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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The writer is author of ‘Black Wave’ and distinguished fellow at Columbia University’s Institute of Global Politics
The second stage of Israel’s war against Hamas brings with it more devastation and death for Palestinians in Gaza, immense peril for the remaining Israeli hostages and a moment of renewed danger for the wider Middle East.
Israel has warned the war could take another year. Minister of defence Yoav Gallant spoke of months — to which the US secretary of state Antony Blinken reportedly retorted: “I don’t think you have the credit for that.” Neither does the Biden administration.
US officials, including vice-president Kamala Harris at COP28, have been speaking about the day after the war in Gaza and, even more optimistically, about the day after that, which President Joe Biden said would involve a “concentrated effort to put us back on the path towards peace,” and a two-state solution. Those words, first spoken at the end of October, just as the Israeli army was beginning its ground offensive, are hard to fathom today, juxtaposed with a Gaza Strip in ruins and thousands of deaths.
More worryingly, as the rhythm of war sets in, entering a third month, the many regional flashpoints are at risk of heating up. These are in two different categories: the first driven directly by the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, with fears of an uprising in the occupied West Bank. Israeli settler violence against Palestinians is on the rise and tensions are high in East Jerusalem.
This week, the State Department announced visa bans on anyone engaging in violence in the occupied West Bank. While the Biden administration has made clear it will not permit the forced relocation of Palestinians from Gaza, US officials remain concerned about this scenario as Israel’s military operation pushes Palestinians further south towards the border with Egypt.
The second parallel category is driven by Iran’s need to maintain its credibility as a self-professed defender of the Palestinians — Tehran did not rush to openly help Hamas on October 7 or since — while simultaneously making itself heard by the US, at an inflection point for the region. No one wants a full escalation but the dangers are growing.
Iran’s proxies across the region have upped the pressure. American troops in Iraq and Syria faced more than 76 attacks since mid-October. Yemen’s Houthis have launched missiles at Israel and attacked commercial vessels in the Red Sea. The US has struck back, walking a fine line between deterrence and raising alarm in Tehran about a wider strike.
The most urgent flashpoint is the Lebanon-Israel border, where there have been ongoing clashes since October 7. Towns on both sides of the border have emptied. Though at least 90 of its fighters have been killed, Hizbollah is doing the bare minimum to show support for Hamas. That’s still more than Israel can bear for much longer.
Washington has already dissuaded Israel from carrying out a pre-emptive strike against Hizbollah. US officials, including secretary of defence Lloyd Austin, make frequent public appeals for calm. With no military success yet in Gaza, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, may want to divert attention. American and French diplomats have travelled to Lebanon and Israel to push for a diplomatic off-ramp, including the application of the 2006 UN resolution 1701 which stipulates, among other things, that only the Lebanese army and UN troops should have a presence along the border.
A sudden escalation is still possible on all these fronts. However, a slow metastasising of the violence over months across the region, including a possible Hamas insurgency against Israeli troops in Gaza, is a more likely, but no less concerning scenario.
Diplomats are rightly focused on the geopolitics and the fate of those directly affected. Just as important is the swell of sentiment rippling out. The suffering in Gaza is already beyond the limits of what is tolerable. On Wednesday, the UN secretary-general António Guterres warned of a “catastrophe with potentially irreversible implications for Palestinians as a whole and for peace and security in the region”.
Fury and fear are pulsating through both Israeli and Palestinian societies. Globally, a new generation on both sides of the divide is reconnecting with the viscerally intense feelings this conflict awakens. There are also many powerful voices speaking out in support for peace, more than we’ve heard in years — but they may be drowned out by the extremes.
The longer the war goes on, the harder it will become to utter the word “peace”. Even in the absence of a large-scale escalation, what was possible a month ago may not be possible a month from now.