The Dangers of a Regional Peace Conference

As Mahmoud Abbas continues to reject Benjamin Netanyahu’s calls for a renewal of negotiations, and Israel’s relations with Sunni Arab states continue to improve, the idea of a regional peace conference has started to gain traction in some Israeli government circles. Eylon Aslan-Levy, citing past precedent, argues that such a conference is unlikely to succeed:

The last Arab-Israeli regional peace conference was a failure and a farce. In 1949, the United Nations convened a regional summit in Lausanne, Switzerland, to follow up on the armistice agreements at the end of Israel’s War of Independence. . . . [Representatives of] Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, and Lebanon . . . sat in one room and the Israelis in another for indirect talks: the Arab bloc refused to negotiate face-to-face. Since none of the Arab states wished to be seen as the side willing to make concessions, their diplomats ended up collectively reinforcing each other’s intransigence, raising the conditions for a deal impossibly high and obviating [the possibility of an] agreement. . . .

[A] regional peace conference establishes one side as a diplomatic cartel, so to speak. By foreclosing the option of separate agreements, where Israel could bargain for favorable terms, the Arab states can club together to raise the price of peace. . . . This cartel, however, is really a consortium of states. Negotiations, therefore, would have two stages: among the Arabs, to agree on a common position, and then with Israel. . . . [As at Lausanne, no one state] would want to be “outed” as the side that made the collective Arab bloc “blink first” on an ostensibly non-negotiable deal, thereby weakening its [own] hand. As such, the Arab states are liable [once more to] make the price [of peace] impossibly high.

Read more at Tower

More about: Israel & Zionism, Israel diplomacy, Israel-Arab relations, Israeli history, Peace Process, United Nations

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF