Cables From The Diplomatic Frontlines - Biden begins to apply leverage on Israel - more muscular yet nuanced action is needed.

A lot has changed since the beginning of the war in October.

• Two months ago (and at the time when traditional allies of Israel like the US, UK, and EU) were bringing up possibility of a unilateral (without Israeli agreement/input) recognition of a Palestinian state, we unpacked the series of essential steps that would have been necessary to turn this aspirational vision into a reality:

• The following elements would have needed to be in place:

• 1) Prolonged ceasefire: remaining Hamas leaders are either eliminated or allowed to self-exile into a third country.

• Ordinary Hamas operatives are allowed to surrender - international coalition forces oversee governance and law & order missions.

• (side note: Israel is trying to kill more of the Hamas leaders in the latest stage of the fighting - but it looks more unlikely than ever that this will happen anytime soon. A more realistic possibility is a self-exile (there is a historic precedent for this with Yasser Arafat). Israel can then pursue retribution ultimate masterminds much later - once a final peace deal is done and there is a new political order in Palestine. In the meantime, Hamas counteroffers for a ceasefire, with demands for the release of hundreds of hardened operatives serving long sentences is a pure fantasy and it is only natural that Israel rejected this outright. Hamas must be warned that either they surrender and self-exile in the shortest period of time, or Israel will simply continue its lower intensity operations and will sooner or later reach them all. There is a little chance of a third option: Washington is not going to pressure Israel to stop fighting as long there is no realistic pathway to Hamas’s ultimate surrender. This much must be made clear to Hamas leaders via their Qatari interlocutors.)

• 2) A new and competent political power in Gaza and West Bank is formed.

• (side note: it is hard to see how Blinken’s push for a ‘‘reformed’’ Palestinian Authority is going to work - this is an organization that is rotten and corrupt to its core. A fundamentally corrupt organization cannot be reformed.)

• 3) a US-led NATO coalition (similar to forces in Kosovo) administers internal order and security - together with police forces from the UAE/Saudi and Qatar.

• The latter three assist with training of new civil servants and invest into reconstruction.

• 4) A new United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) is formed and guards borders between West Bank/Gaza and Israel - similar to what happened pre-1967 war between Israel and Egypt.

• 5) Israel recognizes Palestine and Saudis recognize Israel: this last part may be delayed until Netanyahu is removed. But if all previous elements are in place, it will only be a matter of time before Israeli leaders see that a new status quo is in their interests as well. And in the meantime, the rest of the world can still recognize Palestine and treat it as a state.

• The essential elements remain unchanged, but a lot of facts on the ground have indeed changed since then:

• 1) The risk of a second front with Lebanon is no longer as acute as before.

• Iran has made it clear that it is not interested in wasting its crown jewel of a proxy - Hezbollah - to help out Hamas.

• From Tehran’s point of view, the likelihood of achieving anything worthwhile militarily is rather low - while the immense political cost resulting from a change in narrative from ‘‘Israeli genocide in Gaza’’ to “Israel is fighting two-front war against Iran-backed terrorists’’ would be counterproductive, and would essentially serve as a lifeline for Netanyahu.

• (side note: even though the recent Israeli airstrike on an Iranian diplomatic compound in Syria - killing 2 generals and 5 other officers was a deliberate attempt to pull Tehran into an escalation with Israel. Iran will of course have to respond - but initiating a second-front via Hezbollah will still not be in Iranian interests. Although this is something that Israel may ultimately achieve)

• 2) Iran-backed proxies elsewhere have been reined in.

• Following the deadly drone attack that targeted a US base in Jordan, and a US retaliation killing the leader of Kata'ib Hezbollah in Iraq, Iran was quick to dispatch the leader of its Quds forces to Iraq to rein in their proxies and de-escalate the standoff with the US.

• In addition, there are now credible reports that Iran held secret talks with the US in Oman to discuss the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea.

• It is not yet clear whether the intensity of Houthi attacks have lessened due to some stern talk from Tehran, or after the US/UK airstrikes or both - but one thing is clear: they are no longer as intense and threatening as before.

• And all of this makes sense from Iran’s point of view: as discussed in the previous cables, a military confrontation with the US taking place now would most definitely not be in Iranian interests: they would rather delay a possible confrontation until their skies are better protected by Russian Su-34s and S-400s SAM missiles, and when their nuclear enrichment sites are buried even deeper and are more secure than ever before.

• 3) Israeli intransigence reached a new level - causing major embarrassment to the US.

• A lot of the catastrophic consequences of this war could have been avoided if Israel would have listened to Washington’s guidance from the very outset of the war.

• From nearly tens of thousands of killed civilians as a result of indiscriminate bombing via unguided ‘‘dumb bombs’’, to the looming famine and humanitarian catastrophe as a result of food shortages, a lot of tragedies could have been forestalled if only Israel abided by laws of armed conflict and allowed for adequate distribution of food and medical aid.

• Many international organizations (like Oxfam) have documented Israeli failure to let in food convoys.

• Indeed, Israel has been so brazenly disruptive that even The EU’s foreign affairs chief has accused Israel of using starvation as a "weapon of war".

• Netanyahu’s government has been so deliberately intransigent that the US (and other allies) are now forced to airdrop aid into Gaza and build a pier off the Gaza coast.

• It is astonishing that a US ally that depends on the US for weapons, ammo and diplomatic cover, is then blocking America from delivering aid in a normal way, leading to a humiliating situation that the aid needs to be dropped from the air (killing several Palestinians as a result of a malfunctioning parachute)…

• Meanwhile, the overall situation is extremely dire: the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has indicated that the "entire population" of Gaza, which amounts to some 2.3 million people, is enduring high levels of "acute" food insecurity.

• This includes 1.11 million people suffering from "catastrophic" food insecurity, classified as IPC Phase 5, which is the most severe level on the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification scale.

• At least 500,000 people are directly facing famine conditions, while the rest of the population experiences acute food shortages.

• In addition, the health of pregnant women and children is of particular concern, with all children under five — numbering around 335,000 — are at a high risk of severe malnutrition.

• (side note: this situation is exacerbated by the fact that the last time the UN was able to deliver food aid to northern Gaza was in late January.)

• And as if all this was not enough, Israel then crossed all lines by targeting an aid convoy from World Central Kitchen (a charity that provides meals to civilians suffering from hunger due to conflicts and natural disasters) - killing 7 aid workers (including an American-Canadian dual citizen and several aid workers from the UK).

• (side note: World Central Kitchen is based in DC, and is run by the politically outspoken Spanish-American chef Jose Andres. His sway over many key players in the DC establishment is not going to necessarily affect policy of course - no one person can do that (especially just a celebrity), but it will keep the spotlight on the incident. Andres already spoke to Biden about this.)

• It can of course be a tragic accident if it was only one strike that killed an aid worker - this is war after all: fog of war and all that..

• But there is no justification whatsoever to continue these strikes once the aid workers get out of the car unarmed.

• What makes this specific incident so outrageous, is that the unarmed aid workers had actually coordinated their movements with the IDF and were in clearly marked aid vehicles.

• So then, 1) prior coordination, 2) continuous strikes even after unarmed individuals got out of the vehicles make this airstrike a particularly egregious violation of basic laws of war.

• At the very least, this is beyond reckless, and at worst, it is not exactly hard to see how this incident will fan the flames of the narrative that Israel has embarked upon an indiscriminate homicidal spree.

• It is also a little unconvincing that Israel can have an intel agency competent and superior enough to find out precise window needed to target via a drone to assassinate a Hamas leader in Lebanon or conduct high-precision airstrike in Syria - killing senior Quds commanders, but still fail to take necessary precautions to avoid killing western aid workers (unarmed and in marked cars) in Gaza.

• It also doesn’t help that Israel has atrociously permissive high tolerance for civilian casualties in Gaza.

• In the recent phase of the conflict, the allowable collateral damage threshold was reduced.

• Previously however, there was in fact authorization to eliminate up to 20 non-combatants for the sake of neutralizing a single target - with no consideration of the target's rank, strategic value, or age.

• Lavender AI played a pivotal role in the conflict, leveraging vast data analysis to quickly pinpoint targets for “junior” officers to approve.

• Initially, Lavender AI identified approximately 37,000 Palestinian males as being associated with Hamas or the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), based on its data analysis.

• This unprecedented callous attitude towards collateral damage and to the Palestinian lives (Israel would never approve such ratios if the city in question was in Israel vs in Gaza strip) combined with reliance on AI to select targets to kill is going to make it very hard for America to remain quiet..

• Now, all of these certainly add up - meaning that it is increasingly strategically impossible for the US to stick to business as usual with Israel - the geopolitical cost of underwriting Netanyahu’s government is now extremely high.

• 4) Domestic political pressure on Netanyahu is reaching a boiling point.

• As if the war itself wasn’t enough, Netanyahu now has to deal with another crisis: issue of ultra-Orthodox Jews being drafted into the army.

• The protests in Israel over legislation related to the draft of ultra-Orthodox Jews into the army stem from a deeply contentious issue within Israeli society.

• Historically, ultra-Orthodox Jews, also known as Haredim, have been exempt from military service, a status protected by various laws and government decisions over the years.

• This exemption (dating back to 1948 under the first PM David Ben-Gurion) is rooted in the social contract to treat the religious studies of Haredim as their contribution to society.

• However, this arrangement has led to significant public criticism and legal challenges, mainly because it is seen as violating the principle of equality, with the burden of military service falling unevenly on the rest of the population.

• Ultra-orthodox Jews make up 12% of Israel’s population - and given their higher birth rate, they are projected to make up 32% of the entire population by 2065.

• Naturally, you cannot have a third of the population not serving in the military (or not working).

• But beyond a long-term strategic challenge, it is also a short-term crisis.

• Most secular Israelis are sick and tired of subsidizing rather extreme lifestyles of the Haredim.

• Why should the bulk of the population serve in the army, risk their lives, and underwrite a highly unproductive segment of the population?

• Recent developments have brought this issue to the forefront, with Israel's High Court setting deadlines for the government to explain why it hasn't drafted ultra-Orthodox Jews into the army.

• A notable deadline was set for March 31, 2024, (now extended by a month) by which the government was expected to pass new conscription legislation or face the prospect of ultra-Orthodox men being conscripted without the current exemptions​.

• (side note: although the Supreme Court granted the request for extension by 30 additional days, it also ordered that starting in April, the government must suspend state subsidies for religious students who meet the criteria for conscription: a major headache for Netanyahu)

• The ultra-Orthodox community has responded with significant protests.

• On the streets, the protests have been marked by significant tensions.

• For example, in February 2024, ultra-Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem blocked traffic and the light rail in protest against the draft, leading to clashes with the police​.

• The Chief Sephardic Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef has been vocal, suggesting that compulsory drafting could lead to mass emigration of ultra-Orthodox Jews​: threatening that they “will all move abroad”.

• But reactions are equally strong from those on the other side of the issue as well.

• There have been major public protests demanding Netanyahu to stop subsidizing policies sought by his far-right coalition partners and do what is right.

• In fact, Netanyahu’s Minister of Defense from his very own Likud party wants these draft exemptions to be scrapped.

• (side note: and 70% of Israelis would agree with him here)

• The problem is that doing so risks the breakdown of his coalition government - the two ultra-Orthodox far-right coalition partners of his are necessary for the Netanyahu-led government to stay intact.

• Just five resignations would end his coalition government, and trigger elections - which he would likely lose.

• This is a political predicament that even someone as cunning and scheming as Netanyahu could possibly not survive.

Biden admin begins application of real leverage: a lot of options still remain on the table.