How historical choices affect Israel’s current multi-front war – opinion

This is my sixth trip to Israel since October 2023. During this visit, I spoke to one of my most trusted colleagues, who has worked with many Israeli prime ministers and continues to be a reliable source for advice and consultation in the government. This conversation prompted me to think about Israel’s upcoming diplomatic and military options in a historical context. 

Have Israel’s past choices directly led to its current dilemma, a multi-front war with Iran and its proxy network, including Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen? Will they and their closest ally, America, learn from historical mistakes, or will we repeat them? US national security interests primarily coincide with Israel’s. Still, for political reasons, we often pressure our ally and, in the end, undermine our interests and respect in the Middle East.

If Israelis could go back in time, would they still have left Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005, and signed the Oslo Accords in 1993? 

Yossi Kuperwasser, former head of the research division in the IDF Military Intelligence division and director-general of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, told me, “Don’t confuse pragmatism with moderation” when dealing with Middle Eastern adversaries. 

That is the mistake my government has made too often over many administrations. One of the most notorious was secretary of state John Kerry’s naiveté during the Obama administration, believing the smiling Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif was a moderate during the nuclear negotiations instead of a wily Islamist. 

As Kuperwasser said, you can be “pragmatic but still be a radical,” and that’s how the Obama administration was manipulated and misled, forgetting they were negotiating with the world’s leading sponsor of terror with so much American blood on their hands.

BUT HAVE the Israelis also been guilty of the same errors, mistaking Palestinian and Arab pragmatism for moderation, and could it have been a significant reason why Israel is in the situation it is in today? Israelis know, and my government should learn, that Iran practices taddiyah, religiously approved dissimulation, lying. 

In 2000, prime minister Ehud Barak suddenly withdrew Israeli forces that had been stationed in southern Lebanon for 18 years. Six years later, after Hezbollah kidnappings and attacks, they instigated the Second Lebanon War. 

Over the next 17 years, with the help of their fellow Twelver Shi’ite Iranian benefactor, they assembled a massive missile arsenal with a professional terrorist army numbering in the tens of thousands, under the direction of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Sharing their mission of the destruction of Israel, they work with Sunni jihadists like Hamas.

During Israel’s occupation of Southern Lebanon from 1982 to 2000, Israelis suffered the loss of 12 to 14 soldiers a year to maintain a buffer zone in Southern Lebanon and not allow Hezbollah to take over the territory bordering on northern Israeli communities. A significant number of the Israeli electorate in the late 1990s felt the price to pay to control Lebanon and deal with a never-ending war of attrition was too high and needed to end. That was what Barak felt was his mandate at the time.

Still, the political choice ignored what could come after, over-estimating Israel’s ability to respond effectively to Hezbollah’s control of southern Lebanon, while underestimating the strategic patience of Iran to create a ring of fire around Israel, with their centerpiece being Hezbollah’s control of Lebanon and dominance over Syria.

In 2005, prime minister Ariel Sharon withdrew all Israeli troops and communities from Gaza. This was at the end of the Second Intifada, when Hamas was the leading actor in perfecting the art of suicide bombers targeting soft targets like Israeli malls and cafes, terrorizing Israelis for half a decade, and turning a generation of young Israelis into war hawks.

Hamas takes over

A Palestinian election the next year led to a Hamas victory. Though Hamas came away victorious on the parliamentary level, Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority still ruled the executive. But in 2007, Hamas carried out a coup, overthrowing the PA. Since 2008, many wars against Israel have emanated from Gaza. 

Ultimately, in less than two decades, Hamas, with Iranian backing, created a terror tunnel network of more than 965 km., culminating in the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack – the worst Jewish atrocity since the Holocaust.

In the early 1990s, prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, despite being kept in the dark by foreign minister Shimon Peres’s secret dealings with the PLO in Norway, decided to take over the negotiations, culminating in the signing of the Oslo Accords, which many Israelis thought was their path to acceptance and peace.

Within a short time, terror reigned in Israel, worse than during the First Intifada before the Oslo Accords. Israel soon learned that trusting the arch-terrorist Arafat’s promises led directly to the Second Intifada. 

I write this as someone who, in theory, supports two states for two peoples but also believed at the time that the Oslo Accords’ assumptions and expectations were a profound mistake that would lead to violence, not peace.

WHAT ARE the lessons to be learned from history as the US pressures Israel to end its war in Gaza, while the Iranian enemy is on the verge of a nuclear weapon, and has constructed a formidable proxy network?

American policy has been to do anything to avoid the possibility of escalation, kick the can down the road, even if it increases the chance for regional wars and undermines American influence in the long run. Israel does not have that luxury, as it is now in its first existential fight since 1948. “Daylight” between these two nations undermines their security interests in the near and long term. 

An America without a credible military threat increases the chance of war and a nuclear Iran, the opposite of our stated goal. This is in part the result of Western minds failing to put themselves in Persian and Arab shoes, what former US National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster calls “strategic empathy.”

Iran and her proxies are content with long wars of attrition, which Israel historically has not done well with. Just think of the time between 1967 and 1973 along the Suez Canal, between Israel’s high point of its lightning victory in the 1967 Six Day War followed by a simmering war of attrition leading to one of its worst failures, the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

With enemies who will not relent unless, and until, there is regime change in Iran, wars of attrition will continue. But can Israel create a new strategy to design them on their terms? For America, can an administration realize that regime change in Iran is in our interest and convince the American people it does not mean boots on the ground? 

That means publicly stating that American policy is pro-Iranian, that is, pro-Iranian people with full enforcement of sanctions, something the Biden administration doesn’t want to do, believing appeasement will be met with reciprocity, a classic case of not learning from history. 

THERE ARE many lessons to learn from historical mistakes, but some stand out.

Lesson number one: if your enemy does not believe you have a credible military threat, they will give you only lip service.

Lesson number two: the word “peace” means something very different to America and Israel than it does to our Middle East adversaries.

Lesson number three: we should not believe that written agreements in the Middle East are likely to bring about results, as they carry little weight with our adversaries when push comes to shove.

Lesson number four: America must come to the realization that Palestinians are not ready for two states for two peoples, as they have continued to teach the importance of martyrdom and terrorism, hatred of Jews, not just of Israel, and have not even begun the process of accepting a Jewish state as a legitimate neighbor.

Premature American pressure on Israel will turn the West Bank into an Iranian-dominated entity that will threaten not only Israel but Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, which are American allies. A path to Palestinian self-sufficiency and eventual independence if they meet critical milestones over time is the path forward, as anything more will bring catastrophe. This is not about a Greater Israel; it is about a secure Israel, which is in America’s interest. You deal with the reality as it is, not as you wish.

The best message America can send to Iran to reassure our Arab allies is for America to allow Israel to finish the job of degrading Hamas’s military capabilities and ability to govern Gaza. That is the only way any Palestinian or Arab force will be willing or effective in controlling the civilian affairs of Gaza. 

Americans need to think like the Middle East to advance their regional interests. Learn to understand strategic patience and give Israel the time to reduce the insurgency that has now turned into a guerrilla war of thousands of terrorists still hiding in hundreds of kilometers of underground tunnels.

It is a tired and overused expression; those who don’t learn from history are bound to repeat it, but for Israel and American interests, it is the place to begin before imposing unrealistic “day after” scenarios for Gaza and the West Bank.

Finally, end the Obama Middle East strategy of creating daylight between Israel and the United States while trying to curry favor with Iran’s rulers. As history has shown, it empowers our adversaries and undermines our allies.  

The writer is the director of MEPIN (Middle East Political Information Network) and Mandel Strategies, a consulting firm for business and government officials in the Middle East. He regularly briefs members of Congress and their foreign policy aides. He is the senior security editor for The Jerusalem Report and a regular contributor to The Hill.