While the White House Talks of Palestinian Statehood, Mahmoud Abbas Talks of a “Day of Rage”

In response to the new U.S. plan to resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict by creating a Palestinian state in Gaza and parts of the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority’s President Mahmoud Abbas called for a “day of rage.” This reaction, writes Abe Greenwald, “gets to the heart of the matter.”

Palestinian leaders will take a day of rage over a decade of peace every time. And it’s their very refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist and to negotiate in good faith that’s doomed the long-suffering Palestinian people. Palestinian officials have refused to meet with Americans since President Trump announced the opening of the American Embassy in Jerusalem in 2017.

For decades, such self-defeating obstinacy found support among other Arab leaders in the region. This kept the Israel-Palestinian issue at the center of any discussion about Middle East stability. But that has unofficially come to an end. With Iran’s increased aggression against its Sunni neighbors—and Barack Obama’s mistaken effort to strengthen the Islamic Republic—Saudi Arabia and other Sunni kingdoms have formed an unspoken alliance with Israel against Tehran. They have more pressing concerns than Mahmoud Abbas’s latest tantrum. And without the undying support of the Saudis and other critical allies, the Palestinians have lost much of their leverage.

This is in part why the U.S. felt no pressure to wait for Palestinian input before rolling out its framework. And it’s also why, if Palestinian leaders once again fail to seize the opportunity before them, everyone will get along just fine except the Palestinian people.

Read more at Commentary

More about: Iran, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Mahmoud Abbas, Saudi Arabia, Trump Peace Plan

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