Middle East Conflicts

This week we talk about Operation Iron Swords, October 7, and the International Court of Justice.

We also discuss human rights abuses, the Red Sea, and Iran’s influence.

Recommended Book: Empire Games by Charles Stross

Transcript

In the early morning of October 7, 2023, the militant wing of Hamas—which is also a political organization that has governed the Gaza Strip territory since 2007, a few years after Israel withdrew from the area and then blockaded it, leading to accusations from international human rights organizations that Israel still occupies the area, even if not officially—but the militant wing of this Sunni Islamist group, Hamas, launched a sneak-attack, in coordination with other islamist groups (a term that in this context usually but not always refers to groups that want to claim territory they can govern in accordance with what they consider to be proper Islamic fashion, usually defined by a fairly extreme interpretation of the religion).

This sneak-attack was successful in the sense that it caught seemingly everyone off guard, despite the Israeli military's foreknowledge of this possibility; that foreknowledge only becoming public months after the attack, and the possibility of such an attack dismissed by those who could have prepared for it because it seemed to them to be a sort of pie-in-the-sky aspiration on the part of a group that was disempowered and incapable of putting up any kind of fight beyond periodically launching unsophisticated rockets that could be easily taken out by Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile defense system.

So for more than a year the Israeli government had information indicating Hamas was planning some kind of incursion into Israel, but they dismissed it, and by some accounts they had every reason to do so, as Hamas had seemed to be more chill than usual, pulling back on the overt military activity and lacking sufficient support from the Gaza population to attempt even a tenth of what they had blueprinted.

Three months before the attack an Israeli signals intelligence analyst raised a red flag on this issue, indicating that Hamas was conducting intense training exercises that seemed to be in line with those pie-in-the-sky plans, but this flag was ignored by those higher up the chain of command, once again.

Consequently, when Hamas launched a huge flurry of rockets, around 3,000 by most estimates, sent drones to take out automated machine guns and cameras placed along the border fences between Israel and Gaza, and sent militants through holes in the fence, in on motorcycles, and over barriers using paragliders, Israeli defense forces were caught flat-footed, taking a surprisingly long time to respond to the incursion and failing to protect a military base that housed the defense division responsible for security in Gaza, alongside several other bases, and the around 1,200 people who were killed and around 250 who were taken hostage.

Dozens of nations immediately decried Hamas's attack as a terrorist act, many of Israel's neighbors made noises about not liking it, but then blamed Israel's long-standing alleged occupation of Gaza and the West Bank for the attack, and attempts to shore-up defenses, clear out lingering Hamas fighters, and tally the dead and missing began; the numbers and the experiences of those involved were all pretty horrifying.

Israel's response, a plan that was designated Operation Iron Swords, arrived alongside a state of emergency for the portions of Israel within about 50 miles or 80 km of its border with Gaza, and the country's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that the country was at war with Hamas and would destroy them and anyone else who dared to join them.

The nation's defense forces were also ordered to shore up its other borders to prevent anyone else from joining on in attacking Israel at a moment in which it might be seen as weak.

In the just over 100 days—108 as of the day this episode goes live—everything has changed or been amplified in the Middle East as a consequence of this conflict.

Most immediately, the Gaza Strip has been turned into a wasteland by Israel's counterattack, which involved heavy bombardment of what the Israeli military said were confirmed and potential Hamas hideouts, but which included countless civilian homes and businesses and other bits of infrastructure, and Gaza's population has been herded into public spaces and makeshift tents, the majority of them down at the southern end of the territory where Israel told them they would be safe, but which has since, itself, also come under bombardment and ground assault.

Something like 25,000 Gazan residents have been confirmed dead by the Palestinian Ministry of Health, 70% of them women and children, around 8,000 more have been reported missing, and around 61,000 have been officially tallied as injured since the counterattack began.

Israel has been accused of all sorts of human rights abuses because of this counterattack, has lost a fair bit of the support it garnered in the early days after Hamas' sneak attack against them, and Netanyahu has faced heightened challenges to his leadership, from outside entities, but also from Israeli civilians and service people who question his motivations for maintaining the offensive stance that he's still maintaining, and by those who question the logic of how that stance is playing out, strategically.

What I'd like to talk about today is the bigger picture in the Middle East, and what we might expect to happen in the region, next.

—

The general state of play, as of the day I'm recording this at least, and this is a big collection of fast-moving interconnected stories, so this is all prone to change and quickly, but the big-picture layout right now is this:

Israel is run by Prime Minister Netanyahu who is in the midst of a corruption trial and is facing opposition for his response to Hamas' attack and his alleged human rights-violating flattening of Gaza and treatment of Gaza-residing Palestinians, and that pushback is coming from Israeli citizens, from within Israel's defense leadership structure, and from a growing number of the country's allies.

Israel's biggest and generally most supportive ally, the US, has been sending all sorts of support and throwing out vetoes in Israel's favor, as well, when international bodies have tried to hold them accountable for some of those alleged human rights violations, and when they've tried to push for official ceasefires, but there are reports that the Biden administration is reaching the end of its rope on this, and that's partially because much of the world is not a fan of how brutal this response has been and how badly Gazans have been treated, but also, reportedly at least, because this is not good for Biden's reelection potential in November, as young people in the United States have largely sided with the Palestinians rather than what they perceive to be the bigger, badder, abusive aggressor—the Israeli military.

The EU, also a long-time and enthusiastic backer of Israel, most of the countries in the bloc, anyway, has arguably already reached the end of its rope, the bloc's foreign ministers increasing pressure on Israel to consider a two-state solution post-fighting, which would basically mean making a real-deal Palestinian state in the area, rather than two Palestinian Territories run or blockaded by Israel, as Netanyahu has recently said he won't even consider the concept as it would be bad for Israel's long-term national security, but the majority of influential nations that are providing support for Israel are saying, well, you're probably going to need to do this, so let's think this through.

The EU is even calling for consequences for Israel if Netanyahu continues to oppose a two-state solution, the idea being that his stance on the matter is fanning the flames of violence, and will continue to stoke them long-term, so some new state of affairs is necessary to change the existing, incredibly tumultuous status quo.

The UN is even more pointed on this matter than the EU, those three groups—again, nations and organizations that are typically on Israel's side with pretty much everything—becoming publicly pissed off at Netanyahu's apparent slow-walking of this counterattack, his standing in the way of any kind of long-term ceasefire or peace-making, and his increasingly extremist, nationalist language when it comes to the possibility of a Palestinian state at some point in the future.

Chinese leadership have also said they think Israel should stop punishing Palestinians in their hunt for Hamas militants and leaders, South Africa brought a case against Israel to the international Court of Justice, alleging genocide—and while this case was originally seen as a bit of a headline-grabbing sideshow and still has some staunch opponents, it's gathering more and more support, especially from other African nations, including those that have seen genocidal and genocide-like massacres at some point in their past.

Chile and Mexico, in recent days, have also asked the ICJ to investigate possible war crimes committed by Israeli forces against civilians in Gaza.

Maybe the most important responses here, though, from Israel's Muslim majority neighbors, have been universally negative—and this is in the context of a period of pseudo-normalization of these nations' relationship with Israel, a lot of negotiating and deal-making leading to a flurry of announcements that seemed primed to set the area up for a period of peace and prosperity—former opponents suddenly dealing with each other peaceably instead of lobbing munitions at and threatening each other pretty much continuously.

Instead, what we see now is Egypt worrying that Israel is trying to push Gazan civilian across their shared border, Saudi Arabia warning of potential long-term consequences from Israel's invasion of the Strip, the Hezbollah government and military in Lebanon increasing the intensity of its fighting with Israeli forces across their shared border in the north, an increase in the tempo of fighting between Israeli assets and Iran-linked assets in Syria, and a huge new push by the Houthis, a group that's been engaged in a long-term civil war with the Saudi-backed government in Yemen, to fire at and take hostage the crews of cargo ships passing through the Red Sea toward the Suez Canal, which has massively disrupted global trade; the Houthis say they're doing this in support of Gazans, demanding the Israelis pull out of the strip or they'll keep it up, though they've been doing this kind of pirating for a long while now, if not at this volume, so the degree to which they're just engaging in a rebranding effort for these attacks is up for debate.

The general vibe of escalatory potential, though, is reshaping the region, and that's especially true of Israel's neighbors, like Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan, which have suffered extreme economic damage—by some calculations around $10.3 billion, which is about 2.3% of their total, combined GDP—and that damage is expected to push hundreds of thousands of their citizens into poverty.

This is the result of a dramatic decline in tourism to the area, a drop in oil production and oil market prices, and the confluence of climate-amplified droughts, economic and financial crises, and reverberations from other nearby conflicts like the ongoing fighting in Syria, which, among other things, has turned the Syrian government into one of the world's biggest illicit drug producers and exporters, which is having a hugely detrimental effect on many other nations in the region, in terms of their health outcomes and in terms of heightened and empowered gang activity.

Uncertainty is a big variable, too, though, as investment money is suddenly finding other homes, those controlling these resources not wanting to plant their funds in a region that might soon catch fire, and the potential benefits from all that foreordained normalization, all that potential peace and divided entities suddenly able to do business with each other after a period of separation, has more or less disappeared.

We're also see more military activity on the outskirts of this, the US and its allies launching regular air strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen, which themselves continue to launch strikes against vessels passing through the Red Sea, and Israel has been lashing out at other targets in the region, too, mimicking Iran's attacks on what it's called terrorist groups operating within its neighbor's borders—which has upped the volatility level even further, as one of those Iranian neighbors, Pakistan, is nuclear armed and working through its own collection of instability-inducing variables, at the moment.

There are a lot of entities in this region that are taking this opportunity to bulk-up their reputations with their constituents and allies, doing things that allow them to show strength, and doing those things in such a way that it looks like they're opposing Israel, even when they're not really actually doing that—as is probably the case with the Houthis and some of Iran's efforts—because this framing of their efforts allows them to grab more power, reinforce their existing power, and potentially even team-up, if only loosely, with other regional fellow travelers against the new regional baddy of the moment, an even-more-opposable-than-usual Israel.

This is all a lot! But one thing I think we can fairly confidently say at this point is that Iran seems like it's using this opportunity to expand and flex its influence throughout the region, mostly by using proxy groups, as it tends to do, to annoy and hurt its various enemies, including but not limited to Israel, the US, the West in general, and Saudi Arabia.

We're also seeing cracks in the veneer of unity Israel's government and military have promoted following Hamas' sneak-attack, people in power coming out against the way things have been handled, and folks on the ground maintaining a steady cadence of protests aimed at many facets of how Netanyahu has done things and is continuing to do things, including but not limited to not seeing the sneak-attack coming, not prioritizing rescuing hostages, and arguably pushing the region deeper and deeper into a state of war, rather than looking for ceasefire options.

So there's a chance we could see a change in leadership in Israel soon, whether by election or other means, which would likely then change the reality on the ground throughout the region.

There are also signs, as I mentioned earlier, that the US and other Israel-allied governments have just about reached the point where they'll formally step away from Israel's side on this, and it's unlikely anyone involved wants that to happen, so we could see a grand pivot on this matter, from Israel's side, sometime in the next few weeks.

And there have been still-in-the-background reports that the plan, amongst some US negotiators and their allies, anyway, is to try to promote a normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel as the means by which a new stability in the Middle East could still be reached: Israel's Muslim neighbors helping a new, Palestinian state get off the ground and everyone living together in relative harmony, except for Iran and its allies, which would see their influence substantially reduced by this potential new state of affairs.

It's anyone's guess as to whether this possibility has any legs, as again, this is still a kind of under the radar possibility at this point, and Netanyahu has said with increasing force and clarity that he will not allow a Palestinian state to happen—so who knows, this may be dead in the water before it's even formally proposed and promoted.

So this continues to be a central flashpoint and major variable informing a lot of what's happening in the world right now, which is saying something at a moment in which China is increasingly vocal in its intention to take Taiwan, by force if necessary, in which Russia is still in the midst of an increasingly long-term invasion of Ukraine, and in which a record-number of democratic and pseudo-democratic elections are happening around the world, potentially leading to untold other, non-military upsets, further rearranging the pieces on the board and consequently, maybe, some of those aforementioned alliances and animosities, as well.

Show Notes

https://archive.ph/sJ75U

https://www.euractiv.com/section/global-europe/news/eu-foreign-ministers-to-meet-with-israeli-palestinian-arab-top-diplomats/

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/21/business/economy/israel-gaza-regional-economy.html

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/01/20/world/middleeast/houthi-red-sea-shipping.html

https://www.axios.com/2024/01/21/biden-middle-east-gaza-palestinian-state-israel

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/01/21/world/israel-hamas-gaza-news-iraq

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/u-s-pushes-hostage-release-plan-aimed-at-ending-gaza-war-d48b27e1

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/hamas-toll-thus-far-falls-short-of-israels-war-aims-u-s-says-d1c43164

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/01/20/us-military-yemen-houthis/

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/after-100-days-israel-hamas-war-threatens-to-spill-beyond-gaza-disrupt-global-trade-2d36ab09

https://archive.ph/J0e5W

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/01/21/hamas-attack-october-7-conspiracy-israel/

https://www.nbcnews.com/investigations/hostage-talks-continue-israel-rejects-hamas-demand-full-idf-withdrawal-rcna134975

https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/mexico-chile-international-criminal-court-investigate-crimes-gaza-106495506

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/fierce-fighting-gaza-war-hits-100-days-2024-01-14/

https://www.npr.org/2024/01/14/1224673502/gaza-numbers-100-days-israel-hamas

https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2024/1/14/israels-war-on-gaza-100-days-of-death-and-suffering

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Hamas-led_attack_on_Israel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93Hamas_war

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/30/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-attack-intelligence.html

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