Peace in Gaza: Skeptical and Hopeful

It's easy to be skeptical about this week's peace agreement between Israel and Hamas. The recent history of the Middle East is filled with misery, dashed hopes, and broken promises, with major interests possessing seemingly irreconcilable differences.

Joy in Israel (Correa/AP/WSJ)

Nevertheless, the spontaneous outpourings of joy in both Israel and Gaza at even the possibility of an end to the fighting reveal the powerful yearning for peace. Herewith the key elements of the Gaza deal--you, dear reader, be the judge of whether all parties have enough incentives to make it stick.

All living hostages held by Hamas are to be released.
Roughly 20 hostages are believed to be alive. Trump said they would be released Monday or Tuesday, as “getting them is a complicated process.”

Egyptian officials and others briefed on the deal said mediators are still hashing out the arrangements.

The bodies of around 28 hostages who have died are to be handed over later. Hamas has said it would need at least 10 days to locate the bodies, according to people close to the talks.

The families of hostages are waiting anxiously to see their captive relatives return after a monthslong struggle in the streets and lobbying world leaders.

Israel will release Palestinian prisoners.
Once all the hostages are returned, Israel is expected to release 250 Palestinians who are in Israeli prisons and 1,700 Palestinians who have been detained in Gaza during the conflict. Precisely who is on that list is being finalized.

Hamas has pushed to get as many big-name prisoners released as possible, including Marwan Barghouti, whom Israel jailed over his role in a Palestinian uprising in the early 2000s.

A cease-fire has gone into effect.
Israeli troops began withdrawing from parts of the Gaza Strip on Friday morning, Israeli and Arab officials said.

U.S. troops began to arrive in Israel on Thursday, the first of about 200 being sent to support the cease-fire in Gaza as part of an international team, according to U.S. officials.

The troops will help monitor the implementation of the cease-fire and eventual transition to a civilian government, according to a U.S. official. They will also help facilitate the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Though celebrations have erupted in both Gaza and Tel Aviv, mediators and many civilians on both sides are holding their breath to see if the cease-fire will hold. Truces have given way to renewed fighting in Gaza before.

The precise details of Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza are unclear.
A critical task in the coming days will be getting Israel and Hamas to agree on the exact lines for Israel’s initial military withdrawal.

Hamas wants Israel to exit from around 70% of Gaza in return for the release of hostages, Arab mediators said. Israel wants to vacate less territory, and the two sides are still negotiating this detail, according to people briefed on the negotiations.

The Rafah crossing with Egypt will open.
The border crossing will reopen to facilitate aid deliveries and allow for entry and exit of Palestinians. Some aid trucks have been entering Gaza in recent months, though in much lower numbers than what is needed, as the enclave endures a hunger crisis.

"Trump said they would be released Monday or Tuesday", which means that the next few days will be crucial. Why Hamas would agree to give up the hostages, Hamas' main source of leverage, remains a mystery. Regardless, if that happens, the celebrations will begin.

Middle East: the Future May Have Changed

The GBU-57, or the Massive Ordnance Penetrator bomb

President Trump announced that the U.S. had bombed three Iranian nuclear sites:

President Trump, speaking to the nation late Saturday, called the strikes "a spectacular military success" and said Iran's nuclear sites were "completely and totally obliterated." Trump had ordered the attack abruptly, hoping it would catch Tehran off guard.

The sites attacked—Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan—represent the core of the Iranian nuclear infrastructure. ​The U.S. bombers that attacked the nuclear sites dropped bunker-busting bombs called GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators for the first time in warfare.

Just this once I hope that President Trump had turned off his sales-pitch mode and is not exaggerating an accomplishment. If Iran's nuclear-bomb capability indeed has been "obliterated," the future of the Middle East has been changed.

Worrying on Friday the 13th

(Image from rreyesmd))

This Friday the 13th is filled with foreboding. The Middle East is threatening to explode in all out war between two of its largest powers, Israel and Iran. In the United States the Army's 250th birthday parade has become heavily politicized because it coincides with President Trump's birthday, and demonstrations for "no kings" are planned all across the country. Political partisans are itching to provoke violence by the opposition in order to gain advantage for their side with the general public. Though that strategy is itself disgusting, it has a high probability of working.

The fear of Friday the 13th is called paraskevidekatriaphobia.

The Trump Doctrine

President Trump with Qatari Emir Sheikh
Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani (carnegie)

President Trump has upended so many norms and protocols that it's difficult to distinguish those actions that have long-term consequences from those that serve as short-term distractions for his opponents. One such distraction was the gift of a Boeing 747 by Qatar to the Air Force, which made it easy to overlook the President's fleshing out of the "Trump doctrine" in his trip to the Middle East. [bold added]

Mr. Trump is offering a form of foreign-policy realism rooted in good commercial relations and a focus on negotiating peace and stability. He doesn’t much care what kind of government countries run as long as they want good relations with the U.S. He’s looking for deals, even with enemies. He thinks mutual interest in prosperity can overcome even strong ideological differences—and he has no interest in promoting American values, including liberty or democracy.

...He says he wants peace above all else, and the test will be whether his deals with adversarial states are short-term expedients or longer-term strategic victories. His deal with Iran, however it goes, will tell us something about his plans for China as well.

Mr. Trump’s aversion to ideology—to promoting U.S. values—led to the biggest mistake of his trip, which was a needless attack on his predecessors. He praised the sparkling new cities of the Arab countries and claimed they are solely the handiwork of those nations.

American foreign policy has always been marked by the tension between realism and idealism. (An example of the latter is JFK's inaugural address:

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.)

President Trump attributes recent U.S. foreign-policy failures to "nation-builders" and "interventionalists." His move toward realism is popular and is likely to last through his term.

Iran is Working Against Trump

President Trump withdrew the U.S. from the 2015
nuclear deal (JCPOA) in 2018.

Sometimes a politician's enemy is so despicable that it's enough to cause one to vote for that politician despite his flaws: [bold added]

Iran is seeking to harm Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in covert online influence operations, fearing a return to power by the Republican nominee would inflame relations with Washington, U.S. intelligence officials said Monday.

U.S. spy agencies have “observed Tehran working to influence the presidential election, probably because Iranian leaders want to avoid” increased tensions with the U.S., an official with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said during a press briefing.

If Iran wants to "avoid increased tensions" it should quit supporting Hamas and Hezbollah, both of which have rained rockets on Israel whenever peace threatens to break out in the Middle East.

Talking about Elon's Talking, Again

On Wednesday afternoon I flipped to CNBC to watch Fast Money and Mad Money, the shows that recap the stock market activity for the day. Instead of the expected fare there was Elon Musk being interviewed by Andrew Sorkin, a reporter for NBC/CNBC/MSNBC. I could not look away.



The most widely remarked-upon section of the 93-minute interview occurred when Elon Musk told advertisers who pulled their ads from X (formerly Twitter) to "go f--- yourself," uncensored on live TV.

The expletive was Elon's reaction to alleged anti-Semitism on a Musk tweet and the alleged placement of corporate advertisements next to pro-Nazi statements on X. He is suing those who made those (fraudulent, he says) accusations and heaping opprobrium on advertisers who believe them. I don't want to get into the merits of the claims themselves except to say that, for the moment, I give Elon Musk the benefit of the doubt that neither he nor X are anti-Semitic.

Speaking of the F-word, some of my former business associates said to me decades ago that their goal in life was to amass "F-you" money, that is, a nest egg sufficient enough not to fear telling off an employer before walking out the door. As we noted four months ago, Elon Musk's total investment in X represents 10-15% of his net worth. Losing that amount will hurt him, but not enough to silence him. When we're talking about F-you money, that's what we're talking about.

Good Goes Around, Then Comes Around

Maj. Gen. Miguel Correa, rescued Zayed bin Hamdan al
Nahyan, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan (WSJ)

The peace agreements (Abraham Accords) between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain would not have occurred without an unpublicized good deed in which the United States risked its soldiers' lives in 2017:

Gen. [Miguel] Correa was at his home in Abu Dhabi in 2017 when he got a call that the Emirati helicopter had gone down in Yemen while carrying out a counterterrorism mission...

Three Emirati soldiers were killed. Zayed bin Hamdan al Nahyan, a 27-year-old nephew and son-in-law to the country’s crown prince, was one of seven others seriously injured. U.S. officials soon learned that the young Emirati royal was among those being rescued.

Two American Ospreys carried a special operations forces medical team to the helicopter crash site in Yemen. The American medical team flew the seven injured soldiers to the USS Bataan, a U.S. Navy amphibious assault ship in the Gulf of Aden, said Capt. Bill Urban, spokesman for U.S. Central Command. One soldier died on the way to the ship as a surgeon on the Osprey revived a second Emirati whose heart stopped, said Capt. Urban.

Medical teams on the Bataan worked frantically for 48 hours, Capt. Urban said, as American forces onboard lined up to give blood for the Emirati soldiers. The medical team used 54 of 66 units of blood, making it the largest such “walking blood bank” the Navy has used since World War II, said Capt. Urban.

Meanwhile, U.A.E. leaders asked the Americans for special permission to fly the six soldiers, including the Emirati royal, to Landstuhl, Germany, where the U.S. Army has a medical hospital that specializes in treating combat injuries.

Gen. Joseph Votel, then head of Central Command, called then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who quickly approved the plan as Gen. Correa kept the anxious Emiratis apprised.

The U.S. flew the Emirati soldiers from the ship back to an airport in Yemen, where an Air Force C-17 cargo plane equipped with a special medical unit was waiting to fly them to Germany,

Flying the massive plane into Yemen posed a risk. The U.S. landed the plane at night and flew out before the sun rose to ensure everyone’s safety.

General Correa coordinated the mission and became "something of a hero" in the UAE. The trust that had developed between him and the UAE royal family was an invaluable part of the peace negotiations. Emirati ambassador Yousef Otaiba:

“The truth is, for the Abraham Accords to have materialized, there was a very much-needed element of trust, and we had that trust with Miguel Correa and the White House,” he said. “A pretty big leap of faith was required from all sides for this to happen.”

One good thing that will come out of a Biden victory is that the historic foreign policy triumphs of the Trump Administration may finally be given their due. Who knows, Hollywood may even make a movie (or limited series) about Major General Miguel Correa, soldier and diplomat.