Time Is Not on Israel’s Side

March 12 2024

While Hamas’s interests may be served by dragging out the war, Israel’s would be served by hastening its end—not through a ceasefire, but through victory. That, argues Seth Mandel, is the lesson Benny Gantz, the leader of Israel’s National Unity party and a member of the post-October 7 unity government, should take away from his recent visit to London and Washington. The favored candidate to replace Prime Minister Netanyahu in the event of an election, Gantz seems to have believed he could garner more sympathy for Israel than Netanyahu. Instead, he got lectures from Kamala Harris as well as from the British foreign minister David Cameron and prime minister Rishi Sunak. Mandel writes:

How should Gantz interpret this? As a reminder that, as far as the West is concerned, Israel does not have all the time in the world to finish off Hamas. Neither Sunak nor Cameron particularly cares how this war ends. Gantz and Netanyahu don’t have that luxury. The reason Hamas is disingenuously manipulating the U.S., Israel, and Qatar on the hostage negotiations is because their only goal is to run out the clock.

The same message, Mandel adds, should be taken from President Biden’s scheme, announced last week, to build a floating dock off the coast of Gaza for the delivery of humanitarian aid. An American ship has already been dispatched with equipment for the project, which is expected to involve as many as 1,000 U.S. military personnel:

Nobody cheering “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is going to change their mind thanks to a hastily constructed port that will simply serve as a more dangerous way of getting aid to Palestinian civilians. Which means when it fails to move the needle of progressive opinion, Biden will try something else to make them happy. Israel needs to accept that this ball is now rolling downhill, and it’s standing at the bottom.

Kamala Harris and the other Americans threw a lot of words at Benny Gantz. So did Rishi Sunak and David Cameron. But they all amount to the same thing: Get moving.

Read more at Commentary

More about: Benny Gantz, David Cameron, Gaza War 2023, Kamala Harris, U.S.-Israel relationship, United Kingdom

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023