More War, Less Vision

As we celebrate another free hostage, clouds gather over an ever intractable conflict

Amid the desperation about the fate of the remaining hostages there was, once more, some unexpected and really good news. The IDF managed to rescue hostage Farhan al-Qadi, a guard at one of the kibbutzim that was attacked on October 7th. There was incredible joy among his family of course, but also among those that have worked so hard to tell a judgmental world that Israel is indeed a very diverse and multiethnic country: al-Qadi is a member of the country’s Bedouin tribe which is a Muslim and Arab speaking minority that mostly live in southern Israel. On October 7th, seventeen Bedouins were murdered by Hamas.

Farhan spent eleven months under gruelling circumstances mostly underground in tunnels, after having been operated on by his captors without much anaesthesia on a bullet wound in his leg and having lost about twenty kilograms of bodyweight. He also witnessed the slow and horrendous death of one of the oldest hostages, octogenarian Aryeh Zalmanovich, who was deprived of medicine and died after two months of captivity. In their short time together he and al-Qadi had formed a bond and debriefing Zalmanovich’s family was one of the first things the freed Bedouin hostage attended to not long after his release.

Progress?

It was my mistake to suggest earlier this week that negotiations were continuing in Cairo, they actually took place in Doha, Qatar, and there is some mild optimism that things are moving in the right direction. That is, according to news reports, but we have heard things like that before. There are now 103 hostages remaining of which 33 have been confirmed as dead by the IDF. Yesterday the families of the remaining hostages gathered at the Gaza border and in a heartbreaking move called out to their loved ones via loudspeakers. Their despair has now sunk to unprecedented levels as we are edging closer to the one year anniversary of that horrible day with more and more gruesome testimonies - like al-Qadi’s - coming out of Gaza.

Widening War

In the meantime the war on both the northern front and the West Bank have intensified over the past few days with Israel stepping up military activities. Its incursions to root our terrorist cells in the West Bank were fairly unprecedented in terms of size and indicate a response to the escalating violence between Israeli and Arabs who both live in the same area. It is also a move to ensure that the embers of Hamas are not lit up again in the one area that has benefitted from relatively moderate Arab operators that tend to cooperate with Israel. That could change in an instant and the West Bank is still a tinderbox that could turn into another war zone.

With Biden slowly disappearing from the main stage, it is up to Harris to now define where America stands and where it will be going when it comes to the Middle East. The much hyped, but somewhat boring, interview last night on CNN gave us some clues. Her direct answer on the issue gave no one any material insights, it was a ‘plus ça change’ well-rehearsed answer for the political center and did not tell us anything:

And that should be a real concern. The best case is that Harris is going to be a rehash of the Biden and Obama years, which means we will slide deeper into the mess created by too much Iran engagement and restricting Israel with ever more conditions, while maintaining support and weapon deliveries. A worst case is that Harris, who has no real foreign policy ideas or expertise of her own, will fall prey to a coterie of younger Democratic advisors who will play to Harris’ worst instincts which will no longer be restrained in a post-election world. And that would be bad news for Israel which is now forced to rush and try and change as many facts on the ground as it possibly can before January 20th, 2025.

And no, a Harris win is not a given, but the polls are trending this way at the moment. Trump will need to make some inroads in the battleground states to remain competitive. Most of the debate there will revolve on the economy and domestic issues like immigration, but at the same time we should expect him to deliver a much stronger and compelling vision on foreign policy than what we have heard so far from both him and Harris. As it stands, both candidates may take us into more uncertainty and quite probably into the twilight of an unending war.