Quick Thoughts on the Israel/UAE Deal

As you may have heard, Israel and the UAE have announced a historic agreement to normalize ties, in exchange for which Israel has committed to "suspend" plans to annex the West Bank. My quick thoughts:

• This is a good thing. And it's okay to say it's a good thing! It doesn't make you a Trump supporter to say this is a good thing!
• If you can only take joy in policy announcements these days if they anger someone you hate, be advised that the extreme settler-right in Israel is furious about this -- they view it as Bibi once again Lucy-and-the-footballing them with regard to annexation.
• In all seriousness, this is probably the biggest foreign policy accomplishment of Trump's entire term. Of course, when one zooms out, that means his biggest foreign policy accomplishment is "Israel establishing diplomatic relations with its third Arab neighbor, in exchange for which Israel steps off a ledge Trump put them on." Less impressive.
• The best defense you can give of Trump's approach here, appearing to green-light annexation, is that it was a case of brinkmanship that paid off. Still a hell of a gamble though. When David Friedman says Israel could have annexation or peace, but not both, he's basically admitting his favored policy was one which would have denied Israel peace for generations.
• In "brinkmanship doesn't always pay off", see also Iran, whose increasingly belligerent orientation towards its Arab neighbors has had the effect of drawing them closer to Israel in ways unthinkable in the recent past.
• Will this announcement be an "icebreaker" for other Arab states to follow suit? I've seen Bahrain and Oman cited as candidates. One awkward but probably accurate assessment: It's simultaneously healthy for Israel and its Arab neighbors to develop closer ties and for the U.S. and Israel to have greater critical distance.
• While stopping annexation is an unambiguous good thing, it still leaves in place a status quo where Palestinians are under occupation and lack full democratic and self-determination rights. "Stopping annexation" is not and should not be the be-all-end-all of American support for Palestinian equality.
• Has annexation been stopped? Bibi is saying it is still "on the table". What's that I often hear about leaders who say one thing to their domestic audiences and another to international listeners? (I actually think this is Bibi once again playing the rule of Lucy vis-a-vis the settler-right and putting the football back down, but still).

LA Times Gives Dubai Assassination Quick Hits

I almost missed the pun ... I assure you, it's unintended.

The LA Times has a mini-symposium on the legality and morality of the Dubai assassination of a top Hamas leader (presumed, but not proven, to be done by Israel). It's very interesting reading.

With a bit of critical distance from my initial reaction, I think my view on the matter is changing slightly. What I wrote then, and what I still believe, is that within the facial framework by which Israel is being evaluated upon, this assassination was an unqualified success: one terrorist eliminated, no civilian casualties, no civilian hardship. It's also not particularly scalable, which is why it's unreasonable to base an entire security apparatus around it. But more importantly, it's somewhat annoying to see folks who last year were holding Israel to unreasonable standards regarding the degree of care it had to take regarding civilian casualties being equally aggrieved by this operation. It really feeds into my broader intuition that -- no matter what they protest -- the real objection is Israel doing anything to defend itself at all.

That being said, I do think there are perfectly legitimate concerns about undertaking these operations. The sovereignty violation bothers me. The passport theft bothers me even more. And that doesn't get into the diplomatic hellstorm that develops when you forge passports from your nominal allies. Bradley Burston's frustration is not unwarranted.

What I think is really going on here is the continued dearth of sophisticated visions regarding what a progressive, human rights oriented law of war should look like in the era of terrorism and counter-insurgency. Instead, we have visceral reactions tinted by our pre-conceptualizations of what (and who) constitutes good and evil, and then build out principles to match. And lo and behold, such an approach doesn't create optimal incentives. But when we keep changing the rules in midgame, it can't come as a surprise when people begin to suggest there are no rules at all. And that, unsurprisingly, is even worse.

Very Targeted Assassinations

One major shift we've seen from the Bush to Obama administration is an increase in targeted strikes successfully killing al-Qaeda terrorists. Most people consider this a good thing, though a few die-hard Obama haters are annoyed that we aren't capturing and sending them to Gitmo instead. But by and large, we consider this an example of a step forward in the war against al-Qaeda.

The recent assassination of Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, possibly (though not assuredly) at the hands of Israel, has not raised similar cries of pleasure. Indeed, it seems to be seen as some sort of mini-scandal. This despite the fact that this manner of eliminating a known terrorist resulted in precisely zero civilian casualties, property damage, or serious negative effect whatsoever. I seriously object to some of the policies endorsed here, but Sonny Bunch has a point when he writes:

I mean, look, I’m all in favor of lobbing missiles at terrorists from airplanes; it’d be nice to capture them alive and get some info out of them via harsh interrogations, but a Tomahawk up the keister works just as well as far as I’m concerned. But then you get all the hemming and hawing about “Oh, we’re just creating more terrorists when we accidentally kill an innocent bystander.” Well, there’s none of that here, is there? The guy was traced to his hotel room, zapped with a stun gun, and smothered to death. Quick and easy. If only all terrorists could meet the same fate.

I don't endorse torturing anybody, and I don't endorse recklessly lobbing missiles at terrorists without regard to the surrounding civilian population (though that doesn't mean no collateral damage is acceptable). Nonetheless, from within the framework folks say they judge Israel within (accepting its right to self-defense, but urging it to do more to avoid collective punishment and civilian hardship), this really was the ideal killing. At least, Alan Dershowitz writes, that was seemingly Judge Goldstone's view on things:

The Goldstone report suggests that Israel cannot lawfully fight Hamas rockets by wholesale air attacks. Richard Goldstone, in his interviews, has suggested that Israel should protect itself from these unlawful attacks by more proportionate retail measures, such as commando raids and targeted killing of terrorists engaged in the firing of rockets. Well, there could be no better example of a proportionate, retail and focused attack on a combatant who was deeply involved in the rocket attacks on Israel, than the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. Not only was Mabhouh the commander in charge of Hamas' unlawful military actions at the time of his death, he was also personally responsible for the kidnapping and coldblooded murder of two Israeli soldiers several years earlier.

Not putting any words in Judge Goldstone's mouth -- he may have no problem with the killing of Mr. Mabhouh -- but the global community hardly seems to be taking this stance. One gets the distinct sense it's damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Squeaky Clean

The United Arab Emirates gets in on the expelling Palestinians action, topping Jordan, which merely stripped their citizenship. So they aren't totally similar, but they are in the sense that I imagine few will care.

UAE Denies Visa To Israeli Tennis Player

The United Arab Emirates has denied a visa to an Israeli tennis player scheduled to compete in a WTA event in Dubai. The WTA, while expressing "disappointment" with the move, will not cancel the tournament, even though under association guidelines players are not supposed to barred from tournaments that they have otherwise qualified for. The WTA will, however, consider removing Dubai from its spot on the tour next year.

No word on the UAE's reason for its decision as of yet.