A Bottom-Up Approach Can Improve Israel’s Relations with Western Europe

Over the past decade, Jerusalem has managed to make great diplomatic strides, successfully reaching out to nations in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and Eastern Europe—not to mention its cooperation with certain Arab states. Western Europe, however, remains a bastion of hostility, and this has done much to shape the reflexively anti-Israel stance of the European Union itself. Even so, argues Evelyn Gordon, the region shouldn’t be considered a lost cause:

[M]ost Europeans, like most people everywhere, don’t really care that much about Israel, the Palestinians, or their unending conflict. Consequently, small groups of committed activists can exert a disproportionate influence on policy. For years, this has worked against Israel because the anti-Israel crowd woke up to this fact very early and took full advantage of it.

Yet it turns out pro-Israel activists can use the same tactics. [For instance], a relatively small group of committed pro-Israel Christians in the Dutch parliament managed to mobilize support last month for a resolution rejecting labeling requirements for products made in the disputed Israeli territories (Judea and Samaria, the Golan Heights, and parts of Jerusalem). The motion, which passed 82-68, correctly deemed these rules discriminatory so long as they don’t apply equally to all disputed territory worldwide.

The problem with traditional diplomacy is that it generally focuses on high-level officials, both elected politicians and civil servants. These are people with zero incentive to rock the boat on Israel’s behalf. . . . And in Europe, not rocking the boat means adhering to the anti-Israel consensus that has long dominated the EU. . . . Yet precisely because senior officialdom often doesn’t care much about Israel, committed activists can move the needle by lobbying members of parliament, joining the boards of organizations, and so forth, thereby generating noise that makes it seem that people care about this issue.

Citing examples in Norway, France, and even in the California Democratic party where such initiatives have yielded fruit, Gordon exhorts Israeli diplomats to encourage such efforts “by identifying and actively engaging with groups that are potentially persuadable to pro-Israel activism.”

Read more at JNS

More about: Europe and Israel, European Union, Israel diplomacy

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