Q&A with Professor Efraim Karsh: In order to save the Abraham Accords, Israel must defeat Hamas
I recently spoke with Professor Efraim Karsh, a distinguished historian and Middle East expert from King's College London.
In the wake of the evil events that transpired in Israel on October 7, 2023, orchestrated by Hamas terrorists, Prof. Karsh's views come at a crucial time, addressing the challenges Israel faces and the potential impact on international relationships, including the Abraham Accords. His expertise provides valuable perspectives on the importance of Israel's success in dealing with Hamas to ensure the survival and expansion of the Abraham Accords, while highlighting the broader political and cultural shifts that have influenced Israel's outlook and approach to regional conflicts.
The interview delves into various aspects, including Israel's relations with the US and Arab allies, the role of the media in shaping public perception, and the implications of the Oslo Accords and their impact on Israel's strategic thinking. Professor Karsh's deep understanding of the Middle East's historical complexities and current dynamics offers essential insights for interpreting the ongoing geopolitical developments in the region.
How could this have happened?
Dennis Mitzner: What, in your assessment, is the most plausible theory explaining Israel's inability to prevent the Hamas attack? This question isn't about assigning blame or making a political statement, but understanding the circumstances surrounding the terrorist attack.
Efraim Karsh: There are two significant factors at play here. First, there are the underlying causes leading to the collapse of the Israeli doctrine, according to which Hamas can be contained by a “carrot and stick” strategy combining economic incentives and sporadic use of force. The core idea is that by enhancing the socioeconomic conditions of the Gaza population, pressure can be exerted on Hamas, which had ruled the Strip since 2007, to refrain from initiating violence as it has something to lose. This rationale is behind Israel's decision to allow tens of thousands Gazans to work in Israel and to permit Qatari financial aid to enter the Strip.
When Hamas failed to live up to these expectations and reverted to violence, particularly through missile attacks on Israeli population centers, the Israeli response was relatively restrained, limited in most cases to air strikes. When ground forces were used, notably in the December 2008-January 2009 and the July-August 2014 Gaza wars, their operations were limited in terms of scope and intensity and showed no intention to destroy Hamas’s military power, let alone to dislodge it from Gaza.
On a broader level, this dates to the “land for peace” formula underlying the Oslo “peace” process of the 1990s. By January 1996, Israel had withdrawn its forces from the West Bank’s populated areas with the exception of Hebron where redeployment was completed in January 1997; withdrawal from Gaza’s populated areas had been completed by May 1994 when control passed to the newly-established PLO-dominated Palestinian Authority (PA). In one fell swoop, Israel effectively ended its 30-year-long control of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip’s populace. Since January 1996, and certainly after the completion of the Hebron redeployment, 99% of the Palestinians in these territories have not lived under Israeli “occupation” but under PLO/PA rule (in Gaza, since 2007, under Hamas’s rule).
But then, rather than use the end of occupation as a springboard for bringing the Oslo process to fruition through bilateral negotiations on the future of the largely unpopulated West Bank territories still under Israel’s control, or Area C as they were called, the PA/PLO (let alone Hamas) has launched a sustained war of terror against their “peace partners,” of which Hamas’s last week’s massacres are but the latest, and most horrendous round.
I find the failure to anticipate Hamas’s move mind-boggling. According to media reports, as late as last week, the military intelligence directorate (Aman) and Shin Bet (Israel's internal security service) told the government that Hamas had no interest in a new Gaza conflagration, suggesting to increase the number of workers coming to Israel after the Jewish Holidays. Instead, they proposed to reinforce the IDF presence in the West Bank, where they anticipated a tense situation during the holidays. This misconception, which also led to the release of many soldiers on the southern front for the holidays, enabled Hamas’s terrorists to invade Israel with virtual impunity.
All in all, this is a more disastrous calamity than the 1973 intelligence blunder, and to my mind the culpable military and political leaderships will have to pay the price of their folly after the war.
On the IDF
DM: This situation could potentially have significant political repercussions for the government after the war. With Benjamin Netanyahu in power for 15 years, what, in your analysis, explains his preference for swift, surgical military operations and a rapid pursuit of ceasefires with a focus on maintaining calm on the frontlines? What factors or considerations drive this approach, especially given our knowledge of Hamas' historical behavior? Furthermore, do you believe he bears ultimate responsibility for the recent events?
EK: Certainly PM Netanyahu, as head of government, bears responsibility for the recent events. In the 1973 Yom Kippur War the government was eventually called to task by the Israeli public, though it took nearly four years for this to happen. However, the process today will be much swifter in my view.
Netanyahu sought to transform Israel into an economic and technological powerhouse, while upholding its military deterrent and keeping armed confrontations to the barest minimum. Contrary to a common misperception, Netanyahu is a cautious leader who doesn’t rush into military operations without careful consideration, unlike previous instances such as the 2006 Lebanon War, when the government stumbled into war without a clear idea what it wanted to achieve.
Another aspect to consider relates to the Oslo process’ devastating impact on the IDF. As early as September 1993—a mere fortnight after the Oslo I conclusion - Chief of Staff Ehud Barak was reported to be transforming the IDF into “an army of peace.” The underlying assumption of this sea change was that since security was a corollary of peace rather than the other way around as had been commonly believed, the IDF had to be rebuilt in a way that would first and foremost promote the attainment of peace.
At the organizational level, this rationale led to the reduction of the IDF’s ground forces in favor of overwhelming reliance on airpower and sophisticated armaments (Barak’s so called “small and smart army”). Conceptually, the transformation of the Arab-Israeli conflict from recurrent interstate wars to sustained “low intensity warfare” against terrorist organizations led the IDF to discard its perennial striving for a swift victory in favor of a strategy that would contain and wear down these organizations, believed to represent deep-rooted ideals (whether nationalist or Islamist) that could not be defeated by force of arms. Hence the containment strategy vis-à-vis Hamas since its violent takeover of Gaza in 2007.
IDF readiness: warnings from the IDF Comptroller
Maj. Gen. (res.) Itzhak Brik, who served as IDF comptroller for over a decade, has been persistently warning for some time that the IDF is ill- prepared for war, and that should a multi-front war ensue, Israel would suffer a tremendous military and strategic setback of the kind it has never suffered before—only to have his warnings totally ignored by the IDF’s top echelons. Among the more apocalyptic scenarios he envisaged a Hezbollah ground invasion of northern Israel and the occupation of Israeli localities—something the Arabs had failed to do since the 1948 war. And while this scenario was unexpectedly realized by Hamas, the weaker of the two terrorist organizations, it may well materialize yet again—with no less horrendous consequences—should Hezbollah join the war, though the IDF has been working hard in recent days to forestall this eventuality.
The main culprit of this calamitous development is then-prime minister Barak, who on 24 May 2000 hurriedly vacated Israel’s self-proclaimed security zone in south Lebanon while leaving behind heavy weapons and military equipment and abandoning the South Lebanon Army, which had aided the IDF’s counterterrorist operations for decades. Yet rather than “drain the terrorist swamp,” as Barak gloated after the flight, the withdrawal served to expand Hezbollah to gargantuan proportions and to transform south Lebanon into an ineradicable terrorist stronghold crisscrossed with fortified defenses designed to serve as a springboard for attacks on Israeli territory, to shelter Hezbollah’s burgeoning rocket and missile arsenal (which grew to a whopping 150,000), and to exact a high cost from attacking forces in the event of a general conflagration.
The result was the IDF’s inconclusive ground operations in the Second Lebanon War (12 July– 14 August 2006), which hardly ventured more than a few miles from the border during the 34 days of fighting—in contrast to the 1982 invasion that swiftly swept across this area and reached Beirut within five days—as well as the war’s relatively high human toll: 164 fatalities, or 70% of those killed in the security zone during the 15 years preceding the 2000 withdrawal.
Hezbollah’s terrorist threat—both its rocket and missile arsenal that can hit any part of Israel and its ability to invade the Galilee and occupy Israeli localities—has confronted Israel with unprecedented security challenges.
This in turn drove successive Israeli governments, and the IDF, to turn a blind eye to Hezbollah’s massive military build-up in flagrant violation of the post-2006 UN resolutions for fear of an all-out conflagration. This timidity was most starkly illustrated by Jerusalem’s acceptance (in October 2022)—at the IDF’s prodding—of Beirut’s demands regarding the demarcation of the Lebanese-Israeli maritime border and the ownership of the substantial gas deposits believed to be in the disputed area, for fear of war with Hezbollah. This further convinced Tehran and its proxy terrorist organizations of Israel’s fear of a general conflagration, catalyzing Hama’s latest atrocities.
The Oslo mentality
DM: Could you provide a summary of how the Oslo Accords and the subsequent "Oslo mentality" have influenced Israel? In the United States, there's a phenomenon often referred to as the "CNN factor," where widespread media coverage amplifies the horrors of a situation, and concerned civilians, particularly family members, gain media attention and influence decision-makers, potentially to the detriment of national interests. Has a similar phenomenon had a corrosive effect on Israel's military strength and its ability to make progress?
EK: The influence of the media in Israel has been more significant than in the United States. The media unanimously magnified the supposed benefits of the Oslo accords while totally ignoring and/or downplaying its mortal dangers. Even when the Oslo process unequivocally collapsed in September 2000, when Arafat launched his four-years-long war of terror (euphemized as “al-Aqsa Intifada”), which disillusioned most of the Israeli of their “peace” dreams, the media was reluctant to come to terms with the new reality. Hence its persistent bashing of the Likud governments ruling in Israel since 2009 in general, and the sustained de-legitimization of PM Netanyahu, who would not be defeated in the ballot box, in particular.
DM: Do you think there's also a deeper cultural element at play in Israel? Could this cultural shift within the people of Israel be leading to a certain level of "softness," as exemplified by the idea of having the "most moral army in the world," which might simply be a lack of determination or even a viciousness needed to neutralize the enemy?
EK: I would say it's not so much the entire Israeli nation but rather the traditional elites that have undergone a significant transformation. In a way, you could argue that previous generations of Labor leaders and IDF commanders were much tougher and more “right-wing” than today’s Likud as far as national security is concerned. Even PM Rabin, who allowed FM Peres to draw him to the Oslo process, rejected the two-state solution to his dying day and envisaged “an entity short of a state that will independently run the lives of the Palestinians under its control” within narrower boundaries than the pre-1967 lines. Netanyahu, by contrast, agreed in his June 2009 Bar-Ilan speech to the establishment of a Palestinian state (though effectively blocking this eventually through repeated tussles with the Obama administration).
DM: In their everyday lives, Israelis generally don't spend much time thinking about the evil next door. Does this contribute to a certain kind of fatalism? What is your opinion?
EK: When you believe you've come close to ending a long-standing conflict, you might not wish to dwell on its mortal threats. Hence Rabin’s mockery of his critics, especially Netanyahu, stating shortly before his assassination that no missiles had been fired, or would be fired, from Gaza on Israel’s population centers. And hence the unanimous endorsement of hundreds of retired generals and senior security officials of the 2005 unilateral disengagement from Gaza as a major boon to Israel’s security. And so on and so forth.
For Israel to save the Abraham Accords, it must defeat Hamas
DM: In the context of Middle East geopolitics, particularly with Israel's new Arab partners like Bahrain and the UAE, is there a risk of losing these partners due to a conflict with Hamas?
EK: No, quite the opposite, in fact. If Israel does not comprehensively defeat Hamas, there is a real risk of losing its Arab allies. But if it destroys the Islamist terror organization it sends a powerful signal to allies and foes alike. The Gulf states did not warm up to Israel because of a newfound affinity for Zionism or the Jewish People but because they viewed Netanyahu as a strong and successful leader, who had transformed Israel into an economic and technological superpower and who is determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. But if Israel appears weak and disintegrating, it could quickly lose this support. So, to maintain the new Middle Eastern strategic architecture, Israel must decisively defeat Hamas. There's no middle ground here. Israel has to go in, destroy Hamas as a military and political force, and disarm Gaza (as incidentally had been stipulated by the Oslo Accords).
As I have repeatedly argued, just as the creation of free and democratic societies in Germany and Japan after World War II necessitated a comprehensive sociopolitical and educational transformation, so long as the West Bank and Gaza continue to be governed by Hamas’ (and the PLO’s) rule of the jungle, no Palestinian civil society, let alone a viable state, can possibly develop there.
DM: Would you conclude that in order for the Abraham Accords to survive and expand, Israel needs to defeat Hamas?
EK: Yes, it is an absolute must. Not only the Abraham Accords, but, more importantly, the Saudi-Israeli normalization process. The Saudis are quietly backing Israel's operation as do Jordan’s King Abdullah and Egypt’s president Sisi, among others. No Arab regime has any sympathy for the Muslim Brotherhood and their many offshoots, be they Hamas, al-Qaeda, or ISIS. They are even less sympathetic to the Shiite Islamist regime in Tehran and its offshoots—Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthis. Hamas, in this respect, has it the worst of all worlds being ideologically affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood and militarily and politically supported by Shiite Iran.
DM: Do you think America also is responsible, or bears some responsibility, for what happened, considering the transfer of funds to Iran?
EK: In a broader sense, the Biden administration's desperation to appease Tehran and to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran, instead of intensifying the sanctions and making a credible military threat, has had a significant adverse impact. This softer stance has emboldened Tehran and strengthened its regional position. Yet, the administration seemed to be slowly reawakening from its delusions over the past few months, as illustrated inter alia by the firing of Iran’s foremost Washington advocate: Robert Malley. And the scope and barbarity of Hamas’s atrocities have certainly touched a raw nerve in President Biden and enticed him into sending a powerful message to Tehran and its Lebanese proxy—in word and deed (sending the US navy to the eastern Mediterranean—to stay out of the Israel-Hamas confrontation.
It remains to be seen how the war will play out. Should Iran and Hezbollah ignore Biden’s warning and become involved, America might respond, in which case it might lead to NATO involvement as happened in Afghanistan and Iraq. Biden said he consulted his main NATO allies—Britain, Germany, and France—about the situation, and the outcome may depend on various contingencies. In the event that Hezbollah targets Israel, it's likely that Israel will respond swiftly and decisively against Lebanon, perhaps even against Iran. But the hope is that Hezbollah doesn't interfere in an already complex scenario.
Israel’s international standing stronger today than ever before
DM: Would you say that, compared to previous major operations or wars, Israel is in a better international position today, given its relations with the U.S. and its Arab allies, including Greece, Egypt, and even Morocco?
EK: Yes, internationally, Israel is in a better position. It has the support of the United States and the anti-Iran Arab alliance. And while the Arab states will keep relatively aloof, or even make symbolic gestures to the Palestinians, such as the UAE sending them $20 million in humanitarian relief, the broader international sentiment is presently on Israel’s side.
As a matter of fact, the Arab states have never had real sympathy for the Palestinians. And while anti-Zionism formed the main common denominator of pan-Arab solidarity and its most effective rallying cry, the actual policies of the Arab states have shown far less concern for the well-being of the Palestinians than for their own self-serving interests. Indeed, nothing has done more to expose the hollowness of pan-Arabism than its most celebrated cause.
Now that many of the Arab states have normalized relations with Israel, they will seek to avoid getting involved in the current war and would like to see Israel resolve the situation as quickly as possible. Once Hamas is defeated, they can shift back their focus to other, more pressing issues.