As the Gaza ceasefire talks enter the second day in Doha, the situation in the Middle East remains ripe for an impending vertical escalation between Israel and Iran.
Hamas, whose Political Bureau chief and chief negotiator Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated by Israel in a covert operation in Tehran on July 31, is not participating in the indirect negotiations in Doha for now, although mediators are said to be relaying messages to the group’s representatives based in Doha.
After the first day of talks, White House spokesman John Kirby told the media that “there remains a lot of work to do” to resolve gaps in the implementation of the framework agreement. This is a euphemistic statement that in reality refers to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s strategy to keep everyone stringing along. That strategy is central to where the situation stands, including the continuing savagery in Gaza and targeted strikes in Lebanon and elsewhere.
The method in Netanyahu’s madness
What’s Netanyahu’s strategy?
As I have noted in this space earlier, Netanyahu has gamed it very carefully. To quote Shakespeare, “Though there’s madness, yet there’s method in it.” Consider this from the beginning.
On the day Hamas launched its offensive, Netanyahu’s political stock was at its lowest. His rightwing government was reviled, his corruption trial was hobbling him, his attempt to rein in Israel’s Supreme Court through controversial legislation was widely condemned, including by IDF reservists, over concerns that his rightwing coalition would pass increasingly hardline laws with no mechanism for opposition.
Unpacking the WSJ Exclusive on Sinwar's 'Cold Calculation'Then October 7 happened.
Netanyahu’s stock plummeted further. He was blamed for the biggest security lapse since possibly the Egyptian crossing of the Bar-Lev Line. His claim that he was the best leader to provide security lay in tatters. Even as the IDF and military intelligence chiefs accepted responsibility for failing to detect and preempt the Hamas attack, Netanyahu kept insisting that he was not warned by security chiefs about an impending Hamas attack. In statements and even public tweets he claimed that security chiefs had consistently assured him that Hamas was deterred.
While fighting rearguard action against his political rivals, Netanyahu was also formulating his offensive strategy on the basis of two facts: the ‘ironclad” support of the United States and the Israelis rallying under the flag to seek retribution. Multiple opinion polls indicated that while the public had little confidence in Netanyahu and his government’s ability to handle the situation, support for a war against Hamas ran high. It still does.
The most important aspect of US support is military and financial. Israel does not have the logistical capacity to wage a long war without US military hardware and US intelligence,........