Law, Power, and Justice

Friday 3 November 2023

• Blinken (headed to Israel) is expected to urge “humanitarian pauses” in Hamas war.
• The humanitarian situation in Gaza increasingly deteriorates.
• Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, will give a speech which is hoped to give indications about whether Hezbollah intends to escalate the war.  Reports are that the speech (now having occurred) represented Hezbollah “blinking.”
• Hezbollah is committed to the destruction of Israel.
• Ghazi Hamad, a member of Hamas’ political bureau, championed the October 7 attacks on Israeli civilians.  He promised future assaults with the goal of annihilating Israel.  “…there will be a second, a third, a fourth” he told a Lebanese television channel aired on October 24, 2023 and was later put online.
• Yesterday it seemed the Israeli government was warning its citizens that the invasion of the Gaza Strip would proceed more slowly than initially indicated.
• More foreigners were allowed to evacuate from Gaza to Egypt.  Included in the number were aid workers and critically wounded patients.
• There are surging attacks in the West Bank by Israeli forces and settlers on Palestinians. 
• In her book, “How Terrorism Ends,” Audrey Kurth Cronin examined 460 terrorist groups to see  what caused their collapse.  Rarely did pure repression work and requires an “unthinkable level of sustained and indiscriminate violence.”  Democracies are not particularly good at this pure repression.  There must be a “political outreach” to demonstrate to the Palestinians that Israel is a reliable partner and that there is a peaceful way to a better life.  (Note: Really?)  Hamas is antisemitic and dedicated to wiping Israel off the map.   
• Regime change in Gaza is unlikely to be successful.  While many Palestinians have problems with Hamas, few view Israel as anything but pure evil.
• Hamas was trying to provoke an “overreaction.”

Voices

• “Two things are true: Israel must do something, and what it’s doing now is indefensible.”  Zack Beauchamp, Correspondent Vox.
• “We are fighting human animals, and we act accordingly.”  Defense Minister Yoav Gaillant.
• “If you’re going to become the monster you fight, what’s the point of fighting the monster?”  Bradley Strawser, former US Air Force captain.
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ISRAEL

• Daniel Kurtzer, Former US Ambassador to Israel and Egypt. CNN. There are concerns that the war will spill over to other countries.  Jordan has withdrawn an ambassador from Israel.  Diplomatic time is running out for Israel.  Article in Foreign Relations.  Little attention being paid to what happens after the attack.  The reconstruction of Gaza, will get us back to the status quo, nothing more.  Even if Israel deals Hamas a severe blow, it does no solve the problem.  West Bank, ministers punishing the PA by withholding funds,
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• Leader of Hezbollah to speak for first time since attack.  (Note: The speech was ambiguous but praised the Gaza attack.
• Slotkin, MSNBC, is cautioning an “end-game”  don’t create more terrorists. 
• There is beginning to be a discussion of the survivability of the Netanyahu government. 

“What Israel Should Do Now.”

https://www.vox.com/2023/10/20/23919946/israel-hamas-war-gaza-palestine-ground-invasion-strategy

• Under Netanyahu, the repeated bombing of Gaza as a plan (“mowing the grass), basically left the foundations of Hamas rule in place, even at times propping them up to “maintain the status quo of a divided Palestinian leadership that closed off the possibility of a two-state solution.
• There was, then, a long standing “false security” on the Israel-Gaza border.  Military force alone will not provide security. 
• Israel must change its approach to the West Bank.  The Palestinian Authority (PA) and the moderate Fatah party is “sclerotic, corrupt, and authoritarian.”
• Increasingly the two are seen as quisling governments, leading to calls for Mahmoud Abbas to resign.
• Under Netanyahu, Israeli settlements have expanded and the violence of settlers increased. 
• Current Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich maintains the notion that Israel can eliminate Palestinian resistance by destroying the hope for a state.  In a 2017 paper, he wrote: “Terrorism derives from hope – a hope to weaken us.”
• The effect runs in the other direction.  The more Israel represses Palestinians, the weaker its moderate leadership becomes.  Smotrich’s approach has failed morally and also strategically.  “Smotrich’s approach has not only failed morally, but it has failed strategically: the single worst terrorist attack in Israeli history happened under his watch, as he used his powers to implement his desired policy in the West Bank.”
• “To actually stop terrorism, Israel needs to reverse moves toward de facto annexation of the West Bank. It needs to cease settlement expansion, take steps to improve the West Bank economy, crack down on settler violence, and scale back the network of checkpoints that currently make life extremely difficult for ordinary West Bank citizens.”
• “After the Second Intifada and Hamas takeover of Gaza in the 2000s discredited the peace camp, the Israeli polity seemed to be shifting ever-rightward. Political scientists found that terrorist attacks specifically played a major role in increasing support for right-wing parties.”
• And even though you would think the October terrorist attack would have moved public opinion rightward, the reverse has happened.  Polls demonstrate that elections now would see Netanyahu’s Likud party losing 40 percent of its seats in parliament and the governing majority.  People see that the government fore either “great” or “very great” responsibility for the attack.
• A centrist government would be far more likely to unwind the right-wing policies that got us where we are.
• “There is, in short, a chance that the right’s utter failure to provide for Israeli security creates an opening for a new political approach: one premised not on repressing the Palestinians through sheer might, but by fighting terrorism and building up a peaceful Palestinian alternative at the same time.”
• “…ordinary Israelis, thankfully, do not appear to be acting like Americans did after 9/11: they have shown themselves remarkably willing to criticize their own government’s approach and blame it for allowing the catastrophic Hamas violence to happen. They should hold on to this instinct: followed to its logical conclusion, it might actually lead to a better future for Israelis and Palestinians alike.”