Haass’ Take: Don’t Give Up On Diplomacy

Following the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel and the mobilization of that nation’s armed forces, talk of diplomacy seems far-fetched.
However, in his first public statement since that attack, Richard Haass, a Roslyn native and former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, is claiming that any reasonable ending to the war underway will have such a solution.
Writing in his “Home & Away” substack column, Haass laid out several daunting tasks ahead for Tel Aviv, all despite its overwhelming advantage in conventional forces.
“Israel lacks a strategy for dealing with Gaza,” Haass wrote. “Over the decades it has tried economic pressure, economic easing, enhanced defense, and attacks. None has succeeded and none is likely to. Restoring deterrence will prove difficult.
“There is the additional reality that Israel also lacks a strategy for dealing with Palestinians in the occupied West Bank,” he added. “Such a strategy must be premised on sidelining Hamas, something that only has a chance of being accomplished if Israel demonstrates that non-violent diplomatic efforts by Palestinians to reach an accommodation with Israel will lead to a far better political, economic, and territorial future for Palestinians than renewed violence.
“The absence of any willingness by Israel to adopt such a political strategy all but ensures the outbreak of violence we are witnessing will not be the last,” the grim column concluded. “Israel may well be at war…but wars cannot be ended and won unless they are waged with political as well as military tools. The true friends of the Jewish state, above all the United States, should not just stand by it in the UN Security Council and help it meet the immediate security threat, which President Biden pledged to do. The United States should also work with Israel over time to develop a viable political option to promote an accommodation with the Palestinians as well.”
The attack came on the 50th anniversary of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Haass drew parallels. Were Israeli intelligence forces “caught flat-footed?” Were they guilty of overconfidence, which Haass speculates may have been the case when Israel, in 1973, was attacked by both Egypt and Syria?
Either way, this war is different. Egypt and Syria were both sovereign nations. Hamas is an unconventional foe. From June 1967 to September 2005, Israeli forces occupied the Gaza Strip, a densely populated area now ruled by Hamas and where the attacks were launched. In 2006, Hamas won a legislative victory, earning it control over that land mass. Haass doesn’t believe a re-occupation of Gaza is possible. There will also be the fate of Israeli hostages, many of which are young people, the elderly, and soldiers, not to mention foreigners, including Americans. Can Israel retaliate and still free those hostages?
The Yom Kippur War was a shocking event. For a good 72 hours, Israel’s fate was in the balance. Since Egypt regained land lost in the 1967 Six-Day War and since Israel could not afford more loss in life, the 1978 Camp David Accords were possible.
Haass believes that a political solution is possible, but that would probably only include one with the Palestinians on the West Bank.