Silence before the Storm?

The stage for a hot summer in the Middle East and the US is set

It may sound strange, but last week was a relatively ‘quiet’ one in terms of major developments as the world was bracing itself for a potential major flare up on Israel’s northern border. The likely failure of a deal in Gaza where fighting continued has given Hezbollah the sustained ‘rationale’ to keep its pressure on Israel going. So the attacks continued with the northern town of Metula (photo) taking a lot of the incoming missiles and drones, but also other areas and towns deeper into Israel are now under fire. By not attacking a major Israeli city that is not evacuated, say for instance Haifa, Hezbollah has however managed to stall a major counter attack on its positions, but that may change.

As discussed last week, this situation is simply no longer sustainable for Israel which in this way is losing control of more and more of its northern territory with many of its residents still displaced. So behind the scenes, the next steps are being mapped out with leaks from Israel indeed confirming that a sizeable attack on Lebanon is forthcoming. It is hard to say if this is totally accurate, but there are a lot of pieces being put in place right now that will facilitate such a dramatic incursion.

There are two key ingredients: diplomatic support from the US and a fully stocked arsenal of military resources, for which the US is also the crucial partner. Let’s start with the latter. Nethanyahu last week pointed to slower than normal US arms deliveries and this was getting some interesting headlines, not to mention frustration on the American side who claim no such changes to deliveries were really made. If however the US is indeed applying such pressure on Israel this is not to be interpreted as being related to Gaza, but as the Biden administration trying to frustrate the all-out attack on Lebanon for the time being and give diplomatic moves a bit more time. At the same time as this spat unfolded, Biden’s senior diplomatic representative, Amos Hochstein, toured the region last week, but he wasn’t able to report any tangible results or progress. Israel’s minister of defence, the ever silent Yoav Gallant, landed in Washington yesterday to conduct high level talks with team Biden. You see how the diplomatic and military interact right now with many moving pieces.

So it is a high level political chess game which may well continue until Nethanyahu delivers his address to the US congress on July 24 by which time hopefully the US and Israel have found some common ground on the next steps. Remember that in order to alleviate domestic pressures Biden will need to see a de-escalation in Gaza but that at the same time the US will be dragged into a potential war with Iran. It was interesting to note that Nethanyahu hinted last night that Israel is scaling down operations Gaza. That may well be part of a refocus of Israel’s military on the north while giving Biden something positive to work with.

The rest of the world in the meantime is not sitting by silently and moving various pieces of the puzzle forward, Canada for instance announced an evacuation of not less than 45,000 of its citizens out of Lebanon. UN secretary-general António Guterres also weighed in and rather than calling out Hezbollah and demanding it complies with UN Resolution 1701, he as per usual shifted the burden to Israel by calling for it, diplomatically, to not attack:

A major operation by Israel in the north will drag the US in and it will likely involve direct conflict with Iran. But it would solve the tension in the north and deal a blow to Tehran’s so far quite successful ‘ring of fire’ strategy. By biting the bullet we could have a real game changer on the ground if the US and Israel find the common ground to collaborate and execute here. It will turn Biden’s Middle East foreign policy of containing Iran upside down only weeks ahead of the August 19 start of the Democratic Convention in Chicago. This gives Israel a short time window to maneuver and you can expect some major developments later in July and in early August, ahead of the convention’s start.

Now Chicago and conventions inevitably bring back memories of the Democratic 1968 convention where the tensions over the Vietnam War and the Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. murders all converged in riots and extreme violence. For those of you too young to remember, the then Democratic nominee was Hubert Humphrey who went on to lose to Richard Nixon who managed to end that Vietnam War (at quite an incredible human cost).

Why do I bring this up? Because the streets all over America (and Europe and Canada) have not been so silent recently because of the Middle East wars. Pro-Hamas and pro-Gaza demonstrations are morphing ever more into targeted attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions everywhere. The anti-Semitism on our streets has been unleashed and this for instance happened in the Pico-Robertson area of Los Angeles yesterday where the Adas Torah synagogue came under a targeted attack from the usual crop of ‘protesters’:

So it is not that hard to see a link between missiles devastating Israel’s north, Biden’s plans, global tensions and how the most odious forces are escalating this conflict into America’s main street. It will require rare political talent and guts to turn events around on both the frontlines in Lebanon and the streets of LA. So far we have seen little of it but events may now force Biden’s hand to act decisively.