All posts tagged: Israeli government

Biden’s New Doomsday Option Against Israeli Settlers

Biden’s New Doomsday Option Against Israeli Settlers

On February 1, Joe Biden took the biggest step any U.S. president has ever taken against Israel’s settler movement. He issued an executive order “imposing certain sanctions on persons undermining peace, security, and stability in the West Bank” and used this new authority to punish four Israeli settlers for violence against Palestinians and Israeli peace activists. But because the president’s directive dealt with the West Bank and not the war in Gaza, and was initially applied to only a handful of people, it was largely overlooked—or cast by critics as a symbolic sop to disaffected Arab and Muslim voters in places like Michigan. A careful reading of the order and conversations with officials both inside and outside the U.S. government, however, reveal that the move was no PR exercise. It was a warning shot—part of a deliberate strategy to splinter Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition and to advance the cause of the two-state solution. In time, it could even upend the U.S.-Israeli relationship. For more than a decade, Israel has struggled to contain a …

Will the White House Fight for a Palestinian State?

Will the White House Fight for a Palestinian State?

Amid the war in Gaza, a major crisis has been brewing, largely behind the scenes, between the United States and Israel over the need for a Palestinian state. The two governments’ positions have long diverged—except during the administration of Donald Trump, whose peace proposal envisaged Israel annexing an additional 30 percent of the occupied West Bank and enveloping a conditional Palestinian state in an even more empowered Greater Israel. Now that divergence has a harder, sharper edge than ever: Washington’s strategic goals in the region require a Palestinian state in the long run and Israeli acknowledgment of that aim in the short run; the Israeli government is having none of it. Much expectation attends a purportedly comprehensive peace proposal that the U.S. and its most important Arab partners have reportedly been working on, soon to be unveiled and then implemented as the Gaza war winds down. The centerpiece of the plan would be a firm commitment to, and timeline for, the creation of a Palestinian state—a process that President Joe Biden has already mapped out …

What Was It All For?

What Was It All For?

Four months after the October 7 massacre by Hamas, Israel says it is continuing to pursue the total defeat of the Islamist group, which has ruled the Gaza Strip for 17 years. At the same time, Israel is reportedly negotiating a hostage deal built around a pause in the fighting that could extend for months—long enough to make the resumption of full-scale operations unlikely, and perhaps even to arrive at a negotiated settlement. The medium-term survival of Hamas politically and administratively now appears inevitable. If so, what has been the point of the Israeli military operation in Gaza? The conflict has, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry, claimed the lives of 27,365 Gazans and left an estimated 8,000 missing. (Israel counts some 10,000 Hamas militants among the dead.) It has produced unspeakable human suffering, including a fast-approaching famine, and rendered much of the coastal enclave uninhabitable, while setting the Middle East aflame. If Israel was inevitably going to negotiate with Hamas for the release of the remaining hostages and then pull out its troops, only …

The International Court of Selective Justice

The International Court of Selective Justice

The International Court of Justice in The Hague today made an initial ruling, four weeks after an application from South Africa that accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians. The court ordered Israel to ensure that its military does not commit acts of genocide against Palestinians, to immediately improve humanitarian aid to Palestinians, and to prevent and punish genocidal incitement against Palestinians. However, the court stopped short of ordering Israel to end its military operations against Hamas, a nod to Israel’s right to respond in self-defense after the deadly Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7. South Africa had hoped the court would order such a cessation, in effect ruling in favor of an immediate cease-fire in Gaza. The court did also call for the immediate release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas. Given the dreadful toll of civilian deaths in Gaza, reportedly now topping 25,000, Israel should answer questions about its conduct. Every member of the United Nations’ 1948 Genocide Convention has an obligation to raise concerns if they have evidence that a group …

Can Netanyahu outlast this war?

Can Netanyahu outlast this war?

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. “It’s hard to remember at this point, but before the Hamas slaughter on October 7, Israel was embroiled in the worst civic unrest since its founding,” my colleague Yair Rosenberg wrote earlier this month. Most Israelis have since shifted their focus from that unrest, which was caused by the government’s attempt to subordinate Israel’s judiciary to its politicians. At the same time, many Israeli citizens remain at odds with the government’s hard-right factions over the country’s future, and Gaza’s—and those tensions are only ramping up as the Israel-Hamas war continues. I talked with Yair about what could be next for the Israeli government, Netanyahu’s profound failure, and how to stay informed about the war while avoiding misinformation. First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic: A Democracy in Crisis Isabel Fattal: You wrote a few weeks after the …

Erasing Jewish History Will Not Help Palestinians

Erasing Jewish History Will Not Help Palestinians

For Jews, the events of October 7—the worst massacre of Jews on a single day since the Holocaust—were horrifying and traumatizing. But what has happened in the three months since is also deeply unsettling, though in a different way. Much of the world, rather than offering empathy and compassion for Israel, has turned on it. Hamas’s malevolent actions helped produce a sharp rise in anti-Semitism and in anti-Israel rallies in cities across the world. Earlier this month, the International Court of Justice in The Hague began hearing South Africa’s case accusing Israel of genocide in its war against Hamas, launched in reaction to the massacre. Israel was the victim of depraved attacks by an Iran-backed terror group determined to annihilate the world’s only Jewish-majority country—and yet it is Israel that is in the dock. We’ve seen this perverse phenomenon play out in other ways as well. During the Christmas holidays, Jesus was pulled into the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. In an Instagram post, U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez drew parallels between the persecutors of …

Israel’s action in Gaza ‘way beyond legitimate response’ to Hamas attack

Israel’s action in Gaza ‘way beyond legitimate response’ to Hamas attack

Scotland’s First Minister has urged the UK Government to make clear to Israel its actions in Gaza have gone ‘way beyond a legitimate response’ to the October 7 attack by Hamas. In a statement on Friday, Humza Yousaf called for UK ministers to use their influence as a key Israeli ally to push for an end to hostilities. The call came as the UN claimed 1.9 million people in Gaza have been displaced as a result of the Israeli action. Mr Yousaf also said UK ministers should make clear Israeli officials – including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – must be held accountable for the deaths of civilians if the country does not “immediately cease indiscriminate attacks” in Gaza. The First Minister condemned comments by Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, who said the country should “encourage migration” of Palestinians from Gaza, drawing international condemnation, including from the US. Mr Yousaf said: “The time has come for the UK Government to speak out forcefully and make it clear that Israeli action has gone way beyond a legitimate …

When Leaders Fail – The Atlantic

When Leaders Fail – The Atlantic

“That film,” my friend Mick Ryan, a retired Australian general, said to me, “should be shown to all senior national-security officials and military officers. It is the most profound demonstration of what happens in the wake of slovenly strategic thinking.” The occasion was a visit to Israel with a small group of military and national-security experts. The film was a 47-minute compilation of videos taken from dashcams, body cameras, and closed-circuit-television cameras. Some smartphone clips came from the perpetrators of the October 7 attacks in Israel, who delighted in the footage, and others from victims documenting their last moments. It is the most horrifying thing I have ever watched. It includes subtitles but no commentary on scenes of murder, mutilation, and bestial cruelty. It shows a beheading, performed before a cheering Gazan mob, and the despairing cries of sobbing, blinded, blood-smeared orphans. And it concludes with a chilling fact: This was only a tenth of the mayhem wrought on Israel that day. Over the course of a week, we toured the Gaza and Lebanon borders, …

Biden’s Big Anti-Netanyahu Bet – The Atlantic

Biden’s Big Anti-Netanyahu Bet – The Atlantic

The fundamental problem for American presidents who have attempted to work with Benjamin Netanyahu is that Benjamin Netanyahu does not care what American presidents think. An exceptional English orator who was raised in Philadelphia, Netanyahu believes that he can outmaneuver and outlast American politicians on their own turf. “I know America,” he said in a private 2001 conversation that later leaked. “America is something that can easily be moved.” This attitude constituted a sharp break; in the past, even hard-line politicians like the maverick general turned premier Ariel Sharon responded to pressure from American presidents. But during Bill Clinton’s presidency and again during Barack Obama’s, Netanyahu changed the equation. He repeatedly blew off American entreaties on issues including the peace process and Iran, and turned his willingness to stand up to U.S. presidents into an electoral selling point with his base. Faced with this unprecedented recalcitrance, different Democratic administrations tried different tactics for wrangling Bibi. Some attempted to compel his compliance with hard public pressure, only to have Netanyahu wait out a U.S.-imposed settlement freeze, …

How to Be Anti-Semitic and Get Away With It

How to Be Anti-Semitic and Get Away With It

Out of 8 billion people on the planet, there are only 16 million Jews—but far, far more anti-Semites. I sometimes joke that if I had fewer scruples, I wouldn’t report on anti-Jewish prejudice; I’d contract myself out to the more numerous and better-resourced bigots, and help them get away with it. Because in more than a decade covering anti-Semitism, I have become a reluctant expert in all the ways that anti-Jewish activists obfuscate their hate. People must learn to recognize and reject these tactics, because too many communities have developed ways to excuse or otherwise ignore anti-Semitism. Today, such prejudice is growing in high and low places because powerful people around the world are running the same playbook to launder their hate into the public sphere. Here’s how they do it: 1. They become too big to fail. Over the past six months, Elon Musk has publicly affirmed the deadliest anti-Semitic conspiracy theory in recent American history, claimed that Jews and Jewish organizations cause anti-Semitism, and echoed extremist conspiracy theories about the Jewish financier George …