Today, Explained - Biden goes to Israel

Episode Date: October 18, 2023

It’s been 11 days since Hamas attacked Israel, killing civilians and taking hostages. Israel’s retaliation has killed hundreds of Palestinians and created a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment Aaron David Miller and Middle East analyst Michael Wahid Hanna explain what role diplomacy will play in the coming days. This episode was produced by Hady Mawajdeh and Amanda Lewellyn with help from Jon Ehrens, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Tien Nguyen and Avishay Artsy, engineered by David Herman and Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Coming up on Today Explained, President Biden spoke from Israel today after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He said, among other things, Israel has the right to defend itself and the U.S. will help Israel. My message to any state or any other hostile actor, thinking about attacking Israel remains the same as it was a week ago. Don't. Don't. Don't. Biden also said, based on information he's seen, quote, an errant rocket fired by a terrorist group from Gaza caused the devastation at a hospital in Gaza City yesterday. Gaza's health ministry blames Israel for that incident. Biden also urged Israel to be cautious.

The vast majority of Palestinians are not Hamas. Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people. We have news of Biden's visit coming up next. BetMGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with BetMGM. And no matter your team, your favorite player, or your style, there's something every NBA fan will love about BetMGM. Download the app today and discover why BetMGM is your basketball home for the season.

Raise your game to the next level this year with BetMGM, a sportsbook worth a slam dunk and authorized gaming partner of the NBA. BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge.

BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. You're listening to Today Explained. It's been 11 days since Hamas attacked Israel, killing civilians and taking hostages. Israel's retaliation has created a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. Can diplomacy work at this point? Today we're going to ask people who are familiar with such negotiations. Aaron David Miller is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment who served in both Republican and Democratic presidential administrations as a Middle East analyst, advisor and negotiator. I asked him, what is President Biden's objectiveized and lacking, I think, in their own view of their own leadership, to demonstrate a measure of hope and support for the Israelis.

I come to Israel with a single message. You're not alone. You are not alone. As long as the United States stands and we will stand forever, we'll not let you ever be alone. He's already started by meeting with the families of first responders and hostages. The second objective, complicated by the fact that the Arab summit in Amman was postponed, has sort of been short-circuited because he can crest the Israelis on the need for a stable and predictable humanitarian corridor to surge humanitarian assistance in badly needed communities and displace Palestinians in southern Gaza. But he cannot have an opportunity right now to talk to Abdel Fattah al-Sisi directly in person in Amman. And I think that's unfortunate. The other reality is because of the attack on the Al-Akhle Arab Hospital in Gaza, there are demonstrations

throughout the region. Anger is surging. And the visit, because he cannot see America's Arab partners, Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority, seems to be an Israel-only trip. And given the anger generated by the attack, and I must say the president must have received information because he made a statement that basically said that it was his understanding that the Israelis were not responsible. I was deeply saddened and outraged by the explosion at the hospital in Gaza yesterday. And based on what I've seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you. But the perception on the Arab street and in the Arab

world and the Muslim world is that the Israelis were responsible for this and no denial and no explanation by the United States is going to address that problem. So that creates an optic problem for the administration going forward. And finally, the third and hardest objective was to sit with the prime minister and his war cabinet, to press them, to question them on the issue of the ground campaign. What are its objectives? What are the means at Israel's disposal to carry it out? What are the complications? And of course, what happens the day after?

The president has already added to his preternatural support of Israel over the last week, additional points on proportionality, the need to adhere to the rules of war, the need to avoid civilian casualties, and the need to avoid reoccupying Gaza. My own sense now, whether it's been a factor in the delay, Israeli indecision has been a factor in the delay. The Biden visit will now almost certainly delay the ground campaign. I'm beginning to think that the massive ground campaign that the Israelis have promised, the mobilization and their response, may not be that massive ground campaign.

What would take its place? I'm not sure. But there's clearly a degree of indecision. And I suspect the president will seek to try to clarify what the Israelis intend to do in the days and weeks ahead. Why is it important for him to clarify what the Israelis intend to do in the days and weeks ahead? Is that part of a plan to de-escalate this war? It's a fascinating question. I think he would like to, but I don't think we've reached the point where the president is going to say to the prime minister, it would be much better for the U.S.-Israeli relationship, our interests, my personal relationship with you and the region if you didn't do this. I think the line of questioning will lead to an effort to try to get the Israelis to think through

the consequences of what it is they intend to do, how complex it is, how difficult it is. Because in many respects, Joe Biden and Israel now sandwiched between this savage, brutal Hamas terror surge, the Israeli blockade against Gaza, the punishing airstrikes, and on one hand, possibility of a massive ground campaign against Hamas on the other. The president is going to be identified with this operation. I think he understands that. He's put himself firmly in the Israeli camp. I think he is pressing to get them to understand the consequences and the implications of what the Israelis could do. I do not believe, and I could be wrong, that he's exploring alternatives in any detail to such a ground

campaign. I'm getting the sense, my own sense, untethered from any contacts with the government of Israel or the Biden administration, that there is a growing sense of delay and uncertainty on the part of the Israelis themselves about what it is they're going to do. And then the question becomes, if there is no massive unprecedented ground campaign, what do the Israelis intend to do? And I think this is a question that it's impossible to answer, and I may be wrong. But clearly, we're in the week two. I suspect there will be no major ground campaign in the wake of the president's departure. I think that would be a mistake and would further tie the president to what the Israelis are going to do. I don't think

there's an answer to your question. President Biden was, as you know, as we said, he was supposed to meet with the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. He was also supposed to meet with the leaders of Jordan and Egypt. Now, after the hospital was hit, as you said, those leaders canceled an in-person meeting. How significant is that and what could it mean here? I think it's unfortunate because he needs to have conversations. Those are three key partners, Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority. As weak and dysfunctional as the Palestinian Authority is, it is still the address. It is the address for Israel, it's the address for the international community, the Palestinian address, and it's the address for U.S. relations with the Palestinians. So the Palestinian dimension of this and the Palestinian authorities' role here right now is marginal. But as the days and weeks proceed,

with or without a ground campaign, if the United States is going to be more deeply involved in the Palestinian issue, and I suspect it will be, it has to be now, the Palestinian Authority, for want of any other address or partner, is going to has to be Arab state participation. And Mr. Biden's maintaining contacts with these partners is critically important. What are the risks for President Biden in taking this trip, in being there in Israel? Physical risks, obviously, which Secret Service is concerned about. He's been to Ukraine, which I think is a far more fraught and vulnerable security risk. But I think that'll be fine. Frankly, if the president can't figure out a way to deliver on the humanitarian issue, which is complicated, there's only one Hamas's interests, and Israel's interests. But at a minimum, I think he has to deliver on the humanitarian to create the stable corridor of assistance to Gaza. That's the key objective, frankly. I suspect in terms of the risk category, it's only the optic, the perception that he's visiting the region, but only going to Israel.

And that's not Mr. Biden's fault or responsibility. He intended quite correctly to meet with the Arab partners in Amman. That's not going to happen. That would be the only optic problem. Aaron, lastly, this region has been troubled for generations. You were an advisor to secretaries of state in multiple presidential administrations. You worked at the State Department for years. Does this moment feel different to you at all? You know, I was in Jerusalem in 1973 on October 6th, and the same sense of vulnerability, of trauma, the intelligence failure, the fact that the Middle East would never be the same again. In 73, I was right. Within six years of that trauma,

Egypt and Israel would sign a full treaty of peace. So out of trauma came hope. 20 years later, September 13th, 1993, I'm sitting on the White House lawn watching in amazement as Bill Clinton, Yitzhak Rabin, Yasser Arafat signed the Oslo Accords, thinking wrongly in a galactic misjudgment that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had reached a turning point and had become irreversible in its momentum toward a negotiated solution. Well, in that case, hope turned to trauma. So I would say two things. The arc of history is long, and it bends in very strange and very unpredictable ways, number one. And number two, every breakthrough in this conflict, whether it was the 1973 war that produced the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, whether it was the Madrid peace conference, which I, part of a small team help, former Secretary of State Baker Fashion in October of 1991,

was preceded by Saddam's invasion of Kuwait and the first Iraq war. The Oslo Accords and the Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty grew out of the first intifada, where the Israelis made a decision, Prime Minister Rabin, that there was no military solution to the Palestinian problem. Every agreement in these conflict zones came out of terror, insurgency, and war. And you could only hope, we're in a long, dark tunnel now. You can only hope, if past is prologue, that the pain, which is why people act in some respects, creates urgency, is accompanied by the prospects of gain. It is the pain plus gain that give rise to breakthroughs in the Arab-Israeli conflict. So I never say never.

I would only hope somewhere amidst all this, the horror, the violence and the tragedy of what we're watching, will come a new sort of opening to put Israelis and Palestinians on a different course. That was Aaron David Miller. He's a Middle East analyst. Coming up, the view from where President Biden isn't going. Thank you. make it easy to share unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone to the frame. When you give an AuraFrame as a gift, you can personalize it, you can preload it with a thoughtful message, maybe your favorite photos. Our colleague Andrew tried an AuraFrame for himself. So setup was super simple. In my case, we were celebrating my grandmother's birthday and she's very fortunate. She's got 10 grandkids. And so we wanted to surprise her with the Aura Frame. And because she's a little bit older, it was just easier for us to source all the images together and have them uploaded to the frame itself.

And because we're all connected over text message, it was just so easy to send a link to everybody. You can save on the perfect gift by visiting AuraFrames.com to get $35 off Aura's best-selling Carvermat frames with promo code EXPLAINED at checkout. That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com, promo code EXPLAINED. This deal is exclusive to listeners and available just in time for the holidays. Terms and conditions do apply. It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King. The leaders of Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority canceled their meetings with President Biden after the al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City was struck yesterday.

We're going to look at what these Arab countries want with Middle East analyst Michael Wahid Hanna. I'm the U.S. program director at the International Crisis Group. Most of my professional life has been spent working on the politics and security dynamics of the region and U.S. foreign policy there. Prior to getting into the policy world, I was a lawyer and focused on international law and spent a lot of time prior to that studying in the region. Over the last few years, countries in the Middle East have moved to normalize diplomatic relations with Israel. Where did things stand before Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th? Yeah, I mean, during the tail end of the Trump administration, we saw these major normalization agreements. Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain will establish embassies, exchange ambassadors,

and begin to cooperate and work together so strongly to cooperate as partners across... In more recent months, the big discussion has been about extending that normalization to Saudi Arabia. And of course, at the heart of this question as well was this issue of Palestine. Saudi Arabia had offered something called the Arab Peace Initiative, which was effectively an idea that if Israel and Palestinians came to a two-state solution, that then recognition and normalization would happen in the region by all the Arab states. And so there's been a lot of discussion of late about

what it would take for Saudi Arabia now to normalize relations with Israel. To hear Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel speak in recent months, he has really assured everybody in public that Saudi Arabia really would only require symbolic steps. We are at the cusp of an even more dramatic breakthrough, an historic peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Such a peace will go a long way to ending the Arab-Israeli conflict. And of course, events of the past days have blown asunder a lot of the assumptions that undergirded this diplomatic effort. The idea that the region had kind of leapfrogged ahead of the issue of Palestine and not be held hostage to the lack of a resolution of this conflict to push forward other interests. Where do things stand today after 11 days of war?

I think it's worth pausing and thinking about the regional reaction, particularly after the outrage in the region seen after the bombing of the Ilhadi Hospital in Gaza. The whole region is at the brink of falling into the abyss that this new cycle of death and destruction is pushing us towards. The threat of this war expanding is real. The cost this will bring on all of us is too much to bear. Regional mood has shifted. I think it's, you know, regardless of attribution,

and this would be a point of very serious contestation, but in a sense, the region has made a judgment about the war, about its trajectory, about what it is hoping to see. And so the reason I say that is because we saw sort of unanimity in approach. You had very condemnatory statements coming from Egypt, Jordan, but also the UAE and Saudi. That is a judgment about the war itself and about their fears about its direction, perhaps more so than attribution, because obviously there's deep skepticism in the region about the Israeli account for what happened. But the fact that the statements came out,

the fact that the statements looked like they did, I think is reflective of this shift in regional mood. And that shift might actually create real constraints on Israel's freedom of operation and perhaps the kind of scope of military offensive that it might be able to launch now. President Biden is in Israel today. He was supposed to, on this trip, meet with the president of Egypt, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the president of Egypt, and Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority. They were to meet in Amman. And of course, it's not surprising that after yesterday's incident and what looks to be a pretty horrific civilian toll, Mahmoud Abbas at first and the others later pulled the plug on this meeting. It's reflective of the strain on relations with the United States seen as the sort of key backer

of Israel and how volatile the moment is. And I'm sure there will be multiple communications in the coming days with these leaders, including President Sisi, because humanitarian access is dependent at this point, because of the Israeli stance, on coming to an agreement on the Rafah border crossing. So, you know, there has been a lot of talk about opening up. The Egyptians contest that it's closed, but they say that it is non-functional because of Israeli airstrikes and the lack of full agreement on how the crossing would operate. But clearly, there is a big gap between what the United States has announced on humanitarian access and assistance and what we see on the ground. There is not a functioning border crossing now.

And it will be key in the coming days, because the situation really is quite dire inside Gaza, and the Israelis are not going to let up on their siege, that there is a way to create a somewhat normalized functioning of Rafah to allow humanitarian supplies into Gaza, to let American citizens and other foreign nationals out of Gaza and at some point to bring out injured for medical treatment. And potentially this could be a conduit for hostage diplomacy around the Israeli and other hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. So I think that's going to be the main focus at the moment. But as I mentioned, I think the other thing that has shifted now after the hospital bombing

is the regional attitude toward the war, regional patience with where it is going. It seems very clear to me that, you know, this kind of coordinated regional response, moving in lockstep and contaminatory fashion, you know, is meant to send a signal to Israel and the United States about their fears of where this is going and maybe expectations about attempts to try to tame this violence and eventually bring it to a close. There's a lot of anger in the region. There's a lot of blame placed not just on Israel, but the United States as the kind of prime external backer. And so there is risk here, very serious risk for the United States in being associated with whatever comes next.

Could diplomacy still work here, Michael? Is de-escalation, which seems far away, is de-escalation still a possibility? It's a question for U.S. leaders and European leaders. I don't think the Israeli political class is in any mood for de-escalation based on the kind of nature of the attacks and their sense of vulnerability and humiliation. But in a sense, it falls to the United States and others to counsel wisdom at a time of high emotion. Justice must be done. But I caution this while you feel that rage, don't be consumed by it. So that's the big question for the United States now.

It's a question for President Biden, particularly with the regional visit that so tightly links him personally in the United States more generally with this Israeli military operation. What sets us apart from the terrorists is we believe in the fundamental dignity of every human life. Israeli, Palestinian, Arab, Jew, Muslim, Christian, everyone. And clearly we see the horrific kinds of violence that are almost certainly going to multiply if this war continues on its current trajectory, and if the Israelis launch what could be a very prolonged, protracted, and bloody ground invasion. That was Michael Wahid Hanna of the International Crisis Group.

We're going to continue to cover this war as it unfolds. And if you have something that you want explained, we'd love to hear from you. You can call us at 202-643-0314. And just know that if you leave us a message, we may play your message on the air. Today's episode was produced by Hadi Mouagdi and Amanda Llewellyn. We had help from John Ahrens. And our editor is Amina El-Sadi. Our engineers were David Herman and Patrick Boyd.

And our fact checkers were Tian Nguyen and Avishai Artsy. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained. you