing popular opinion. And that popular opinion is not just in Gaza or not just in West Bank, or even not just in Israel, but it’s the international context as well. And I greatly fear that the tremendous suffering and starvation and constant movement of Palestinian civilians trying to find safe places has resonated so deeply with the broader international community, and especially among our younger folks. I think it’s really damaging to Israel’s long term future, and I find it alarming.

I think it’s not just a matter of tit-for-tat when it comes to who’s going to be slightly ahead in this war against Hamas. It’s, what is the future that we are building? What is the future that we are building for the Palestinians, and also for the Israelis? Because remember that whenever you have a major military repression as your counterterrorism policy, one of the side effects throughout history—I could give you eight or 10 different examples—is that it strains the fabric of the state that’s engaged in it, particularly if it’s a democracy. So that absolutely fits the T with Israel.

I very much am concerned about the degree to which there are very large protests among the Israelis, where there is very great daylight between ultraconservatives and those who are more secular, where you’ve got elites and working class who are against each other in Israel. You’ve got a very big disagreement about what the future of a Jewish democracy means.

And I think that’s not at all unconnected to this very long war that most Israelis, according to a poll that just came out in May from the Pew Charitable Trusts, are greatly worried is going to continue to go on and on for a long time beyond what they can stand. Think about all the people who are displaced from the north. They’re living in hotel rooms. Some people are leaving Israel. This is a much bigger question than just which military is going to prevail. It’s what is the future of Israel and its Palestinian territories. And I don’t know what that answer is, and I don’t see a clear answer coming out of this government. I would like to see it, but I’m afraid that I couldn’t see it.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

That perfectly tees up my question to Marc. I mean, so much of what Dana laid out in terms of what a viable path forward on the ground in Gaza would look like, and also what Dennis laid out in terms of regional normalization and some kind of broader regional progress flowing from the disasters of the last 10 months, depends on civilian Palestinian authority, some kind of Palestinian political process, then also a real pathway toward a two-state solution. Both those things seem still fairly far off. You have been skeptical that either of those has been possible. This even goes back before October 7. What is the cause for that skepticism? And do you see any arguments, any counterarguments, that would change the equation in a meaningful way?

MARC LYNCH

No, that’s a great question. And the big problem with a lot of the plans going forward in Gaza—many of which are logical, they make a lot of sense in many ways—but at the end of the day, again and again, they depend on the Israeli government doing things which the Israeli government absolutely is not going to do. And in fact, the Israeli government is almost always going to do the opposite.

And so Audrey, for example, is completely right that the way to separate Hamas from the people of Gaza would have been to not massacre the people of Gaza. And the sheer scale and scope of the humanitarian devastation in Gaza is something that we often have just as a footnote as we engage in the strategic analysis. But in your question about regional normalization and in terms of what kind of future is going to go forward, that weighs extremely heavily on the way everybody thinks about what kind of future is possible.

So trying to imagine what kind of civilian administration might emerge in Gaza as they’re looking around at 80 percent of the infrastructure destroyed, 100 percent of the population displaced, 50,000 people dead. That’s just a guess, because they stopped counting, and they can’t get out of the rubble. Basically, nobody is going to be able to put a face onto this and survive politically in a Palestinian context.

And even I would say that the Arab states that everyone is counting on to finance and fund reconstruction, again, I don’t think that many of them have particular scruples about any of this. They clearly want to cooperate with Israel. They want to be part of the American regional order. But it’s very, very difficult for them to do so when their people are as upset as they are—as they rightly are—about the scale and magnitude of the killing that they see.

And so again, when we talk about things like a path forward or civil administrations in Gaza or trying to find some path towards a Palestine that is going to be able to live side by side with Israel and a two-state solution, it really goes against almost everything we’re seeing on the ground, which is in the West Bank and in Jerusalem, as I said before, you’re seeing the radical wing of the settlers running amok with the support of the Israeli state. You’re seeing the large-scale confiscation of territory. You’re seeing the breakdown of redlines in the administration of Jerusalem and the Old City.

And basically, what you’re seeing is everything is going in the opposite direction of what we would need to be seeing if we wanted to have any kind of hopeful idea that out of this emerges a two-state solution. I see absolutely nothing to make anybody believe that Israel wants to go from here, or has any intention of going from here, toward anything that looks like a two-state solution. And if your path forward is dependent upon those things, then that’s not a path forward.

And so I think that’s the real crux of the problem that we face right now. And I think that October 7 and the devastation of Gaza has magnified many of those problems; but as everyone knows, it didn’t create them. This has been going on for quite a long time. But everything which has happened in Israel’s prosecution of the war on Gaza has basically ramped up all of those factors by a factor of a thousand. And I just don’t think you can then say, “Okay, the war is over. Netanyahu declares victory, and now we can get on with the business of the UAE rebuilding Gaza.” There’s a lot more that is going to be weighing on us for a very long time as people come to grips with the magnitude of what has been done to Gaza.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Dennis, let me close this round with you. You see at least some cause for a more optimistic scenario. What would get us there? And maybe I’ll ask you to focus a little bit on the Israeli political dimension. What in the current dynamics of Israeli politics suggests that that would be possible?

DENNIS ROSS

First of all, I would say I’m congenitally geared toward saying, “All right, rather than accepting that nothing can be done, I’m looking for what actually can be done.” We can easily despair, because you look at circumstances and they produce that. But if we despair and decide nothing can be done, then we create a self-fulfilling prophecy. So I start with the premise of, as hard as this is, what is it that we can be looking at that gives us something to work with?

Before I get to the Israelis, I just want to say on the Arab side, there is something quite interesting about, I think, what the mood certainly of the Gulf states is at this point. One thing they learned is that you can’t ignore the Palestinian issue. If you go—I would say in the last five to 10 years, when I would go to the Gulf, I would frequently find myself explaining to them why they should care about the Palestinian issue: “This is not altruism. This is not an issue that you can ignore and it’s just going to disappear. At some point, it will blow up in your face and you won’t be able—and you’ll have to deal with it.” So I would say one thing that is interesting right now is they know you can’t ignore it. Now, it doesn’t mean they all have the same prescription for what to do about it, but they now know you can’t ignore it.

And I look at—as an example of that, you look at the Emiratis. They are much more active on the ground than anybody knows. They have a hospital ship, they have a field hospital on the ground. They have four bakeries that are feeding half a million people a day. They are on the ground. They are ready to invest in a way that’s quite serious. Part of that is because they want to validate the Abraham Accords. Doesn’t matter exactly what the motivation is, but it exists.

In the case of the Saudis, the Saudis clearly still want to do the normalization deal. Why? Not because of normalization with Israel; because they want a defense treaty with the United States, because that ties to what they see as their most important priority: the internal transformation of Saudi Arabia, creating the security that guarantees they won’t be threatened by Iran in a way that could disrupt that or threaten that. But that’s their priority. And what they’re saying now—and I spent plenty of time talking to them—they require something on the Palestinians that was not the case before.

Now, if Bibi wants a legacy that is not October 7, he will have to make some fundamental decisions that will not allow this government as it is to endure. Now, some might argue, well, he’s made it clear that political survival is more important than that. But I wouldn’t discount the possibility that he might yet have an interest in that, number one.

Number two, I would also say we need to understand some of the changes that are coming in Israel. I would flag for you, the Supreme Court made a decision, nine to zero, that the Haredi, the ultrareligious, have to be drafted. Now, 78 percent of the Israeli public supported that decision. Of the nine Supreme Court justices, three are observant, religiously observant. They wear kippah. They’re conservative. Seventy-eight percent of the Israeli public supported this decision. Now that, in time, is going to have an impact on the Likud, because basically you cannot be on the wrong side of that issue. It’s going to express itself politically.

There still is going to be a political reckoning in Israel for October 7. I tell everybody, if you go to Israel, the one thing you discover, it’s still October 7. And why is it still October 7? First, because you see the pictures of the hostages everywhere. Second, because there’s never really been an explanation for why the Israeli military was so slow to react on October 7. And third, there’s been no accountability. The worst day in Israel’s history by far—no accountability in the military, no accountability politically.

It will come. It’s a matter of time. You’re going to get a different Israeli government at a certain point. And there’s going to have to be an understanding that, look, the idea that you can freeze the situation and the Palestinians can be in this inferior position and they’re simply going to accept it—it ignores reality. And there’s going to have to be a debate. And I can’t predict how soon exactly, but the reckoning is going to come, the debate is going to come. And into this mix, you have this possibility of a Saudi deal.

Think about the Biden administration. President Biden now is not running for reelection. He’s making it clear his priority, the last almost six months of this administration is going to be ending the war and trying to create a very different political track or trajectory for the Middle East. So this administration, I think in many ways, is freer than it’s been before to do things that it hasn’t been prepared to do up until now.

And that tells me if you can bring an end to the war, and I think—as I said, there’s two different ways to approach it: hostage deal, which is going to be a little bit more distant now; or ending the war and playing on what ultimately may be in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s own interest. And he has this three-month window. Am I predicting for sure I know what he’s going to do? No way. But I do see a combination of circumstances here that are different than they were before, and they give us something to work with, and it also gives this administration a pretty strong incentive.

One of the things I can tell you that they’re saying within the administration, this area, this foreign policy is going to be where we’re going to have a legacy. And this is what the president has identified is his priority. So as someone who always tries to look at, “Okay, here’s where I am, what are the new conditions or circumstances that exist that give me something to work with?” I focus on that, and then I figure out what I can try to do. And with all the daunting challenges, that’s not a reason to give up and sort of say there’s nothing to be done.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Thank you, Audrey; thank you, Marc; thank you, Dennis; and thank you, Dana, for joining us on quite a day to be discussing these issues. Thanks for your contributions to Foreign Affairs. I think there will be more from all of you coming in the weeks ahead, so we will continue to grapple with these. But for now, thanks so much, and we’ll look forward to doing this again at some point.