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Israel hostage rescue and the worsening human toll
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here and a Quick Take to kick off your week.
Lots of things going on right now, but perhaps, the issue that's gotten most of the news around the Middle East conflict and the issue of the hostages being rescued. Four hostages, some eight months now, being held. Over 100 still that we know of by Hamas in Gaza.
But four of them were rescued by an Israeli Defense Forces operation over the weekend. Not released, as some including, in a chyron, an interview I was in over the weekend, were saying released. No, rescued. Hamas has not released anyone, and there is no agreement going forward, and unlikely in the near term, despite lots of efforts from everyone around the world to get an agreement.
Neither the Israelis or Hamas are coming to one. Now, news beyond that, is that in order to get those hostages out, there were between about 100 and 300 Palestinians killed. Depending on who you talk to, the numbers are completely unclear. How many of those people were civilians? How many of them were Hamas operatives? How many were women and children? That's still unclear. But obviously, the numbers were really, really high. And lots of things to say about this and you should say all of them. First is that Hamas is keeping these people in civilian homes and among a densely populated civilian area specifically to make it harder for Israelis to rescue them without having large numbers of Palestinian civilians killed.
That is indeed the strategy, and both the fact that Hamas continues to hold these hostages, civilian hostages illegally, and the fact that they are using Palestinian civilians as a part of their strategy is that these are war crimes; these are acts of terrorism. And they need to be held accountable for that.
At the same time, Israel has been way too indifferent to civilian casualties. And we've seen that broadly in terms of the war in Gaza, and we've seen it specifically in terms of the events of this weekend. And the fact that the Israeli prime minister celebrated, and understandably so, the rescue of the hostages but didn't mention, didn't even mention the minimum scores of Palestinians that were killed and quite plausibly far more than that, implies that that's not worth mentioning. On the Israeli side, those people don't matter. They don't count. Beyond saying that Hamas is responsible for all of their deaths, which is an extreme statement. The Israelis also bear accountability. But if you don't mention it, it's not even worth a mention is the point. And I think we've gotten to a point in the war of dehumanization where if you are supporting either the Palestinian side or the Israeli side, that the humanity of the people on the other side is no longer a thing for you.
And that is likely to persist for a generation, given the atrocities that we are seeing and have seen on October 7th and in the war since. Let's also focus on the asymmetry. These two actors, Hamas and Israel, do not play by the same rules, right? They also can’t play by the same rules.
I mean, in the sense that if Hamas played by Israel rules, they would have been destroyed by now. I mean, if they weren't trying to intentionally target Israeli civilians and if they weren't intentionally putting Palestinian civilians constantly at risk, there would be no more Hamas because the Israelis are overwhelmingly more powerful militarily, their offensive capabilities, their defensive capabilities, and of course, their intelligence capabilities, which forces a level of greater inhumanity and asymmetry in fighting strategy on Hamas than if they had greater military capabilities. Now, of course, on the other side, if Israel didn't have the incredible military capabilities that they had, they wouldn't have a state, they wouldn't be able to defend it against those that believe that they don't have a right to exist, as a state.
So, I mean, none of these things answer the question of what do we do? And none of these justify, in any way, the behaviors that we've been seeing on the ground from the Israeli Defense Forces in fighting this war from Hamas, in taking these hostages and holding them and putting their own civilians at risk. But it is, I think, incumbent on us as we see this continue to play out that what we're missing and what we need is humanity.
Right now, there are no angels that are fighting. There is only suffering, and there's only dehumanization. We also can't talk about all of this without having an effective deal on the table, and there isn't a deal on the table. And everyone is sort of responsible for that, right? The Israelis have refused a deal with all of the hostages in return for an eventual permanent cease-fire because the Israeli position is, “until we destroy Hamas, their leadership, their military capacity, there can be no end to the fighting.”
And indeed, Benny Gantz, leaving the Unity war cabinet and now leading the War Cabinet to look basically just like the Israeli government, which means Bibi, the PM, and the far right, which puts you farther from any plausible breakthrough agreement than you were even over the past weeks. Hamas has also refused a cease-fire agreement that is on the table.
They've had an agreement on the table for a six-week cease-fire in return for a significant number of hostages being released and also more Palestinians being detained by Israel being released. And then there would be further discussion and negotiations. Hamas has refused that deal. When you're reading about this in the media, you will see people talking about Israel refusing the deal.
You'll see people talk about Hamas refusing the deal. Very rarely will you see people talking about both Israel and Hamas refusing the deal, because they have both set red lines that are mutually incompatible. And that is by design because they don't want a breakthrough that leads the other to be intact and in any way fulfilled. Look in any negotiation, if both sides are dissatisfied, it's probably not effective negotiation. We are not at the point where both sides are prepared to accept that. We're not close.
In fact, I think what we've seen over the weekend, with the hostages rescued, with lots of Palestinians killed, and with Gantz leaving the war cabinet is, we are farther today from a diplomatic agreement, even with Secretary of State Tony Blinken yet again in the region, we're farther from an agreement than we were a week ago, a month ago, two months ago. And we're farther from containing the war, as the potential of this war expanding into the north with Hezbollah and also continuing, of course, on the ground in Rafah and more broadly in Gaza. I think that that is your baseline expectation for the coming weeks and months.
So not great news. And, you know, out of the Middle East these days, it really is. But that is where we are. I hope people find this worthwhile. And I'll talk to you all real soon.
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Biden's Israel-Hamas cease-fire plan is trouble for Netanyahu
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here and a Quick Take on the Middle East.
Latest on is there or is there not a deal that can get done between Hamas and the Israelis, at least creating a short-term cease-fire? The United States has been relentlessly pushing this, in part because Biden has lost a lot of support domestically as the wars continued.
And, of course, because around the world, pretty much every other country wants to see this war over. But easier said than done when you're talking with an Israeli government that overwhelmingly wants to destroy Hamas, whatever exactly that means before they end it. And Hamas, that intends to continue lobbing rockets at the Israelis and is continuing to hold a large number of hostages. A near-term agreement, for at least a temporary cease-fire and hostages being released, has been done once and could be done again.
That's been discussed continuously over the past several months. The details have been challenging in how many hostages would be released and how many are still alive or in a position that Hamas would be able to give them back to the Israelis. But there's a big question about what happens then, and Biden's announcement that there was an Israeli deal that was agreed to that would eventually lead to a permanent cease-fire is not exactly what Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has said. I mean, the same text has been agreed to, but the way it's being presented internationally and to domestic audiences is very, very different. The United States thinks that there's utility, therefore, in being ambiguous about the actual text and about what happens and how one gets to a permanent cease-fire, but that's not acceptable to the Israeli prime minister, who loses his support domestically and his far-right allies if he does that.
Also, he wants Hamas to say no, he wants them to be responsible for the Israelis continuing to fight. And he's become more popular with the Israeli population over the past weeks as he's taken that position. The issue is that, you know, you can have six weeks in response for lots of the hostages being released, but the Israeli position and this is broader than just the prime minister, is that they are not yet done taking out Hamas, that there are thousands of fighters that continue to exist on the ground. And until they destroy their ability to mobilize and attack, they're going to continue. The Biden position is that Hamas is no longer capable of organizing an October 7th-style attack, and that should be sufficient. That is absolutely not the Israeli position. And that's why we don't yet have a deal that Hamas is likely to accept for the long term.
So, you know, all of this is to say that over the coming weeks, there's lots of effort to try to get Hamas to come to yes, but will Hamas say yes? And are they credible if there is every intention of the Israelis to continue to destroy the organization they're negotiating with? And, look, it's hard to negotiate with terrorist organizations in the best of times. This is very far from the best of times. So I would still be reasonably willing to bet that the deal is not going to happen. And if it does, it is only short term; in other words, we are not at the precipice of maybe a sustainable cease-fire that would lead to governance in the region among the Palestinians.
Having said all of that, Bibi himself is under a lot more pressure. Benny Gantz, member of the War Cabinet, a three-man War Cabinet, is willing to leave, gives him an ultimatum to the Prime Minister if there isn't some plan for what to do with Palestinian governance after the war is over.
And Netanyahu has been kicking the can on this, just like he's been kicking the can on under what conditions the war in Rafah will be over. Meanwhile, the Israeli far right has said that the deal as it stands is unacceptable and they are out if the government accepts it. Now, the center opposition Lapid has said that he would support Netanyahu if he loses his government.
But is the Israeli prime minister willing to do that, willing to accept what's going to be a much weaker governance position for him and his country going forward? Probably not. Also, he sees that his support is more likely to come from a Trump presidency, even though Trump doesn't like the Israeli prime minister personally, than it would from Biden. You got $100 million just been given from Miriam Adelson, who was Sheldon's widow, to Trump PAC, and all of that is in support of a far right-wing Israeli political stance. So he certainly understands that giving something to Biden right now is not in his interests. And meanwhile, he has been invited to come and give a speech to a joint session of Congress, Democrats and Republicans, all four running the House and Senate, extended that invitation.
Biden really didn't want that to happen. But since he's no way politically to be able to oppose it in his election process right now. And so more cards are presently being held by the Israeli prime minister than by the American president. That is the reality. And it's one of the reasons why a deal is at this point, in my view, unlikely.
Anyway, complicated stuff. Super challenging in the Middle East, super challenging for the American elections. And I'll talk to you all real soon.
Israel & Hamas extreme positions move them even further apart
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here back in New York City and a Quick Take to kick off your week.
We are talking yet again about the war in the Middle East continuing to escalate. Certainly not the news that anybody wants to hear right now. Israel with tanks now rolling into central Rafah.
This is the warning that the Americans had given the Israelis for over a month now, not to invade that area. The Prime Minister and others on the War Cabinet have said that they will persist until Hamas is destroyed, and that critically includes Rafah. This comes after roughly 1 million Palestinians have fled the area, having been warned by the Israelis that they're going to attack it. Over the past couple of weeks, of course, it's not clear that they have anywhere safe to go. Certainly, nowhere with infrastructure or with adequate humanitarian support. Comes after airstrikes by Israel hit a camp for people displaced from Rafah that killed over 45, mostly women and children, as well as two Hamas officials. Prime Minister Netanyahu referred to that as a tragic error. They've been a lot of those over the course of the past months. The United States, as I said, strongly opposing the invasion and calling it a red line, sort of. I mean, that red line also came with all sorts of caveats that the United States wanted to ensure that aid was going to be able to get in.
And part of that was the Americans building a humanitarian pier that they set up and which is falling apart because of bad weather, choppy seas, and no aid has been delivered from it despite all of the money and all of the effort to do so to the Palestinians. Also, with the idea that the Palestinians have to be gotten out and indeed, most of them have now gotten out, those that aren't military age, fighting age men. But whether those plans are considered adequate by the Americans, especially given where they're fleeing to, seems very unlikely. So Biden's red line is certainly going to be seen as having been transgressed by the Israeli government, by the Israeli War Cabinet. What exactly he plans to do about that? Still very, very challenging.
Hamas, of course, is itself still holding hostages nearly eight months later, military hostages and lots of civilian hostages. How many are still alive? Nobody knows. Hamas is still raining missiles on Israel, not causing casualties given Israel's extraordinarily strong capacity to defend itself, but still showing Hamas military capabilities surprisingly resilient despite months and months of intense Israeli war fighting across Gaza.
So if the Israeli intention is they're going to keep fighting until Hamas is destroyed, we're pretty far from that on its face. The Israeli view is that the killing of Palestinian civilians, and again, we've seen, you know, tens of thousands of deaths among Palestinians, a majority of which are civilians, is 100% the responsibility of Hamas, both for October 7th and for willingness to target Israel and for operating in civilian areas. Now, that is not just the view of the Israeli prime minister or the War Cabinet. That is the view of the majority of the Israeli citizens.
At the same time, it is not the view of any other country in the world which makes Israel increasingly isolated. And also it makes Biden, who was a strong supporter of Israel still, and that's not going to change, and is also by far the most important ally of Israel, puts him in a much more difficult and vulnerable position internationally and at home in his upcoming election. At the same time, Hamas and the so-called Iran-led axis of resistance, their view is that Israel has no right to exist, and that is not the view of any other country in the world.
And so you have these two polar extremes that are implacable enemies of each other. No overlap in the circles of the Venn diagram, no ability to effectively negotiate a cease fire, never mind a sustainable peace on the ground as a consequence. And the rest of the world, opposing both of their positions. That is not to create a moral equivalence between a terrorist organization and a democratically elected government.
But it is to say that in as far as the fighting of the war is going, the position of the axis of resistance and the position of the Israeli government literally are not aligned with or supported by anybody at this point on the global stage. And that makes the likelihood of this war going on, and escalating and expanding further beyond its borders. Also, the likelihood of this war having a real impact on the US election in November and undermining Biden is growing and growing and growing. You see why this isn't getting any better, and you see, why all of the efforts by the Gulf states, by the Egyptians and the Jordanians, by the Europeans, by the Americans, by the United Nations, by others to try to reduce the conflict, to try to contain the conflict, to try to lead to a cease fire, have so far led to not, and unfortunately, looking forward, it is very hard to see in the near future, any end to the fighting, either in terms of the Israeli ground invasion into Rafah and more broadly, the bombings across Gaza, and also in terms of the responses by Hamas, by Hezbollah, by other members of the axis of resistance and by a likely expansion of terrorist attacks against Israel and against the West around the world. This has to be one of the most depressing topics for me to be updating on out there.
And I wish I had better news to offer, but it's not about my preferences. It's about the analysis. And that's where we are. So, I hope everyone's going to have a good week. And I'll talk to you all real soon.
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ICC war crimes charge strengthens Netanyahu's position in Israel
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here and a Quick Take to kick off your week.
Plenty of breaking news right now. And what I want to focus on is the International Criminal Court, the ICC, which is now seeking arrest warrants for Hamas leadership and Israel's leadership, putting both on a level with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has been friends with both Hamas leadership and Netanyahu over the years.
So it's kind of an interesting club. But this is certainly a challenging headline. And if you're watching this around the world and you're seeing that the International Criminal Court is making these cases against Sinwar who runs Hamas and other senior deputies, and the Israeli prime minister and the minister of defense.
What you are seeing, what you feel, the takeaway you would have is moral equivalence, culpability. Well, both of these must be, you know, sort of engaged in crimes against humanity, acting against international law. These are bad people. These are criminals. And I mean, I want to just take a step back for a second. Seven months after the worst killing of Jews since the Holocaust, you are seeing that democratically elected leaders of Israel, the only strong, albeit far from perfect democracy in the Middle East, is being put on the same plane as the terrorists that raped and tortured and killed Israeli citizens, still, seven months later, holding them hostage and want to destroy Israel as a country. That is an extraordinary headline for people to see and people around the world who are on very different sides of this conflict will respond to that very differently, radically differently.
But it's important to recognize what exactly we're seeing and just how far, if you will, the world has moved in what it thinks about this conflict, over the course of the seven months since October 7th. It's clearly bad for the United States and the Biden administration, in particular that President Biden is supporting the Israeli government, is the strongest ally of Israel of any country in the world. It continues, to send weapons, to share intelligence, and to broadly support the war against Hamas. Its continuation though certainly with significant disagreements in the way that the war has been conducted. It's also important to recognize that the United States has itself put out a report that said that war crimes, it believed, were likely to have been committed by the Israeli Defense Forces on the ground in Gaza, says it doesn't have sufficient evidence, to make those claims definitively because the Israelis have not provided the evidence requested by the United States.
But it is worth mentioning that a lot of what the Biden administration, including the secretary of state, the national security adviser, the director of the CIA, all of those have been making trips to Israel over the past months. A lot of what they've been saying privately to Israel, the opposition to using starvation as a tool of war, the demands that humanitarian aid in much greater amount be allowed in, the targeting of civilians with far less restraint than the Americans would want to see.
A lot of that is indeed reflected, though with much sharper language and publicly, in the ICC report. But of course, the United States and Israel, like Russia, do not recognize the ICC as a legitimate body. Most countries around the world do, the vast majority. But the Americans and the Israelis, do not. The response here is going to be stronger support for the Israeli government inside Israel, stronger support for the Israeli prime minister and defense minister inside Israel. The idea for any Israeli civilian, any Israeli civilian that their country, that their leadership could be somehow put in equivalence to the terrorist organization that attacked them on October 7th is utterly unthinkable. And so they're going to support their leadership in response to that claim makes it harder to remove the Israeli prime minister and government, something that certainly the United States and many around the world would like to see. It also puts the hard right in Israel in a stronger position, because that's what the PM needs to maintain his leadership.
And of course, this is a group that is much more equivalent to Hamas. Yes they were also democratically elected. There are many, many parties in Israel, and some of them are very extreme. And they managed to be the critical support to allow for a coalition to be established. But they have leaders who regularly, including members of cabinet in Israel, the minister of finance, the minister of national security, though not critically, any members of the War Cabinet, but they have been arguing for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. They have been arguing for the full and permanent Israeli occupation of that territory, essentially ideologically very similar to Hamas and the axis of resistance. I mean, what you hear them say is from the river to the sea. And if you're Hamas, that means for you, territory should only be for the Palestinians. If you're Israeli on the far right, that means the territory, should belong to the Jews. But neither of which are going to lead to any possible resolution other than greater fighting and war. But it is, of course, one of the true tragedies of the last seven months that these are the two organizations that have become, in a sense, stronger and with veto power over what the rest of the entire world is trying to bring to an end, is trying to create stability and eventually opportunity for these two people to live side by side without fighting each other.
We are farther from that, I'm afraid, today than we were yesterday, and certainly much farther from that today than we were on October 6th. That is it for me. And we'll be watching this, I'm sure, very closely. Thanks.
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Israel-Gaza situation has Biden facing bipartisan criticism
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here and a Quick Take to kick off your week.
Of course, the Middle East is leading our concerns and the headlines right now. There is no deal despite Bill Burns, the most respected senior interlocutor the United States has to offer, director of the CIA, making a last-ditch effort last week in the region, including Israel, to try to get everyone to agree to a short-term cease-fire, in return for significant numbers of hostages being released. Did not happen. Lots of reasons for that. One is because it's hard to talk with Hamas, engage with Hamas. It is a terrorist organization. A lot of people refuse to negotiate with terrorists. And also because, by the time you get a message through to the leadership, it takes usually a minimum of a week, sometimes two, and things change quickly.
Secondly, Israel did not want any ambiguity on what was going to happen after the six weeks of the cease-fire. Prime Minister Netanyahu in particular, saying that they were going to go into Rafah, that they were going to continue and destroy the remaining battalions that Hamas has available to them on the ground in Gaza while the Americans were trying to say, “well, if you've certain further agreements were met, then it could extend and could become permanent. And that was the only way that Hamas was going to agree.” Well, the Israeli government didn't want that, particularly because the government would collapse in all likelihood. It would be very hard for the Prime Minister to maintain the support of his far-right coalition if he were to accept that in a deal. So he did his best to scuttle it.
And also, the fact that the United States pushing Israel as hard as they did publicly, gives Hamas more wiggle room, more support from the international community, more alignment with the international community, to say no. So now, the or else is that Israel is going in. What had been just the capture of the border controls, allowing in humanitarian aid, limited amounts be coming in is now going to become a full-fledged ground invasion.
Some 300,000 Palestinians of the 1.2 to 1.5 million that have been sheltering in Rafah have evacuated into areas with very limited facilities and aid, but certainly better than facing the onslaught which is coming. More will certainly evacuate, not enough to make the Americans comfortable, not including fighting age males among the Palestinians, irrespective of whether they are or not believed to be Hamas.
And there will not be adequate humanitarian support for those, either that have evacuated or those that remain there, which means this is breaching the red line as defined by President Biden, his administration, telling Israel do not attack Rafah or else. The or else at a minimum, being that the United States is going to boycott provision of offensive weapons, that would be used in these Rafah attacks. Biden spoke about that in an interview with Erin Burnett. probably not the way it should have been announced, really should have been a well prepared speech about US policy towards Israel, ideally should have been coordinated with American allies. Look, at the end of the day, when the war started, the US was not aligned on Israel policy with all of its allies out there. Increasingly today it is, with the entirety of the G7 and with allies in the Gulf, in the Middle East, and a US policy like its policy on Ukraine, where the US is leading but is coordinating security policy with everyone, is a much stronger policy than one where the Americans are by themselves. Biden is now in a position where he's increasingly by himself internationally, and he's also increasingly by himself at home.
This decision to cut off the Israelis from some of these offensive weapons opposed strongly by the entire Republican Party, certainly by Trump, even by people like Senator Mitt Romney, also by a number of independents and centrists on the Democratic right. At the same time, the left of the Democratic Party strongly opposed to Biden for continuing to support Israel, defend Israel, provide lots of military capabilities and intelligence in response to what they believe is a genocidal policy on the ground in Gaza.
So this is no man's land for Biden. This is going to hurt, and it's going to hurt at a time that Netanyahu is not going anywhere. He has looked stronger, certainly stronger in his ability to lead a defense of Israel against the 300 plus missiles and drones that were struck against it by Iran. Not a single Israeli military casualty there, but also not going anywhere because as long as this war on Gaza continues in a significant way, it is hard to call for a new election on the ground in Israel. Which means that when we're looking ahead to November, this Israeli government is very likely in place. Opposition of this Israeli government to Biden is growing more public. The Israelis saying they need to go it alone, which is certainly not what's happening. The reality is there's massive intelligence support, military support, defensive support continuing from the United States. But politically, it plays very strongly for the Prime Minister to say, I am the guy who is ensuring that we Israel are defended against Hamas, defended against Gaza, defended against an Iranian-led axis of terror across the region.
And that also means that this fighting is continuing in this US election cycle with more proxy attacks with over 100,000 Israeli citizens that continue to be evacuated from the north of the country, that's the equivalent of 4 million Americans. Imagine how important that would be in a post 9/11 environment, with them still not being able to live in their homes, have their children in their schools, all those things. That is an issue that certainly the Israeli government intends to address before the school year starts in September, which is of course before the US election in November. So a lot of ways that this gets a lot worse. And that's even before we talk about the potential for Iran-Israel to heat up again, before we talk about significant accidents from Iranian proxies to get through and kill American soldiers, on the ground in the region.
And of course, potential for terrorist activity, Islamic extremist terrorist activity gone way up on the back of all of this. So not great news. The worst week in the Middle East War for the United States, since it started back in October. And also the most challenging week for peace and stability in the Middle East.
Palestinians inspect the site of an Israeli strike on a house, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip May 7, 2024.
Biden threatens to cut off some weapons to Israel if Rafah invaded
“We’re not going to supply the weapons and the artillery shells used” in a seemingly imminent Israeli invasion of Rafah, US President Joe Biden said in a CNN interview Wednesday, his toughest language on Israel yet.
Still, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doesn’t seem all that intimidated. Israel massed armor and troops on the outskirts of Rafah Thursday morning, after seizing the city’s crossing into Egypt on Wednesday. Over a million civilians are sheltering in the last Gazan city Israeli troops have not entered, but Netanyahu seems determined to take out the remaining Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants based there.
Meanwhile, CIA director William Burns has been shuttling between Jerusalem and Cairo for urgent cease-fire negotiations that the US hopes could save untold numbers of civilians. Earlier this week Hamas said it would accept a cease-fire agreement, but it was modified in ways Israel found unacceptable.
If Biden does follow through with his threat, we’re watching for further acrimony in the already inflamed relationship with Netanyahu, as well as how his rivals with better reputations at the White House, like Benny Gantz, react.