 |
Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN’s Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good
Seeing this newsletter as a forward? Sign up here.
Today, Israel marks the second anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks “with new hopes of ending the conflict [in Gaza] but with hostages still in captivity,” The New York Times’ David M. Halbfinger reports. “There were quiet gatherings at some of the kibbutzim near Gaza that suffered the most in the massacres … and informal events drew participants throughout the country.”
Those new hopes rest on US President Donald Trump’s Gaza ceasefire plan. Trump has secured the backing of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—has, in fact, “successfully bullied” Netanyahu into agreeing to it, Yair Rosenberg writes for The Atlantic. Hamas has agreed to parts of the deal’s framework, including the release of the remaining hostages, but other details still must be worked out. “Take one of the central issues in any ceasefire,” The Economist writes: “disarming Hamas and securing Gaza. Much of the world agrees that the militants need to lay down their arms. Hamas does not.”
The Gaza war has split Israel politically, The New York Times’ Roger Cohen writes: “On a recent visit … I found a country consumed by doubt. That was before the latest negotiations had begun to potentially free the hostages, and, perhaps eventually, end the war. Since those conversations have begun [following Trump’s announcement of his peace plan], the country is even more on edge. Israel is at war with Hamas. But it is also at war with itself.”
Far-right Israeli Cabinet ministers want to continue the war in Gaza until Hamas is eliminated completely. The ceasefire would be a dangerous opportunity for Hamas to regather, in their view, and they hope to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state, which key Western countries have recognized and to which Trump’s Gaza plan opens the door. Families of Israeli hostages, meanwhile, consistently have called for the war’s end. At the Council on Foreign Relations, Elliott Abrams writes that the Gaza war has inflamed tensions over ultra-Orthodox Jews’ exemption from the military draft and has thrown Netanyahu’s political future into question, with elections looming next year.
As for Israel’s positioning within the Middle East, much has changed since Oct. 7, 2023, as Shai Feldman writes for the DC-based, security-oriented online magazine The National Interest. Before the attacks, Israel’s security environment was marked by relative “quiet”: The country had normalized relations with a handful of Arab countries, and Hamas was not seen as an urgent threat. That was disrupted violently. Now, however, Israel finds itself in new positions of both strength and weakness. The Jewish state has decimated Iran’s vaunted “Axis of Resistance,” notably killing Hezbollah commanders with exploding pagers and walkie-talkies. The Iran-backed Assad government fell next door, in Syria. The Israel Defense Forces exposed the weakness of Iran itself, and Trump joined in with strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Israel “has become the region’s superpower,” Fareed wrote in June.
And yet, Israel faces international isolation and a “quagmire” in Gaza, Feldman writes. In Trump’s Gaza plan, Feldman sees an opportunity to get out of it. Taking Israel’s regional military successes into account, Feldman points to “a uniquely welcoming environment for grasping the lifeline tossed in Israel’s direction by US president Donald Trump. … [F]or the first time since October 7, a path to escape the Gaza trap has opened. How Israel will respond to this opportunity—not in purposefully vague statements, but in actual deeds—and to the challenges and risks that the plan entails, will be another crucial test of the country’s … yet to be articulated, national defense strategy.”
Today marks two years since Hamas launched its terrorist attack on Israel, prompting Israel’s war in Gaza. As talks on a possible end to the war continue in Egypt, we turned to Shalom Lipner, who served as an adviser to Israeli prime ministers from 1990 to 2016, to assess how Israel has changed in the aftermath of October 7. Here’s what he told us from Jerusalem:
Shalom Lipner, Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative
Two years since the initial trauma of the October 7 massacre, Israel is, in many ways, back living on October 6.
After an interim period of peak domestic cohesion—during which Israelis galvanized in response to crisis—ideological divides have reemerged with a vengeance, most prominently in the ferocious debate surrounding the Netanyahu government’s prosecution of the Gaza war and efforts to secure a release of the hostages. The new prospect of a lasting settlement, while welcomed by most of the public, is unlikely to bridge those disputes, which will come to a head certainly in elections that will be held within the coming year.
RELATED
Diplomacy’s lowest point: how the Israel-Gaza conflict was mishandled
The ruin of Gaza: how Israel’s two-year assault has devastated the territory
Maps and data tell the story of two bloody years in Israel and Gaza (The Economist)
Two years on from October 7 attacks, Gazans count the cost of war (The Times)
La perversión del bien (Daniel Peral, CTXT)