Plenty of U.S. elections have been fought over the conduct of foreign wars. What we’re seeing in the Middle East today is a disturbing new inversion: a foreign war apparently being conducted to shape the outcome of a U.S. election.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s approach in recent weeks to what was formerly known as the Israel-Hamas war – now a complex and bloody three-front war in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran – has mystified his own cabinet and baffled informed military observers in Israel and abroad. His months-long refusal to engage in negotiations that might free the Oct. 7 hostages or bring stability to the region has defied logic, brought credible accusations of war crimes and outraged much of the Israeli public.
And his refusal to follow any informed advice from the United States to stop bombing civilian areas now that top leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah have been killed, or to step back from violent escalations that could trigger a regional conflagration, have led a growing number of observers to call this what it really is: deliberate interference in the U.S. election.
“I certainly worry that Prime Minister Netanyahu is watching the American election as he makes decisions about his military campaigns in the north and in Gaza,” Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy, a Democratic member of the Senate foreign relations committee, said recently. “It is certainly a possibility that the Israeli government is not going to sign any diplomatic agreement prior to the American election as a means, potentially, to try to influence the result.”
In less public statements, many Democrats involved in the Mideast file told the DC newspaper The Hill that Mr. Netanyahu’s repeated refusal to listen to President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken is clearly understood as an effort to reduce Vice-President Kamala Harris’s chance of winning the Nov. 5 election.
“Based on my reporting and all my years watching Netanyahu, I would not be surprised if he actually escalates in Gaza between now and Election Day to make life difficult for the Democrats,” the New York Times columnist and veteran Middle East reporter Thomas Friedman predicted in early September. “Netanyahu may do this because, I believe, he wants Trump to win and he wants to be able to tell Trump that he helped him win.”
This is exactly what happened during October: a brutal escalation in Gaza and a chaotic expansion into Lebanon and Iran, even after Mr. Biden insisted that Mr. Netanyahu hold back.
As this October escalation was occurring to the humiliation of Mr. Biden, the Israeli Prime Minister was communicating repeatedly with candidate Donald Trump.
In one of several calls, six people who were on the line told The Washington Post that Mr. Trump had told Mr. Netanyahu to “do what you have to do” in Gaza and Lebanon and provided official-sounding support for actions that Mr. Biden had discouraged. If true, the call would certainly be illegal under U.S. laws that forbid anyone other than the elected government from engaging in international diplomacy.
The call itself appears to deliver a message that military-affairs writer Fred Kaplan summarized as “Don’t accept any cease-fire deal offered by Biden. If I win in November, I’ll offer you a better deal.” Indeed, the fact that Mr. Netanyahu appears to speak more frequently and with greater sympathy with a private citizen running for office than he does with an actual U.S. President who has repeatedly agreed to arm his war at great expense is itself surely political manipulation.
However, there’s no need for an elaborate “October surprise” theory. Mr. Netanyahu’s own cabinet members are accusing him of acting for political rather than military ends.
Last weekend, Mr. Netanyahu was warned by his Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, that the multifront war lacks clear direction or objectives. In the letter, which was leaked to the Israeli media, he noted that in both Gaza and Lebanon Israel needs to “establish a non-threatening environment” to allow civilians to return to their homes and permit the return of the hostages. Mr. Netanyahu brusquely dismissed the letter, calling it “extremely puzzling.”
Mr. Gallant, despite being nominally involved in the organization of the war, has repeatedly questioned why Mr. Netanyahu is continuing to prosecute it in such a needlessly brutal fashion, without an end game or any willingness to seek a settlement, a surrender or a return of the hostages. This strategy-free tactic, he warned in June, will force Israel into a lengthy de facto occupation of Gaza costing the country “blood and many victims, with no aim.”
It now appears that there is an aim. It’s a goal that might rescue Mr. Netanyahu’s political hide, and surround him with an international alliance of similar-minded elected autocrats. The price of that aim, in innocent human lives, is unspeakable.