Next stage in the war in Middle East could be in Lebanon and northern Israel more than in Gaza: Prof Max Abrahms

To understand Israel’s perspective better in a war that is raging on in the Middle East and polarizing global opinions, blurring the line between right and wrong, and fanning culture wars across continents, I engaged Dr Max Abrahms, one of the world’s leading experts on terrorism, and a professor of political science and public policy at Northeastern University, in a free-wheeling conversation recently in New Delhi. Dr Abrahms, who has held various affiliations with Stanford, Princeton, Harvard Universities at different times, believes that the nature of the war between Israel and Hamas, the terrorist organization, will soon undergo a transformation. The following are excerpts from the interview that has been reproduced in full.

Are you surprised by the reaction to Israel’s response, which was inevitable given the magnitude of what happened on 7 October? Surely, a terrorist attack on such a scale couldn’t have gone unanswered?

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I’ve been extremely surprised by the reaction. I want to focus on the reaction in so-called Western countries, specifically in the United States, but also Canada, Australia, western European countries like France and the UK.

I want to compare the response to ‘Operation Al-Aqsa flood’ – the Hamas terrorist rampage on October 7th to the 9/11 attacks. After 9/11, the American public came together. It was a time of consensus, an understanding that terrorism was bad and that we needed to counter the terrorists. Now a lot of that went wrong because of… especially the Iraq war and some overreactions also in terms of the Patriot Act and clamping down on civil liberties that exceeded the objective threat facing Americans. However, the spirit of it was to counter these people who nobody could negotiate with, and they were committed to killing as many civilians as possible.

It was a time of tremendous patriotism in the US. Streets were painted red, white and blue. Flag companies couldn’t keep up with demand. And I compare that to… what we’ve seen since October 7th, and I’m frankly appalled.

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The former consensus that terrorism was bad has shattered. And now what you see commonly… I’m not talking about errant cases. These are not anomalous cases but a standard response in American cities has been for large mobs of people in the thousands screaming for not just an intifada, but a global intifada, and the difference is substantial.

They are not only calling for Palestinians to rise up against Israelis, they are calling for uprisings, lawlessness and yes, violence in the West, against civilians, especially against Jewish civilians. And so… probably the number one slogan that you see at these events is for a global intifada, even more so… than ‘Free Palestine’ and ‘From the River to the Sea’… These two slogans are not objectionable to me because those are expressions of political preferences. Somebody in the US wants Palestine to be free from the river to the sea. That’s a political preference, and that is constitutionally protected.

However, what is not constitutionally protected is inciting imminent lawlessness against American citizens locally, and we see that many, many, many, times a week in the US. We see in Toronto, in Montreal, we’ve seen it in Melbourne, in London, in Paris, and many, many other Western cities… To the point where it actually feels as if 2024 has rekindled the pogrom against Jews. They no longer feel safe.

And this is not just due to their own misperceptions or history of victimization. The police forces say that they are not actually safe. The police officers in various cities have to evacuate synagogues, they have to amass in huge numbers to protect local Jewish populations and the police themselves are very frequently the target of this lawlessness and violence.

So, the difference between the post-9/11 response and the response that we’ve seen to the Hamas attack could hardly be starker. Al Qaeda was very unpopular in the West, but the same is not true of Hamas. It’s not uncommon at all to see terrorist flags at these events. Hamas flags… or the leaders of Hamas being held up on posters… I’ve seen Hezbollah flags. I’ve seen jihadist flags like black flags that were used not exclusively, but also by the Islamic State. There seems to be a reluctance to clamp down, to crack down on overt supports for terrorism, including in the US, and it’s shocking and highly problematic.

Would you put it down to weak leadership from Western leaders?

I think one of the main causes is that the target of the attack was Jews. I think that there is a willingness to stand aside when Jews are targets. I think that a very common problem is that people do not make a distinction between the actions of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Jewish civilians living in the diaspora so Jewish civilians are blamed for every Gazan and who gets killed in the Israeli counterterrorism response.

This creates a very dangerous environment conducive to terrorism. I’ll also say that the Palestinian movement has been very savvy about broadening its appeal, especially in the US, but throughout the West… Making themselves very popular on the far Left. Very popular among progressives. The same is true of the Houthis, who have now become a big ‘progressive cause’, even though neither Hamas nor the Houthis supports many of the main issues that progressives claim to care about – like women’s rights or free speech.

The Palestinian movement, in particular, has managed to broaden by attracting other minorities, including blacks, in the US and many other minorities. It’s very sad to me… (because) American Jews were at the forefront of the Civil Rights movement in the US and in the West. Jews, for decades, put their necks out there and actually voted against their own interests, in many cases to help minorities.

But there are relatively very few Jewish rallies because it’s dangerous to do so. And at the Jewish rallies, they’re limited almost entirely to Jews, and so Jews have not gotten the kind of reciprocity you would expect given the enormous role that they have played in the progressive movement and for the benefit of literally every kind of minority living in the West.

Instead, these people have all flocked to the side which wants to harm the Jews.

Anti-Semitism was blamed on Hitler, and rightly so. But the anti-Semitism that we are witnessing right now in different parts of the world, what would that be blamed on?

Anti-Semitism today comes from many different sources. If I were to divide them up analytically, I would say that there are still anti-Semites on the far Right, but increasingly we see anti-Semitism on the Left and the Left also includes in practice, Islamists. Today the bigger anti-Semitism problem facing many countries, including the US, is from the Left. There are some very bad anti-Semites on the far Right, but there aren’t nearly the number of them as you see on the Left, the thousands and thousands of people chanting for a global intifada against Jews come from the Left.

While Biden has been backing Israel, he’s facing a lot of pushback from his own party. A section of the Democrats is against him, and many have warned him that in the upcoming presidential elections, the Democrats are going to face a problem from some of their core voters, the Arab Americans, for instance. How do you see this playing out? Is the new generation misunderstanding the extent to which Jews are being persecuted?

There’s a very common view among Jews themselves that the reason why there’s anti-Semitism is because there’s some kind of a misunderstanding. Many Jewish organisations which are well-intended… believe that the key to reducing anti-Semitism is with Holocaust history, but does anti-Semitism generally come from ignorance? It comes from hatred.

Many of the strongest anti-Semites, the most disgusting anti-Semites, are actually quite interested in Holocaust history. They spend their own time reading about it. They know more about the Holocaust than most people. It in no way reduces their anti-Semitic impulse.

You’re quite right that the Democratic Party is quite interesting now with respect to its position both towards Jews and towards Israel. I have been impressed by the Biden administration’s response to Operation Al-Aqsa Flood… Biden has done a number of things which I applaud him for. He has consistently recognized the October 7 attack as a terrorist attack, he has recognized Israel’s right and obligation to respond to the terrorists. He deployed military assets to the eastern Mediterranean which may well have been the factor that deterred the head of Hezbollah (Hassan) Nasrallah from opening up a legitimate second front against northern Israel.

Biden has been forthcoming with weapons for Israel’s counterterrorism mission in Gaza and he has also been a supporter of Israel diplomatically, especially at the United Nations… in terms of vetoing anti-Israel resolutions that didn’t end up passing.

Even the Hamas leadership has expressed surprise at how much the Biden administration has gotten Israel’s back. However, Biden’s stance has not gained him much support in the US for two main reasons. The first is that his views are more pro-Israel than most Democrats, and in fact the global intifada movement is made-up of progressives who are a major part of the Democratic Party, especially among American youth, so they call President Biden ‘genocide Joe’.

They’re extremely upset with Biden… His pro-Israel stance may well cost him reelection. Support for Israel will hurt Biden especially in Michigan, where as a percentage of the state there are a large number of Arabs and Muslims. They definitely do not share his views about Israel.

I also know a number of people who are in the foreign policy field like I am. And they too, are unhappy with Biden, but for opposite reasons. They think that Biden has essentially been too soft, and the softness that they see pertains to Qatar and also Iran – major state sponsors of terrorism. And they would like to see… And they’ve been calling for this for many, many years… For a stronger American response especially against Iran.

These are the kinds of people you know who opposed the Iran nuclear deal. They supported maximum pressure against Iran to derail the nuclear deal, and they see the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC, and all of its groups launching attacks against Americans… A large one in Jordan about a month ago… Attacks in Iraq and Syria… They see Iranian ties to, obviously, Hezbollah, but also Hamas, and the Hawks do not believe that the US can respond in a piecemeal fashion against the radical tentacles. They believe that the fight needs to be taken to Tehran. So, although Biden has been very pro-Israel, especially considering where large portions of his party stand, he hasn’t benefited politically.

Let me push you on this. Biden is a cold warrior. He is of a certain age. But you do not have to be of Biden’s age to understand that Israel is the wronged party here. They are the ones who received an unprovoked attack on civilians. Women have been raped, children have been butchered. So why would a large part of the youth in Western societies… Democracies in the West… supporting the Islamists’ cause? What ideological position is driving this? Why is the distinction between right and wrong getting blurred?

Many people in the West deny outright what Hamas did. There’s a lot of disinformation to try to minimize the barbarism that was carried out on October 7th. But the bigger problem is that many people in the West think that Israel deserved it. That the Palestinians are ‘occupied’ and so any kind of resistance is justified under such a political environment. And my argument against that would be that certain atrocities are never justified under any circumstance. Committing mass sexual violence against civilians, taking babies hostages, torturing families, going house to house in kibbutz… Slaughtering families is unacceptable under any political arrangement.

Furthermore, Hamas does not support a two-state solution. And although it is true that the current government in Israel also does not support a two-state solution… it has to be understood that there was a time when Israelis – the majority of them according to credible polls – did support a two-state solution in the early days of the Oslo peace process (Oslo Accords) in 1993 and 1994.

You could look at the data and you could see that the majority of Israelis were on board with making major territorial concessions to the Palestinians, leading to a viable, contiguous Palestinian state. But under Yasser Arafat, the terrorist violence didn’t subside, and in fact increased as Oslo went on and erupted even further during the second intifada.

It was in that political climate that the peaceniks in Israel increasingly became a minority. Benjamin Netanyahu has risen to power and has moved to the political right because the Israeli public moved to the Right in response to the terrorist attacks.

I personally would like to see more effort to reform the Palestinian leadership, such that a leader – who currently does not exist – who has some kind of mandate over the entirety of the Palestinian population… Someone the Israelis could genuinely work with in order to move towards a two-state solution.

At the current time, there is no Palestinian leader like that. Mahmoud Abbas is not the man for this job. He is too old… He’s too weak and he’s too disrespected among the Palestinians… But I am quite sure that if there were a Palestinian leader to emerge in the way that I’m describing, there would be a partner in Israel for more serious discussions about a two-state solution.

What do you think is going to be the endgame? The pressure on Israel is increasing and Netanyahu has said that he’s going to go ahead with the Rafah offensive. So how do you think this is going to pan out?

That’s your toughest question. My understanding is that kinetic operations at the rate that we’ve seen in Gaza are not going to continue indefinitely. I mean… To put a number on it, I would imagine that the war in Gaza is very different within three months’ time.

There is an understanding within Israel that the Rafah operation in southern Gaza needs to happen. That Hamas is hiding out there in large numbers. And it’s also believed that many of the hostages are located there as well. I believe that the Rafah operation is almost definitely going to happen even though there’s so much opposition to it internationally, and even within the Biden administration (where) it’s quite controversial.

There are 1.4 million civilians… I believe… that have fled in very tight quarters into that area. Israel is going to need to evacuate the civilians in order to properly take on Hamas. So, I’m hoping for the maximum number of Hamas deaths with the minimum amount of harm to the local population.

I believe that after this mission is done, that Israel will transition… It will continue to engage in selective strikes from the air, maybe some special operations forces on the ground to go after high-value targets, but we won’t see the same…kind of military response that we’ve seen.

I think that Israel does not actually want to oversee Gaza. For many, many years, even before the beginning of the Oslo peace process in 1993, there was a discussion called ‘Gaza First’. Your readers can look it up… Israel has been trying to disentangle itself from Gaza for decades. There’s very little appetite or interest in occupying Gaza. That’s also a common misunderstanding that what Israel wants to do is expand its territory and take Gaza. It’s not true.

What Israel wants is a peaceful Gaza. There are no Jews living in Gaza… So, Gaza, whether there’s a state or not, is Palestinian. Already Israel is taking a number of actions which suggest that it will be withdrawing… but also very mindful of the continued security threat out of Gaza.

Gaza is now bisected. It is literally cut in half by a huge road that’s going to be used to ensure that Gaza is not again used as the kind of terrorist safe haven which enabled Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. Also, within Gaza itself, there’s essentially a security buffer… A major wall area being built up to push militants further away from Israel.

So, I think that Israel will have a diminished role in Gaza, but obviously keep its eye on it for the required military responses. It’ll be interesting how much buy-in there is from other countries in terms of the Gaza reconstruction. There needs to be an enormous amount of reconstruction in Gaza. How much of a role will the Saudis play? How much of a role will the will the UAE play? How supportive will Egypt be? These are unresolved questions.

The war could also change in a very different way. Thus far, it has primarily involved Gaza, but I would not rule out a second front opening up by Hezbollah, that seems less likely now than it did before, because there have been so many opportunities for it to open up… But make no mistake, Israel’s northern border remains a tinderbox.

And there is growing consideration among the important decision-makers in Israel about actually engaging in what political scientists would call a ‘preventative war’, or sometimes it’s called a ‘preventive war’… The basic idea of a preventive war is that you believe that war with your adversary is inevitable in that time only hurts you, and so given those two considerations, it can incentivize going to war now over going to war at a time which would be more propitious for your adversary.

There is a sense among some Israelis that the iron is hot now and that there’s a lot of support in Israel for military operations given the atrocity it recently faced at the hands of Hamas. So, it is possible that the next stage in this war will be in Lebanon and in northern Israel, more so than in Gaza.

There are 20 per cent of Israelis… sometimes called Arab-Israelis or Muslim-Israelis, and they have been very quiet. They haven’t unleashed an intifada within pre-1967 Israeli borders. But there’s no guarantee that pre-1967 Israel will remain quiet in that area. Ramadan is approaching on March 10th. The government in Israel sometimes does things which exacerbate relations and could even be provocative. So, I wouldn’t rule out the possibility either of a more standard intifada opening up during Ramadan, especially if Israel goes ahead with the Rafah mission.

Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.