Why Israel Won’t Take the Win
Two big things happened in the Middle East this week—big even by the standards of the past year: 1) Israel finally managed to kill Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the prime mover behind the October 7 attack on Israel. 2) The US finally put boots on the ground in Israel. It sent 100 soldiers, along with a missile defense system they’ll operate in the event of another Iranian ballistic missile attack, which is expected to ensue if Israel follows through with plans to retaliate for the last one.
The first development raised hopes that the second one would prove superfluous—that the expanding Middle East conflict might now be wound down, and those anti-missile missiles might not be needed after all. With the death of Sinwar, wrote Matt Duss of the Center for International Policy in The New York Times, “the United States and its partners have a window to halt the downward spiral to regional conflagration.” The US, he said, should push hard to end the Gaza war, get the hostages released, and forge a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. And “in furtherance of those aims, the Biden administration should also urge Israel to refrain from potentially escalatory strikes on Iran.”
The logic makes sense on paper. The death of Sinwar creates an opportunity for the Israeli government to declare victory in Gaza—and to sell that declaration to the many Israelis who felt that justice wouldn’t be done until the architect of October 7 paid the ultimate price. And Israel’s recent blows against Hezbollah—the killing of its leader and the destruction of much of its arsenal—provide a chance to say mission accomplished on that front, too. And what’s the great urgency about striking Iran? Iran’s regional military strength has been sapped by the decimation of Hezbollah, and Tehran had signaled an aversion to direct conflict with Israel even before that.
Meanwhile, the wave of Israeli euphoria over Sinwar’s death gives Netanyahu fresh political capital, possibly enough to survive a clash with hardliners in his coalition who will press for continued war. So maybe, if Biden finally uses his full leverage as Israel’s arms supplier, he can compellingly argue that, as he put it at an earlier juncture, Netanyahu should “take the win.”
But there’s little chance that much of this will happen, and this week’s second big development—the deployment to Israel of that American anti-missile battery—helps explain why. The deployment symbolizes with particular power the longstanding tendency of America’s Israel policy to create what economists call “moral hazard.” The basic idea is that being shielded from the adverse consequences of your actions can encourage risky behavior.
Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute argued in Zeteo this week that Biden has over the last year repeatedly provided such shields for Israel. Whenever Netanyahu escalates the conflict—by, say, invading Lebanon or bombing Iran’s embassy compound in Syria or assassinating (relatively moderate) Hamas leader Ismael Haniyeh on Iranian territory—Biden “rushes to defend Israel from the consequences of its own escalation,” Parsi writes. The result is to encourage more escalation.
The Biden administration has argued that this “bear hug” approach allows US policymakers to influence, and sometimes restrain, Israel. But evidence for that argument is sparse. As Biden has continued to arm Israel and defend it on the world stage—and has helped it fend off two rounds of missile strikes from Iran—Netanyahu has opted to expand the war. Parsi writes: “Had Biden refrained from adding additional defensive capabilities to Israel after it needlessly intensified the conflict, the cost of escalation would have been higher for Israel—perhaps even prohibitive.”
Biden officials might argue that they pulled off a successful bear hug this week. Media reports suggest that agreeing to send the missile defense system to Israel, along with those 100 troops, played a role in getting Netanyahu to agree that in striking Iran he will avoid particularly sensitive targets, like nuclear facilities and oil refineries.
At least: Those targets won’t be hit this time around. But Netanyahu knows that Tehran will feel compelled to respond forcefully to any powerful Israeli strike, so he can assume there will be a next time. And, with US troops in Israel, he can then feel even more confident than he otherwise would that America will help him deal with blowback from a strike on Iran’s refineries or nuclear facilities. Moral hazard.
The US, Parsi argues, has strong incentives to change course. One is that Iranian missiles could kill US soldiers. If that happens, America could find itself drawn deeply into an intensifying and expanding war. (Of course, from Netanyahu’s perspective, direct American involvement is a feature, not a bug. And note that it could further heighten moral hazard.)
Another incentive for the US to abandon the bear hug strategy, writes Parsi, is the impact the conflict is having on America’s global standing. While the Biden administration says it’s building a global system in which international law carries weight and “universal human rights are respected,” its closest ally is prosecuting a war that, in the eyes of much of the world, violates those principles.
Of course, Israel’s global standing, too, has suffered from its conduct of the conflict, and will continue to suffer. But many Israelis feel that the world just doesn’t understand the neighborhood they live in, or what it takes to survive in that neighborhood—so low global standing is a price they’ll have to pay to keep surviving.
And it’s true that many international observers view Israel’s strategic situation differently than Israel does. They view it as ultimately non-zero-sum. They think Israel can only get truly enduring security if things also improve for various nearby actors. That certainly includes the long-suffering Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. But it also includes Iran, whose leaders feel that their country is vulnerable to aggression by both Israel and the US and that they need deterrent proxy forces like Hezbollah to stay safe.
Of course, this non-zero-sum view could be wrong. But so long as Israel gets uncritical military support from the US, and can be shielded from the consequences of its more zero-sum view, Israeli leaders won’t have to even consider the possibility that their view could be wrong. That’s a big moral hazard.