A perfect storm of destabilizing ingredients, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the center, threatens a further near-term escalation of violence growing out of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Palestinians will constitute most of the immediate victims, as they have so often in the past, but will not be the only targets.
Given the nature of the U.S.-Israeli relationship, U.S. interests may be affected in multiple ways.
Escalation of the conflict already was underway months ago. The 144 Palestinians that Israeli forces killed in the West Bank (not counting East Jerusalem) in 2022 were the most since 2004. About 30 Israelis died at the hands of Palestinians during the same period, the most since 2007.
The latest burst of violence this month began with an Israeli raid at the Al-Aqsa mosque, part of the religiously revered site that Muslims call the Noble Sanctuary and Jews call the Temple Mount. A crowd of Muslim worshippers was at the mosque, as is their right under a longstanding international understanding regarding use of the site, which is administered by a Jordanian religious authority. Israeli leaders must have anticipated a violent reaction to the raid, which injured dozens, and it is plausible that provoking such a response was the purpose of the raid.
The response included a rocket barrage from Lebanon, which Israel blamed on Hamas — whose political leader Ismail Haniyeh was meeting at the time with leaders of Lebanese Hezbollah. The Israeli counter-response included airstrikes against targets in both Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.
Some commentary has described the Israeli strikes as relatively restrained as Israeli aerial assaults go, perhaps suggesting a desire not to escalate armed conflict even further. But the storm remains. Its ingredients are domestic, international, and even theological.
A prime ingredient is Netanyahu’s precarious domestic political position. After being ousted by a diverse coalition whose only point of agreement was a desire to remove Netanyahu from the prime minister’s office, Netanyahu’s sole path back to that office was to ally with the extreme settler/religious right. Much of Netanyahu’s political predicament is related to the prospective prosecution he faces for corruption.
The current political turmoil in Israel, including huge popular protests, has centered on the plan of Netanyahu’s far-right coalition to emasculate the judiciary. To buy some breathing space amid the protests, Netanyahu announced a delay in the changes to the judiciary. Part of the price he paid to get that space was to give one of the leading extremists in his government, Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, the “national guard” that Ben-Gvir wanted to create. Ben-Gvir’s own statements feed understandable fears that such a force would function as a personal anti-Arab militia.
Palestinian perceptions of all this do not nudge Palestinians toward moderation and patience, but instead the opposite. Ever since the current far-right Israeli government was formed four months ago, Palestinian political rights and self-determination appear more out of reach than ever.
The popular protests against that government do not raise Palestinian hopes for beneficial peaceful change and may only dissipate them further. In the short term are threats such as Ben-Gvir’s militia. A broader, disturbing realization is that the street demonstrations involve a quarrel among Israeli Jews in which it is clear that the “democracy” that most demonstrators say the government’s judicial plan threatens does not include democracy for Palestinian Arabs. It is hard for Palestinians to perceive friends even among self-declared Israeli moderates. The ingredients are present for more Palestinians than ever to see no feasible alternative to violent resistance.
As if these ingredients were not enough, this year there has seen the coincidence of Passover and Ramadan. The latter holy month had much to do with the size of the crowd at Al-Aqsa at the time of the Israeli raid. On the other side, Ben-Gvir encouraged Jewish crowds to go to the Temple Mount during Passover, although at least he did not endorse the objective of the religious zealots who wanted to observe Passover by slaughtering a lamb or goat there.
External ingredients are contributing to the storm, with foreign conflicts related to domestic ones. One of the most significant regional developments in recent months has been the Chinese-sponsored rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia. This was a positive development for everyone’s interests except those of the Israeli right and especially Netanyahu, who has made eternal hostility toward, and isolation of, Iran a centerpiece of his strategy both foreign and domestic. That strategy serves to divert international attention from Israel’s own behavior and to help Netanyahu present himself to his domestic constituency as a defender of Israeli security against foreign threats. Now he probably sees a need to shore up both elements of that strategy.
A further regional backdrop is the continued acceleration of Iran’s nuclear program — a direct result of former president Donald Trump’s foolish reneging, cheered on by Netanyahu during an earlier term in office, on the multilateral agreement that had closed all paths to a possible Iranian nuclear weapon. Now the danger of Israel initiating a military conflict with Iran is back under discussion.
The United States constitutes another external ingredient in the storm, if only in the negative sense of failing to use its leverage to restrain Israel and deter it from destabilizing behavior. Although the Biden administration has not gone to the extreme that Trump did in wholesale subordination of U.S. interests to Israeli wishes, President Biden is following in the longstanding bipartisan tradition of posing as “pro-Israel” and abstaining from use of the leverage that inheres in the extraordinary economic and diplomatic support that the United States has long provided to Israel. Biden made clear from the outset of his administration that he did not intend to spend political capital in doing anything about the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The resulting nature of the U.S.-Israeli relationship, essentially unchanged from the past, was illustrated when Biden, while reaffirming that he is a “strong supporter of Israel,” rather gently but publicly called for Netanyahu’s government to shelve the controversial plan regarding the judiciary. The Israeli government’s response was summed up by Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli when he said, “Mind your own business.”
Chikli was responding directly to comments by U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides, who, echoing President Biden, had urged Israel to “pump the brakes” on the judicial overhaul plan. But when it comes to issues of war and peace, Nides, far from calling on Netanyahu’s government to pump any brakes, instead sounds like he has given Israel a green light to attack Iran. “Israel can and should do whatever they need to deal with and we’ve got their back,” said Nides.
The biggest questions of the moment come back to Netanyahu, and to an age-old connection — long recognized and exploited by leaders of many countries — between domestic political problems and conflict with external enemies. Such conflict, contrived if necessary, can help rescue a leader from the political problems by creating a rally-round-the-flag effect and by distracting attention from the causes of those problems.
Netanyahu has been a master of this technique, and with his current predicament — probably the most difficult he has ever faced — and with an undiminished desire to stay in power (not least of all to use that power to find a way out of the corruption charges), he has at least as much incentive as he ever has to use the technique.
This means initiating or provoking armed conflict with the Palestinians, Iran, Iran’s ally Hezbollah, or any combination of them. Regarding Palestinians, it may mean more Israeli actions like the raid at the Al-Aqsa mosque, including ever more provocative moves if previous ones fail to generate escalation.
Regarding Iran, it might not mean a direct surprise attack but perhaps an escalation of the continued Israeli aerial assault on Iran-related targets in Syria, with the intention of this leading to further escalation. Here is where Russia’s war in Ukraine could be added to the list of external ingredients that indirectly affect the storm in the Middle East. Israel and Russia have had an understanding whereby the latter does not interfere with the former’s airstrikes in Syria. With Russia’s difficulties in Ukraine and its interest in Israel not increasing its lukewarm support for Ukraine, Moscow is unlikely to stiffen the terms of that understanding, and Israeli warplanes can escalate their bombing.
President Biden, like some of his predecessors, has wanted to pivot U.S. attention away from the Middle East. This is not happening, and not only because of the geopolitical connections between that region and points farther east. It also is because of interests in the Middle East, including ones to which the United States has tied itself, that favor perpetuation of some conflicts or a refusal to try to resolve them. Prominent among these is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which, despite talk about “shrinking” it, not only refuses to shrink but can indirectly lead to violence in other arenas such as Iran.
A drain on policy attention is the most immediate but by no means the only negative consequence for U.S. interests. Any armed clash with Iran would increase the incentive for Iran to develop a nuclear weapon and decrease the chance of foreclosing that possibility through diplomacy. With any escalated armed conflict between Israel and Palestinians, the United States will share in international opprobrium directed at Israel because of the unwavering support and cover the United States has provided Israel. That same relationship carries a risk of the United States being dragged directly into escalated armed conflicts, such as with Iran.
If U.S. policy options in the region seem limited today, this is because of the Manichean tendencies of several administrations that have divided the region into good guys and bad, with unconditional backing to the former and inflexible hostility toward the latter. Those who have been given reason to take U.S. support for granted can feel comfortable blowing off the United States on the few occasions when the United States becomes a critic. If the Israeli government tells the United States to “mind your own business” when Washington makes a sensible suggestion about independent judiciaries, it is because the United States has failed to mind its own business on matters such as use of its veto power at the United Nations.