October 22, 2023 | Yediot Aharonot
Post October 7th – what Israel needs from the US and the International community
After the October 7th terror rampage by Hamas, Israel is enjoying unprecedented support from the U.S. administration. While there are unfortunately still American people and organizations that continue to support Hamas, President Biden has expressed unwavering support in his speeches, during his visit to Israel, and with a range of actions. Washington realizes that something has fundamentally changed, and that Hamas must be eradicated. It is therefore the time to leverage this change.
October 22, 2023 | Yediot Aharonot
Post October 7th – what Israel needs from the US and the International community
After the October 7th terror rampage by Hamas, Israel is enjoying unprecedented support from the U.S. administration. While there are unfortunately still American people and organizations that continue to support Hamas, President Biden has expressed unwavering support in his speeches, during his visit to Israel, and with a range of actions. Washington realizes that something has fundamentally changed, and that Hamas must be eradicated. It is therefore the time to leverage this change.
*This article was originally published in Hebrew
The world has become almost too comfortable attacking Israeli policies, especially as it relates to the disputed West Bank. Yet, the criticism goes beyond Israel’s military control of the West Bank. Entire movements have been built to delegitimize Israel, the homeland of the Jewish people, to a point where there are still stubborn pockets of support for Hamas after the horrific October 7th terror attack that claimed 1,400 lives. The most prominent among them have a home on American Ivy League campuses and in political circles.
How we arrived here is worth a brief review.
Israel rose out of the ashes of horror on an unprecedented scale in Europe, and it managed to build a flourishing oasis. Even before it was a state, Israel was challenged militarily by its Arab neighbors, culminating in a failed war of annihilation in 1948-1949. Israel was forced to fight major wars and small battles for decades to follow. Critics tend to forget that even the “occupied territories” were taken during the Six Day War that was thrust upon Israel in 1967.
Support for the Palestinian cause is not problematic in and of itself. There is nothing wrong with supporting an unrealized national project. But that support cannot justify the countless acts of brutal terror that Israel has suffered over the years. Not the bombing of buses by Hamas in the late 90s (while Israel negotiated a two-state solution), not the rockets fired by Hamas (which started immediately after Israel unilaterally evacuated the Gaza strip and handed it to the Palestinians), and certainly not the recent murder spree carried out of Hamas. Indeed, this many Jews have not been murdered in a single day since the Holocust.
In light of the gravity of the current situation and the mounting threats on Israel, Israel is now more than justified in asking the U.S. and international community’s support to fight back in full force. Here is a proposed list of the things that Israel will need.
First, there must be joint effort to thoroughly delegitimize Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). The world must single out the extreme violent Palestinian factions who seek the elimination of Israel as the state of the Jewish people. They must be decoupled from the legitimate Palestinian aspirations for statehood. Such a distinction will make it clear that violence will be tolerated no more, and might even allow for a political process that strengthens the Palestinian pragmatists, so long as their quest for self determination is peaceful.
The international community should come together to denounce Hamas as a terror organization that has lost the right to govern the civilian population of Gaza, totalling more than 2.5 million people. This should be declared at the United Nations Security Council, and it should be stated there that Israel has the right to remove this threat from its borders.
Moreover, an international effort is needed to sanction all of the state actors and financial institutions that fund Hamas and PIJ, as well as those jurisdictions that offer safe haven to Hamas or PIJ terrorists (without distinction between so-called political and military branches). This means specifically singling out Iranian, Qatari, Turkish, Malaysian, Kuwaiti, Algerian, and other support for Hamas. Such an effort can be aided by publishing an official list of the top leaders of Hamas and PIJ, identifying them as war criminals, and encouraging a global hunt to arrest them, as the United States did in the battle against ISIS and Al-Qaeda.
Another useful measure would be to identify the Palestinian NGOs that promote Hamas and PIJ institutions, activities, ideas, narratives, etc. Many of these are funded by the United Nations and the European Union. Assets seized from these entities should be directed to a fund that supports the families of the victims of October 7th atrocities.
More importantly, Israel needs the world to finally acknowledge that Iran is the primary driver of the extreme movements calling for the extinction of Israel.
Iran has also been creating a “Ring of Fire” on Israel’s borders for years, surrounding it with heavily armed proxies that await their orders from Tehran to attack. Hamas’s murder spree on October 7th is an example of that. Alarmingly, the Lebanese Hezbollah may also join the fighting upon Tehran’s urging, with the goal of a multi-front war designed to eliminate Israel.
Israel’s ability to defend itself could be impacted by a multi-front war. The international community must take action now. It should publicly denounce Iran for its proxy war. Statements should draw a connection between the persistent Iranian funding and support to its violent clients and the horrific events of October 7th.
Israel doesn’t ask the U.S. to fight its wars, but it needs the support of its allies to weaken its enemies through sanctions and diplomacy, and it requires hardware and technology to sustain a qualitative and quantitative edge.
Unfortunately, Iran’s proxies are not the most dire threat the regime can pose. The regime’s ambition for a nuclear weapon is obvious for all to see. An Iranian nuclear bomb clearly endangers Israel, but it also threatens the rest of the Middle East and the globe. The Iranian regime is now reaching the status of a nuclear threshold state. It must be stopped.
The current policy embraced by the U.S. and the entire international community is to practically normalize Iran’s status as a nuclear threshold state, as restrictions stipulated in the flawed 2015 nuclear deal are set to expire in the next few years. Some have expired already. Iran must be deterred from taking another nuclear step.
Israel, along with the entire region, needs the U.S. to deter against and actively prevent a nuclear Iran. Its nuclear ambitions and capabilities can only be rolled back by a pressure campaign and coercive negotiations to produce a new stronger and longer nuclear deal. That can only be achieved with a credible military threat by the U.S.
In parallel, Israel must rapidly enhance the tools needed for an effective strike on the Iranian nuclear program. These are capabilities only the U.S. possesses.
On that note, it is time to strengthen our strategic relationship.
The ten-year MOU is one of the cornerstones of U.S.-Israel strategic relationship. It will expire in a few short years. Israel needs a binding commitment for the coming decades. But there are other steps that the two governments might consider. This includes the potential for Washington to upgrade Israel to the status of a Major Defense Partner (India is so far the only country with this arrangement). Such a designation could improve all aspects of collaboration between the countries short of a military commitment to defend Israel (which Israel neither needs nor wants).
Concurrently, efforts should be mounted to build a Middle East Strategic Alliance with the Arab peace partners of Israel (and peace partners to be, such as Saudi Arabia). Such a regional alliance could help fend off mutual threats, based on shared intelligence, air-defense capabilities, and more.
Finally, this is the moment for enhanced technology collaboration between Israel and its allies. The Israeli innovation culture is the cornerstone of the country’s recent rapid economic growth, and it is a major contributor to the global economy. Based on the strategic nature of our relationship with America, more resources should be allocated to joint R&D, incentives given to private partnerships, collaborative innovation, and manufacturing. Such joint work can lead to the needed breakthroughs that would keep Western countries at the forefront of the future of technology.
Israel’s fight is only beginning. This is again a fight of good against evil, light against darkness. It is imperative that the international community recognize this, and actively enable Israel to fight and win.
Dr. Eyal Hulata is Israel’s former National Security Advisor and head of the National Security Council. He is currently a senior international fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington.