Can Biden coax Israelis out of trauma toward regional peace?
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Ned Temko Columnist
| London
President Joe Biden has an ambitious vision for the way the current war in Gaza might end. A cease-fire and the release of hostages held by Hamas would be just the beginning. The ultimate goals are a Palestinian state alongside Israel and a peace treaty with Saudi Arabia.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants nothing of it, saying the plan would reward Hamas for its Oct. 7 attack. But he is not the biggest obstacle to Washington’s plans.
Why We Wrote This
As President Joe Biden pushes his vision of a regional Mideast peace deal emerging from a Gaza cease-fire, his prime audience is a skeptical Israeli public.
Rather, that obstacle is the Israeli public, gripped by collective trauma and unready – perhaps unable – to look beyond their own pain, the fate of the hostages still in Gaza, and the need to hit back hard in response to the Hamas attack.
There’s been barely a mention of the plight of civilians in Gaza, beyond some Israeli human rights activists and a very few politicians.
Even left-of-center political figures have avoided mentioning, much less promoting, the idea of a two-state solution once the fighting is finally over, and the mood of the country is far from reconciliation.
But it is striking that the most popular politician in Israel is not Israeli.
He is the American who embraced Israelis, met with hostage families, and, despite political pressures at home and abroad, has broadly stuck with Israel.
He is Joe Biden.
“This war is different.”
Those words, from a column I wrote barely a week after Hamas’ assault Oct. 7, which included the abduction and killing of Israeli civilians, have sadly been borne out during months of terrible violence and humanitarian suffering in Gaza.
Yet with the United States now intensifying efforts to secure not only a cease-fire and a hostage release, but also a historic Mideast peace framework involving Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the Palestinian territories, it is becoming clear that this diplomatic challenge is fundamentally different, too.
Why We Wrote This
As President Joe Biden pushes his vision of a regional Mideast peace deal emerging from a Gaza cease-fire, his prime audience is a skeptical Israeli public.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has flatly rejected the U.S. plan, saying it would reward Hamas. But even if he were persuaded to change his mind, that would not be sufficient.
U.S. President Joe Biden will need to find a way to win over the Israeli public.
And that’s because of one aspect, in particular, that has made this war different.
A kind of collective trauma from Oct. 7 has gripped Israelis of all political stripes. Even longtime supporters of a two-state peace, and opponents of Mr. Netanyahu, appear unready – or unable – to look beyond their own pain, the fate of the hostages still in Gaza, and the need to hit back hard in response to the Hamas attack.
In these circumstances, Washington’s main task will not be persuading ordinary Israelis to embrace its diplomatic vision; it will be getting them even to listen.
That’s because Oct. 7 was different from anything Israelis had experienced since the 1948 war that followed the creation of their state.
It unmoored them from core assumptions about their country and themselves: the sense that Israel was strong, protected by an advanced military and security apparatus, and able to coexist, if not make formal peace, with enemies and rivals in their neighborhood.
And that they were safe in their own homes.
Israeli prime ministers have had to reckon in past wars with pressure not only from the outside world, but also from within.
In the conflict most similar in scale and devastation to the war in Gaza, Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon and siege of Beirut, then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan sought to rein in the Israelis no less assertively than Mr. Biden is attempting to do with Mr. Netanyahu.
But ultimately, the people of Israel played a key role in ending that war, with unprecedentedly large popular protests after the massacre of Palestinians in Beirut’s refugee camps by Israeli-allied Lebanese militia.
So far, at least, the mood surrounding the Israel-Hamas war has been strikingly different.
There has been some grassroots pushback, even pressure on Mr. Netanyahu. But it has focused on the welfare of the hostages still held in Gaza, and it is being driven by their agonized families and friends.
There’s been barely a mention of the plight of civilians in Gaza, beyond some Israeli human rights activists and a very few politicians.
Even left-of-center political figures have avoided mentioning, much less promoting, the idea of a two-state solution once the fighting is finally over, and the mood of the country is far from favoring reconciliation. Israel’s music scene, too, has reflected that mood in a string of angry rap hits that one Israeli paper described this week as a post-Oct. 7 “soundtrack” of rage and resilience.
This has all given Mr. Netanyahu little incentive to soften his opposition to the U.S. initiative. The question for Washington is when, and whether, the popular mood and the political environment might begin to change.
While any early, wholesale shift in attitude seems out of the question, the weeks ahead may bring some signs of movement.
Much will depend on the war itself, especially now that significant numbers of reservists deployed to Gaza after Oct. 7 have been rotated out. Their testimony could feed growing doubts about whether Mr. Netanyahu’s promised “total victory” over Hamas is achievable.
If Israel shrugs off U.S. and international opposition to a full-scale military operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah without protecting the hundreds of thousands of civilians there, Israelis may begin to question the conduct of the war.
The prospect of progress toward Washington’s goal of a regional postwar deal looks more remote.
But again, not impossible.
Partly, it may come down to Mr. Biden’s ability to convince Mr. Netanyahu that such an accord would benefit not just Israel, but also his own political fortunes: It would bring a long-sought peace with Saudi Arabia, the most influential country in the Arab and Islamic world.
Ultimately, though, the make-or-break factor could prove to be Mr. Biden’s ability to bring a critical mass of ordinary Israelis on board. And there, the outlook is not hopelessly dark.
A powerful essay last month by a top Israeli polling expert argued that only strong political leadership could break through her country’s current sense of “trauma and suffering.”
She had in mind Israeli political leaders.
But the politician for whom pollsters have found the most support after Oct. 7 is not Israeli.
He is the American who embraced Israelis, met with hostage families, and, despite political pressures at home and abroad, has broadly stuck with Israel.
He is Joe Biden.
