Samantha Power Downgrades the U.S.-Israel Alliance

Testifying to Congress last week, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power refused to guarantee that the U.S. will oppose resolutions on Palestinian statehood at the UN. She did, however, reassure her audience that “we have a record of standing when it matters with Israel.” When, wonders Shoshana Bryen, does “it matter”?

Power’s testimony may have completed the transition of the U.S. from Israel’s ally in its quest for legitimacy and security in the historic homeland of the Jewish people, to an arbiter between Israel and those who seek to erase it. Power appears also to have completed the transition of Israel’s status—in the eyes of the U.S. government—as the party whose legitimacy and permanence in the Middle East remains challenged by all but Egypt and Jordan, to the country that bears an obligation to “fix” the problems that animate its enemies.

The “peace process,” first codified in the Oslo Accords, commits Israel and the Palestinians to resolve differences bilaterally, not through the dictates of a third party or organization. No one thought it would be easy, but successive U.S. administrations ensured that the UN—which Israel finds hopelessly biased against its interests—would not have veto power or enforcement power. Now it may. Power and the U.S. have thrown in the towel on an issue that “matters” to Israel.

Read more at Gatestone

More about: Israel & Zionism, Peace Process, Samantha Power, U.S. Foreign policy, United Nations, US-Israel relations

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