You're listening to On Shifting Ground from Commonwealth Club World Affairs and KQED. I'm Ray Suarez. In the past week, news from the Middle East has moved at a dangerous breakneck speed. We'd originally planned to talk about a rocket attack that killed 12 people in the Golan Heights on Saturday, July 27th. Israeli officials have blamed the Iran-backed militia group Hezbollah for the deadliest strike across Israel's northern border in months.
But then on July 30th, Israel's military launched its own retaliatory attack deep inside Lebanese territory, reportedly killing a senior Hezbollah official named Fouad Shukher. And less than 24 hours later, one of Hamas's most senior leaders, Ismail Haniyeh, was assassinated in Iran's capital city, Tehran. The killings may jeopardize the prospects for a Gaza ceasefire deal and thrust Israel into a serious conversation about a two-front war. To break down these developments from Israel, I was joined by Mayrav Zonshine on July 31st. Mayrav Zonshine is a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group. She's been covering Israeli politics and regional conflicts for more than a decade. Welcome to On Shifting Ground. Thanks for having me, Rafe.
Well, the situation in the Eastern Mediterranean is charitably in flux. What is the aftermath of the killing of Ismail Haniyeh going to do to rewrite the situation as it existed even just 48 hours earlier? You know, we're in a certain paradigm in the last 10 months that is already uncharted territory in the Middle East. And within those paradigms, there have been shifts and unprecedented acts. So in some ways, you know, this isn't surprising at all, but there's going to have to be another recalibration of where things are. We've been, you know...
told that there are ceasefire talks, that there's breakthroughs. But in some ways, both sides, Hamas and Israel, have remained very consistent. You know, Israel has consistently avoided getting into a permanent ceasefire. And Hamas has consistently said, we won't do a deal without a permanent ceasefire. And that hasn't changed. Israel also said from the outset of this war that it would target all Hamas leaders inside Gaza and outside Gaza. And also, if we look at the assassination of Haniyeh in Tehran, that was also something that the defense minister had said would happen. He said this in November. If you see that we have struck in Beirut, that Hezbollah has crossed a red line. And then he tweeted yesterday that Hezbollah had crossed that red line. So in some ways, all the things that we're seeing...
are things that Israel has set out to do. But to your question is, what's going to happen now? And so we know that strikes on the Iranian soil is something that Iran takes very seriously. We know that Khamenei has already said that there will be a retaliation. And at this point, with a paradigm both with Hezbollah and even with Iran, in which we've already had a direct attack by Iran in April.
on Israel, we expect these things to have these escalatory tit-for-tats. So the question is, will those two responses go even further or not? And so I don't think anyone really knows right now, but I think many, many people fear that Netanyahu is just gunning for a wider escalation, a regional war for his own political interests. I'm personally not so sure that that's the case. I think we have to wait and see what happens. There's a lot of domestic Israeli political considerations in his own interests that we have to take into account. But there's no question that nobody in the Middle East is safer today. That's for sure.
You mentioned that Hania was killed in Iran. Iran is a place that's been in a little bit of turmoil. New president after the death of the previous one and a senior foreign ministry official in a helicopter. We were still waiting to take the measure of the new guy and figure out where he was going to take the country. Does this likely, at the very least, put on ice any overtures that anybody had going with Iran?
I would certainly imagine that that's the case. And I do think that we're in a very precarious situation in which both in Iran you have a change of government. Also in the U.S. you have a lame duck Biden administration that has completely switched gears to Kamala Harris's candidacy. And either way, the Israel-Gaza issue has been highly problematic, to put it lightly. And you also have political issues with Netanyahu's coalition here in Israel. So you have a lot of forces that are in flux and no adult in the room to contain things, I think, even the way that we had it in April. So I think that this is a real test for everyone involved. And the pieces of the puzzle have not really settled in yet. So we don't really know what's going to happen. Let's switch, if we can, to the Golan Heights. I think a lot of Americans no longer have that in their glossary, in the way they did over the last several decades since the occupation there began.
What happened in the Golan Heights on Saturday, and why? Yeah, so on Saturday, 12 children were killed from the Druzi community. These are people who live in the occupied Golan Heights. Israel occupied the Golan in 1967 in its Israel-Arab War, and it actually annexed the Golan Heights officially according to Israeli law in 1981. Trump actually recognized that annexation during his term, but nobody else in the world really does. So it's occupied territory and it's Syrian territory. Now, Hezbollah has been firing rockets on a pretty much daily basis, rockets and drones, into northern Israel. And we don't actually have proper evidence yet, but the Israeli claim and the going understanding is that Hezbollah fired at an army base that is very close by. It also had to go over a mountain. The topography in northern Israel and southern Lebanon is very mountainous. And Israel says that the interception wasn't launched because it was a very difficult topography in a very short distance, a very fast rocket. It also claims that it's an Iranian-made rocket.
But the consequences of that explosion, which we assume is a Hezbollah rocket, but Hezbollah denies it. It claims that it could have been an intercepting missile from Israel from its Iron Dome, which explodes rockets in the air as its defenses. So I just want to caveat that we don't know exactly what happened yet, but the result was dozens of injuries, almost all of them kids and teenagers from the Druze community. And also, even though Israel considers it sovereign Israeli territory, the people who were killed, most of them, if not all of them, are not actually citizens of Israel because they never took up Israeli citizenship. So that makes it also domestically a very complicated and interesting issue as far as how Israel claims to be.
speaking for them and defending them. But effectively, Hezbollah and Israel have been doing tit for tats on military targets. Israel has been targeting military commanders. Hezbollah has been targeting military bases. And this seems like it was a very, very bad mistake that Hezbollah had no intention. It hasn't been targeting civilians, even though civilians sometimes are a casualty. At Crisis Group, we have been warning that this escalation is bound to lead to this type of incident that nobody wants and that could spiral out of control. And I think, in part, that's what we're seeing now. So that was Saturday, and that's the worst casualty count on the Israeli side since October 7th, a major event that even though it wasn't a Jewish-Israeli who was killed, it's something that the defense establishment and Israel can't ignore and immediately said it would have to respond to. And as you mentioned, it did respond.
by targeting the commander that it claims is the one that fired the rocket and that has worked on Hezbollah's precision-guided missiles industry. So in some ways, without the assassination of Hania in Tehran, what we had was what looked like could have been a response that could have closed it out in some ways. I think Israel really tried to calibrate its response in similar fashion to how Hezbollah and Iran calibrate their responses in order to keep the balance of deterrence without letting it escalate. But with this other assassination that, by the way, Israel has not taken formal responsibility for, then we have a whole new situation that we still don't understand how it's going to unfold. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in the middle of his visit to the United States, pulled up stakes, got on a plane and headed back to Israel. So it was seen as a significant enough provocation to warrant him heading home. Not that the visit was going that great anyway. That's right. But he did head home. You earlier mentioned the possibility of wider regional war. Some days it looks like that's where it's inexorably heading.
As long as there is no ceasefire in Gaza, there will continue to be this kind of war of attrition from Iran's proxies, primarily Hezbollah. And Israel, even though I think the last few days has shown that its focus is clearly shifting from Gaza away to the northern border and to Iran, that situation is still really, really catastrophic on many levels, obviously for Gaza, but also for Israel. I mean, you have just total chaos, vacuum, hunger, and what many people already accept is a form of genocidal war going on. And so I don't think you can think about any kind of return to stability without figuring out how to get a ceasefire in Gaza. And Israel doesn't seem to be interested.
in that, Israel seems to be under the impression that it is going to continue to destroy and dismantle and disappear Hamas, even though I don't think that that's something that's actually feasible. And so that continues to remain the source of why regional war is constantly a risk and constantly a problem. And this is a new paradigm because the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has always been more isolated, certainly the last decade with Gaza. It was isolated and then... This is a whole new realm in which Hezbollah has tied the fronts and has made very clear that it won't stop until Israel stops. So as long as we're in that paradigm, there's a risk. And now Israel, instead of de-escalating or what many security officials have said in recent weeks was a deal, a hostage deal and ceasefire that could have been achieved already. Instead of going for that, it's going for targeted assassinations all across the Middle East in a very weird and counterintuitive way. I think it's important for your audience to understand that. I think a lot of Israeli officials and maybe some of the public believe that this actually gets us closer to some kind of ceasefire hostage deal, because this is the Israeli narrative that you put more pressure. You show that you're tough. You show that no enemy is safe anywhere.
and then they'll surrender. I don't have that reading. I don't think that's how it's going to go. But it's not just about Israel wanting to blow everything up. I think they actually do think, some of them, that this is a strategy for reaching some kind of deal. In the process of declaring that he would not be a candidate in November's election, President Joe Biden said that one of the biggest to-do items in his remaining time as president would be to try to reach some sort of settlement in the Middle East. Does this look further away today? Does it look like this is just not doable by January 21st, 2025, in a way that it might have even two weeks ago?
I think Biden's vision package for the Middle East since this war started has been unrealistic and problematic. And at the same time, I think it's been the only diplomatic alternative that we could really look to, right? Because if you try to incentivize Israel to go to normalize relations with Saudi Arabia and try to bring in the Palestinian Authority back to Gaza, these are all things that seem very hard to achieve, but they are, I think, better than the alternative, which is just continued chaos and war. So I think Biden was trying to do this bear hug approach. I don't think it's worked. And I think that, you know, he obviously should have done a lot more to get a ceasefire. It's arguable whether he could have really leveraged a lot more.
and put pressure on Israel to do it. I think some people think that that's very doable. Some people don't. I'm not sure. But Biden does have good intentions, I think. But for many people, for Palestinians, for many in America, Biden is not just complicit, but has helped, actively helped Israel to destroy Gaza. And so his policy has been very, very problematic. And now he's on his way out. We've been talking both about Biden and Netanyahu, and there's a confluence of interests there.
It's not believed that Netanyahu is any particular supporter or friend of Joe Biden. And there's plenty of reasons for thinking that. Is this sort of just a bonus for Netanyahu? You can play out your own political hand and remain the leader of the war cabinet and Scotch Democrats' hopes of winning in November and the possibility of having to deal with Donald Trump again starting in January. No, I think a lot of people assume that Netanyahu has tried to draw this out for his own political interest, keeping the war going to avoid an election in Israel, to avoid his court trial that is ongoing and all that, and also to try to get to November. He's obviously banking on getting Trump back into office, but Trump is a wild card and we don't know exactly what he's going to do. But when Netanyahu was in Washington now, he had the same messaging come from Biden, from Harris and from Trump that he needs to.
finish this up, finish the war in Gaza and get the hostages back. And so this was not a very successful trip for Netanyahu. And I think, you know, his gambling on Trump, letting him do whatever he wants is not guaranteed, is not assured. So it's very problematic. But obviously, based on what we know of Trump in the last term, when he was in power with Netanyahu at the same time, Netanyahu pretty much got what he wanted in a lot of ways. He was able to normalize relations with Arab countries and push away the Palestinian issue completely. Now, that obviously exploded in Israel's face on October 7th. But I think Netanyahu thinks that he can, as you said, he can kind of just keep playing this along, stay in power, and then have a lot more freedom of action once Trump is there.
For Americans who follow this part of the world, are interested in the news, it's sometimes hard to... see Israel and see the region through anything but an American lens, often heavily colored by domestic considerations. But sitting here in Washington, it's interesting to think about what America looks like today through an Israeli lens. After October 7th, there was a great deal of public declaration of support, of embrace, of we're with you to the end and we're supporting Israel. And now that we're this many months into it, I'm wondering if America looks different through Israeli eyes.
I mean, I think there's a few different sets of Israeli eyes, and I think it's a really good question. Israelis on a whole love Biden and hate Netanyahu. That's the general public sentiment. Biden came after October 7th, put his foot down and said don't to Iran and Hezbollah. He has helped Israel diplomatically, politically, with weapons, and he prioritized the hostages from the get-go, which is something that Netanyahu has not done. And even the photo op from Washington, you saw Biden sitting on one side of the table with families of the hostages from Israel and Netanyahu on the other side with his staff, which was a very good illustration of kind of the way things are playing out. But there's a very big right-wing base in Israel that in a way...
also takes as a given that the U.S. will support Israel no matter what, takes for granted what the U.S. provides. And that's why you also see a lot of tension between the military echelon and the political echelon in Israel, because the political echelon is now run by a lot of far-right settler ideologists who want to do whatever they want in the West Bank, who openly call to resettle Gaza, and they don't care about the ramifications diplomatically or otherwise. And then you have a military, which is the one that has to keep the order in the West Bank and in Gaza, and needs the weapons from the U.S. And so the defense minister and Netanyahu do not get along at all. And there's a lot of reasons for that, but a big one is also, I mean, in general, not just him, the defense establishment, they've been pushing for a ceasefire in Gaza for weeks now.
because they understand that the military is tired and they understand that Israel's ability to continue relies on U.S. support. So there's actually a big divide there, but the media plays up the crisis between the U.S. and Israel more than it is. There isn't actually a real crisis in the sense that the U.S. is going to break away from Israel tomorrow. But we are seeing longer-term ramifications. I mean, the U.S. has put sanctions on Israel for the first time. Who would have thought Biden would have signed an executive order that potentially could have far-reaching consequences for Israel's settlement enterprise?
this is completely unprecedented. So the far right in Israel says, we don't need the U.S. You know, we can do this on our own and the U.S. won't tell us what we're going to do and it won't dictate how we're going to fight the war and it won't tell us that we can't live in land that's actually ours and all that. And I think this is the result of decades of U.S. policy that has provided complete impunity to Israel. Everything that we're seeing in the geopolitical realm that Israel is involved in has to do with...
exactly that feeling, like it can do almost whatever it wants and not pay any price for it. And I think we also got to October 7th for that same reason, this kind of hubris and this notion that we can just invest all our money in technology and weapons and that this is going to protect us. And also we don't really need a strategy of any kind and we don't need to worry about our diplomacy with the U.S. as a result because the U.S. will never exact a price for what we're doing. And so that's playing out in all kinds of realms and obviously not making Israel safer if that's what the goal is.
Ironclad doctrine in military theory is that the enemy always gets a vote, and you're never sure exactly what they're going to do. So we should talk some about Iran's interests in the area, the groups it funds, the groups it gives energy and support to, and what Hezbollah and Hamas have done in the months since October 7th. It sometimes just looks like pinprick strikes back and forth. Yes, tragic, but it's not all-out war. But then some days it looks very dangerous. Can Israel fight a multiple-front war right now?
I think it depends on what Israel is trying to achieve. You have to understand that Israel is a country that has fought a lot of wars, but they've all been very, very short. And the military plans for short, decisive wars. And I've spoken to military experts who have talked about the fact that Israel is now fighting non-state actors for the last 20, 30 years. Hezbollah, Hamas, this isn't the same thing. It's a completely different kind of warfare that Israel isn't necessarily in a strategic fashion adapted to yet. Obviously, they have very high military intelligence capabilities. They've demonstrated that very clearly over the last couple of days. But what we have now is a war of attrition. Hamas, first of all, its attack on Israel from God.
was completely unprecedented for Israel. It was basically a takeover and occupation of communities for many hours, something that possibly Israel should have foreseen, but because of its hubris and, I think, dehumanization of the Palestinians, it just didn't believe that it had agency to do that. And since then, it's been in a war of attrition on several fronts, and the military approach has been to prioritize. Gaza and to put the northern border as a secondary. And you actually have a lot of residents from northern Israel who have been displaced, who have been pushing for a ground invasion into Lebanon. And I'm sure Israel can do that. The question is, is it going to achieve things that maybe a diplomatic agreement can't also achieve? And even the military has said that it prefers a diplomatic agreement because...
In Gaza, you still have a completely volatile situation. The military itself doesn't want to reoccupy Gaza in the way that it occupied it before it disengaged and withdrew from Gaza in 2005. And what would a ground invasion in Lebanon achieve for Israel? Probably years and years and years of casualties and a high price and no decisive victory, which is something that Israel already went through when it invaded Lebanon and stayed there for almost 20 years. So I don't think there's any easy solutions here. And I'm not saying that diplomacy is going to solve all of Israel's security problems either. But Israel is in a situation where I think the military approach has clearly not worked.
And I think a lot of the security officials have come out and said that none of what we're doing in Gaza or elsewhere is going to be effective if we don't have effective political vision and strategy and political diplomacy for what we want in the future. It is very, very dangerous for Israel that Lebanon really is a hollowed out state. It doesn't have stable institutions. It doesn't have predictable governments that act in the interest of a nation state. And then Syria, wracked by refugee crises, civil war, but also an Assad who is back in charge unquestionably and back in the good graces of the Arab world.
These are dangerous places to have on your border unquestionably. And Hezbollah is like an opportunistic infection. It can thrive in southern Lebanon because there is no state. I don't know how you game out what your next move is when there's a steady supply of material, political help, intelligence cover, weapons from a state also that is sort of beyond the reach of the rules. And that is Iran.
Yeah, I mean, look, Israel is in a very difficult dilemma. If you ask a military official or experts, they'll all tell you that a big war again in Lebanon with Hezbollah is a matter of when, not if. And after October 7th, the Israeli position is you cannot allow these types of non-state actors to have this kind of buildup. I mean, Hezbollah is not the same Hezbollah as 2006. It has over 150,000 rockets. They can really wreak havoc on Israel's home front, on Israel's military bases, on its defense systems. And actually, something I wrote about in The New York Times recently was about how this 10-month period where Israel is claiming all these tactical achievements against Hezbollah, Hezbollah has been learning Israel's defense systems.
It's been learning how to circumvent them. It's been learning how to get through its weak points. It's learning a lot. So Israel is in a very precarious situation. And even people who believe that Israel needs to go into Lebanon and get rid of Hezbollah, if that's even possible, they understand that that's not something Israel can do in a week. And it can't do it tomorrow. And it needs to prepare. And it needs U.S. support. But that is something that is a best-case scenario if we got a ceasefire in Gaza and a de facto de-escalation with Hezbollah, which is something I think a lot of people in Israel now want because the situation is so bad. Even if you get all that, you still have long-term threats and problems that won't go away.
So what do you do in that situation? So some people think you need a decisive military war. So unfortunately, that will continue to hover over us and it's hovering over us right now. And there are no easy answers, I think, for any of these fronts. But the trajectory that we're currently on is just costing a huge amount of life. Even if we put aside the catastrophe in Gaza, Israel economically is not going to be able to handle this kind of ongoing war for much longer. It can't go on like this. My Rob Sunshine, thanks for joining us on Shifting Ground. Thanks a lot.
You've been listening to On Shifting Ground, produced in partnership with KQED, with funding from listeners like you. Today's episode was produced, mixed, and mastered by Mateo Schimpf. Additional production and engineering were provided by Rob Spate. KQED's Jim Bennett is our technical supervisor. Jared Sport is our executive producer. Philip Yun is co-CEO of Commonwealth Club World Affairs. Our music is from Blue Dot Sessions. I'm Ray Suarez. Thanks for listening.