A Cease-Fire in Gaza Wouldn’t End Israel’s Wars
The region’s most bitter conflicts aren’t all linked to one another.
By Steven A. Cook via Foreign Policy
SEPTEMBER 11, 2024
In late May, U.S. President Joe Biden laid out the details of what he called an Israeli proposal for a cease-fire in Gaza. In the course of his remarks, he made the case that “once a cease-fire and hostage deal is concluded, it unlocks the possibility of a great deal more progress, including—including calm along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon.” Two weeks later, Axios scoop machine Barak Ravid revealed that the “White House believes that a ceasefire in Gaza is the only thing that would significantly de-escalate the tensions on the Israeli-Lebanese border.”
This linkage has become an article of faith among U.S. officials, journalists, and analysts. It has become part of the mythology and half-truths on which U.S. policy is being made.
No doubt, a cease-fire in Gaza would be a good thing for Palestinians, in particular. Yet the idea that a halt to the fighting in Gaza would bring an end to the fighting in southern Lebanon/northern Israel or oblige Yemen’s Houthis to stop firing on Israel and Red Sea shipping does not correspond with reality.
Hezbollah’s arsenal, which is widely believed to comprise tens or hundreds of thousands of rockets, missiles, and drones, has conditioned policymakers and commentators to believe that this leading member of the Axis of Resistance is the party most likely to escalate, not Israel. That is backward. Of course, Hezbollah is a bad actor. Its leaders have Israeli, Lebanese, Syrian, and American blood on their hands. That Hezbollah is a militant organization—the A-team of terrorism, as onetime U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage once famously declared—does not contravene the fact that it has little to gain from escalation.
Hezbollah’s fighters are dug in throughout southern Lebanon, and despite Israeli attacks, it still has weapons depots and other military infrastructure there. It has expended large numbers of rockets and drones since last October, when Hezbollah began firing on Israel, but it still has a large arsenal. If Hezbollah escalates, it would jeopardize both its position and its weapons. On the flip side, it is precisely because the group’s fighters are so close to Israel’s border and because it can threaten Israel’s population centers, airports, and military bases that Israel is more likely to escalate.
The Israelis want to solve the problem of Hezbollah on the border, which is not some notional threat. The group has sought to infiltrate Israel, including through tunnels built under the border, and create pretexts for conflict. Given these concerns, the Israelis have been clear: If the matter can be resolved diplomatically and in an enforceable way, they are on board. If not, they will resort to military force to push Hezbollah back about 20 miles from the border.
This has nothing to do with a cease-fire in Gaza.
Biden specifically invoked Lebanon in his remarks, but others have also claimed that a cease-fire is the best way to get the Houthis to stop attacking Israel and firing on commercial shipping. It is an argument that hinges on little other than the (not so) good word of Houthi leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi. Lost in much of the obtuse Washington discussion of Yemen and the Houthis is the fact that the group is ideologically committed to war with Israel—and Jews. After all, it fights under the slogan “God Is Great, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse on the Jews, Victory to Islam.” In an encounter between a group of American think tankers and a Houthi delegation in early 2018, the group’s spokesperson made clear that they were committed to this destructive vision, adding that they also sought death to Saudi Arabia. Current events would suggest that the Houthis have not moderated their view.
In fairness, why did they wait until the war in Gaza to attack Israel? It is a good question. There is no doubt that Hamas’s attack last fall and Israel’s response to it provided an opportunity that did not previously exist for the Houthis to strike Israel. Thus, to a variety of officials and observers, it would stand to reason that once a cease-fire is in place, the firing will stop. That is thinking like a Green Room pundit, not a Houthi leader. Having discovered that they can fire on Israel with virtual impunity, there is little reason to believe that the Houthis will stop. They are, after all, ideologically inclined toward the destruction of Israel and the damnation of 80 percent of its inhabitants. Too often, analysts dismiss ideas as a factor in the behavior of individuals or groups perhaps because it comes too close to the third-rail idea of political culture. But the foreign-policy community overlooks ideology at a cost—mostly of being surprised.
In addition, the Houthis gain a political advantage over their domestic adversaries by attacking both Israel and shipping in the Red Sea. It is important to recognize that the Houthis control a significant portion of Yemen—but not all of it. They continue to confront adversaries, including the Southern Transitional Council, which seeks to break away from Yemen. If firing on Israel and commercial shipping gives the Houthis an upper hand in their struggle to control the country, why would they give it up even after a cease-fire in Gaza? To believe that a cease-fire in Gaza would compel the Houthis to stand down misses this inside-out logic to Houthi attacks in the Red Sea and on Israel.
Of course, any discussion of the possible effects of a cease-fire in Gaza on the broader regional conflict must include the calculations of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Allegedly, the Iranians do not want war. In a strict sense, this is true. Khamenei does not want a war in which Iran is a combatant, preferring instead to arm and train its proxies within the Axis of Resistance. This is central to Iran’s national security strategy: pushing the United States out of the Middle East and the destruction of Israel. If, by chance, there is a cease-fire in Gaza, it seems unlikely to alter Iran’s overall goals. The apparent support for a cease-fire articulated by Iranian diplomats at the United Nations is an effort to save Hamas—a principal proxy. For Tehran, a possible cease-fire is not a means to a more stable region but rather rationalizing assets to continue the fight. In the long war Iran is waging, its leaders believe they can afford to be patient and flexible, demonstrating pragmatism in one realm (a cease-fire) while continuing to destabilize other areas. A cease-fire in Gaza is thus tactical, meaning that the war against Israel will continue.
Much of this may very well be moot. For all that the United States has invested in a cease-fire and for all the declarations from senior officials that a deal is imminent, it has not materialized. The one-staters on both sides of the conflict do not want it.
Steven did not use Artificial Intelligence to generate this content.
Steven is the author of the recently published book, The End of Ambition: America’s Past, Present, and Future in the Middle East.
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