The Gaza Trap

Israel, of course, can count on U.S. support as it takes its next steps. The Biden administration has sent a carrier strike group to the eastern Mediterranean Sea in what it has said is a “deterrence posture” that will provide the Israel Defense Forces with “additional equipment and resources, including munitions.” The national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, reaffirmed U.S. support to Israel immediately after President Biden’s news conference on Tuesday.

Over the next week or so, Israel could destroy much of Hamas’s infrastructure. The I.D.F. will channel the outrage of the nation if it launches a ground invasion of Gaza, and will extract an enormous price for Hamas’s massacre in the Kfar Aza kibbutz. And yet, operationally, Hamas complicates I.D.F. freedom of action given that it holds at least 150 hostages. If a ground war drags on, Israel would make battlefield gains but almost certainly fail to destroy Hamas’s governing ideology or the Palestinians’ unrealized aspirations for statehood.

To avoid the Gaza trap, Israel needs Arab allies on the ground and in the region. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Jordan have all regarded Iran, along with Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthi rebels in Yemen and the Muslim Brotherhood, as a collective strategic threat. To gain the support of the key regional leaders, Israel will have to offer major security concessions and intelligence in the event of a wider war with Iran and set a meaningful and clear political horizon for a post-Abbas, post-Hamas Palestinian state. Yet, Prime Minister Netanyahu faces a steep credibility gap both domestically and with Israel’s Arab neighbors. Only a true unity government may be able to blunt the Hamas threat with breakthrough diplomacy in the region. That success might cost Bibi Netanyahu his job.

The days ahead will be bloody and difficult for Israelis and Palestinians. Hamas may well have set a trap if it induces an Israeli invasion of Gaza. Before Israel makes that call, it needs to have a strategy for exiting Gaza and a plan for the day after. An Israeli miscalculation in Gaza could trigger a crisis in the Middle East that lasts for generations.

R. David Harden is the former assistant administrator at USAID’s Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance, USAID mission director to the West Bank and Gaza and senior adviser to President Barack Obama’s special envoy for Middle East peace.

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