Why World Powers Can’t Stop War in the Middle East

In nearly a year of war in the Middle East, major powers have been unable to stop or even significantly influence the fighting, a failure that reflects a turbulent world of decentralized authority that seems likely to persist.

The on-again, off-again negotiations between Israel and Hamas to end the fighting in Gaza, pushed by the United States, were repeatedly described by the Biden administration as on the verge of a breakthrough, but ultimately failed. The current Western-led attempt to prevent a full-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon amounts to a race to avoid disaster. Their chances of success seem very uncertain after killing Israel Hassan Nasrallahthe leader of Hezbollah for many years.

“In a world where centrifugal forces are much stronger than centralizing forces, more capacity is in more hands,” he said. Richard Haasspresident emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations. “The Middle East is a prime case study of this dangerous fragmentation.”

The assassination of Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader for more than three decades and the man who turned the Shiite organization into one of the most powerful non-state armed forces in the world, leaves a void that Hezbollah will likely take a long time to fill. It is a major blow to Iran, the main sponsor of Hezbollah, which may even destabilize the Islamic Republic. It is still not clear if there will be an all-out war in Lebanon.

“Nasrallah represented everything to Hezbollah and Hezbollah was the advanced arm of Iran”he said Gilles Kepela leading French expert on the Middle East and, since October 7, the author of a book on global turmoil. “Now the Islamic Republic is weakened, perhaps fatally, and one wonders who would even be giving orders to Hezbollah today.

For many years, the United States was the only country that could exert constructive pressure on Israel and the Arab states. He was the architect of the Camp David Accords of 1978, which brought peace between Israel and Egypt, and the peace between Israel and Jordan of 1994. More than three decades ago, Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin Israel and Yasser Arafatpresident of the Palestine Liberation Organization, shook hands on the White House lawn in the name of peace, only for the fragile hope of that handshake to steadily erode.

The world and Israel’s arch-enemies have changed since then. The ability of the United States to influence Iran, its implacable enemy for decades, and its proxies such as Hezbollah is marginal. Hamas and Hezbollah, designated as terrorist organizations in Washington, actually exist outside the reach of American diplomacy.

The United States has lasting influence over Israel, particularly in the form of military aid, which included a 13.608 billion euro ($15 billion) package signed by President Biden this year. However, a strong alliance with Israel built on strategic and domestic considerations, as well as the shared values ​​of the two democracies, means that Washington will almost certainly never threaten to cut off—let alone stop—the arms flow.

The overwhelming Israeli military response in Gaza to the October 7 massacre of Israelis by Hamas and the capture of about 250 hostages drew a mild rebuke from Biden. For example, he called Israel’s actions “exaggerated”. But US support for its beleaguered ally remains unwavering as Palestinian casualties in Gaza number in the tens of thousands, many of them civilians.

The United States, under any imaginable presidency, will not leave the Jewish state whose existence has been increasingly questioned in the past year, from America’s campuses to the streets of the same Europe that less than a century ago set out to destroy the Jewish people.

“If U.S. policy toward Israel ever changes, it will only be marginal,” Haass said, despite growing sympathy, especially among young Americans, for the Palestinian cause.

The other powers were essentially spectators as the bloodshed unfolded. China, a major importer of Iranian oil and a strong supporter of anything that might weaken the US-led world order that emerged from the ruins of 1945, has little interest in assuming the mantle of peacemaker.

Russia also doesn’t want to be very helpful, especially on the eve of the November 5th election in the United States. As Iran relies on defense technology and drones in its complex war in Ukraine, it is also unenthusiastic about any sign of American decline or any opportunity to embroil the United States in the Middle East quagmire.

Taking into account his behavior in the past, a possible return to the White House of the former president Donald J. Trump will likely be seen in Moscow as the return of a leader who would be accommodating to the president Vladimir V. Putin.

None of the regional powers are strong enough or committed enough to the Palestinian cause to confront Israel militarily. Ultimately, Iran is cautious because it knows that the cost of an all-out war could spell the end of the Islamic Republic; Egypt fears huge influx of Palestinian refugees; and Saudi Arabia seeks a Palestinian state, but would not put Saudi lives at risk for that reason.

As for Qatar, it funded Hamas with hundreds of millions of dollars a year, which went in part to build a labyrinthine network of tunnels, some as high as 76.2 meters (250 feet), where Israelis were detained. He enjoyed the complicity of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who saw Hamas as an effective way to undermine the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and thus undermine any chance for peace.

The October 7 disaster was also the culmination of Arab and Israeli leaders’ cynical manipulation of Palestinian statehood efforts. A year later, no one knows how to pick up the pieces.

On their annual pilgrimage now underway, world leaders gather at the United Nations General Assembly, where the Security Council is largely paralyzed by Russia’s veto of any resolution related to Ukraine and American vetoes of resolutions related to Israel.

Leaders hear Biden again describe a world at a “tipping point” between rising autocracies and struggling democracies. They listen to the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterresthey condemn the “collective punishments” of the Palestinian people – a phrase that outraged Israel – in response to the “horrendous terrorist acts committed by Hamas almost a year ago”.

But Guterres’ words, like Biden’s, seem to resonate in the strategic vacuum of an a la carte world order, suspended between the decline of Western hegemony and the faltering rise of alternatives to it. The means to pressure Hamas, Hezbollah, and Israel at once—and effective diplomacy would require influencing all three—do not exist.

This collapse without reconstruction prevented effective action to stop the war between Israel and Gaza. There is no global consensus on the need for peace or even a ceasefire. In the past, a war in the Middle East led to a spike in oil prices and a collapse in markets, forcing global attention. Now he said Itamar Rabinovichformer Israeli ambassador to the United States, “the attitude is, ‘Okay, so be it.'”

In the absence of a coherent and coordinated international response, Netanyahu and Yahya Sinwarthe leader of Hamas and mastermind of the October 7 attack, will face no consequences for continuing on a destructive course whose end point is unclear but which will certainly involve the loss of more lives.

Netanyahu rejected a serious American effort to normalize relations with Saudi Arabia, perhaps the most important country in the Arab and Islamic world, because it would come at the price of some commitment to the creation of a Palestinian state, the very thing he has devoted his political life to preventing.

Netanyahu’s interest in prolonging the war to avoid formal reprimands for the military and intelligence failures that led to the Oct. 7 attack — a disaster for which the prime minister bears responsibility — complicates any diplomatic efforts. So is his attempt to avoid personal charges of fraud and corruption brought against him. He is playing a waiting game, which now involves offering little or nothing until Nov. 5, when Trump, whom he sees as a strong ally, could be elected.

Israeli families who send their children to war do not know how committed their Commander-in-Chief is to bringing these young soldiers home safely and to seize any viable opportunity for peace. This, many Israelis say, is eating away at the nation’s soul.

As for Sinwar, the Israeli hostages he is holding give him an advantage. His apparent indifference to the enormous loss of Palestinian life in Gaza gives him considerable influence over world opinion, which is increasingly turning against Israel as more Palestinian children are murdered.

in summary Sinwar has little reason to change course; And in what Stephen Heintz, president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund philanthropy, has called an “age of turbulence,” the world isn’t about to change course for him.

“The institutions that have governed international relations and global problem-solving since the mid-20th century are clearly incapable of dealing with the challenges of the new millennium,” Heintz wrote in a recent essay. “They are inefficient, ineffective, anachronistic and in some cases simply outdated.”

That was also the lesson of the year since the Hamas attack.

© The New York Times 2024.