Israel must consider 'the day after' in Hamas war, 9/11 lessons, Ohio State historian says
As Israel prepares for a ground invasion of Gaza following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks, Ohio State University history professor Peter Hahn spoke with The Dispatch about the history of U.S. involvement in the region. He discussed lessons from the U.S. response to al-Qaeda’s Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, as well as campus reactions to the escalating violence.
Hahn has authored seven books on American diplomacy in the Middle East, including the textbook “Crisis and Crossfire: The United States and the Middle East since 1945,” which he recently updated for publication of its second edition. He is a former dean and a former chair of the history department.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: Can you give a brief rundown of the history of U.S involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
Answer: Through a complicated, messy international process Israel gained statehood in May 1948. President Harry Truman recognized Israel just minutes after the Israelis declared their independence, and then gave Israel political and economic support immediately thereafter, when five neighboring Arab countries invaded Israel, trying to destroy it in its infancy.
From that moment came decades of U.S. management of Arab-Israeli conflict.
The conflict can be divided into two pieces — there were decades of interstate conflict, where Israel was constantly on guard against what it considered offensive action by its Arab neighbors. Then, since the 1990s, the international war shifted to an Israeli-Palestinian war.
On the interstate conflict side, there was the war of 1948, and then in 1956, there was a war between Egypt and Israel, instigated by the Israelis. In 1967, there was a war between Israel and Egypt, Jordan and Syria. In 1973, the Egyptians and Syrians invaded Israel (on Yom Kippur).
The last of the international wars happened in 1982, when Israel instigated a war against Lebanon for the purpose of clearing out what it called Palestinian Liberation Organization “terrorist networks.” The action drew in the U.S. Marines under President Reagan, and caused all sorts of headaches for the U.S. government, including the terrorist bombings of the U.S. Embassy and the Marine Corps barracks in Beirut in October 1983, which killed around 240 Marines.
The international wars petered out in the 1980s and 1990s, with U.S.-brokered peace treaties between Israel and Egypt, and Israel and Jordan.
In the 1990s, the Palestinians emerged as a proto-state in their own right. Following the first Palestinian Intifada (popular uprising in the late 1980s and early 1990s), the Oslo process was designed to reach a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, leading to the creation of the state of Palestine — a so-called “two-state solution.”
We got inches away from an agreement, but talks broke down in 2000. Then there was a second Intifada, and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza felt more empowered to pursue their political extremism and tactical terrorism.
Since 2000, the Israeli-Palestinian war has roiled on and periodically exploded in bouts of intense violence.
Q. President Biden has spoken forcefully against Hamas and has sent U.S. aircraft carriers to the region as a “deterrent.” He’s pledged American hardware and intelligence support to Israel, and is on his way there as we speak. What do you think of these decisions?
A. Biden is in a difficult dilemma.
The destruction of Oct. 7 was deplorable by any civilized standard of evaluation. Many in the international community – and from what I can see, most Israelis – believe that instead of continuing to try to contain Hamas, it needs to be destroyed.
Biden’s dilemma is how to steer Israel to exercise its legitimate right of self-defense without getting into a war that, in retrospect, will prove to have been counterproductive.
It could be counterproductive either by not eradicating Hamas, or by causing so much devastation for the innocent Palestinian civilians of Gaza that world opinion turns against Israel, and potentially against its American backer. Or that the war in Gaza becomes like a Vietnam-style war, or an Afghanistan-style war, that just drains Israeli and Western resources, but doesn't ever get to an acceptable outcome.
One could imagine that a full-scale invasion could lay waste to Gaza and could kill hundreds of thousands of people. Hamas' senior leadership could be destroyed. But then what happens in that wasteland, to the people who survive, if they're not given hope of a more promising tomorrow?
Q. The Israeli ambassador to the UN has called this “Israel's 9/11.” What lessons from the U.S. reaction to 9/11 are relevant?
A. The psychological impact on the Israelis appears to have been as traumatic as the psychological effect of 9/11 on the American people in terms of galvanizing public opinion. Everyone's rallying around the flag, everyone's ready to go to war.
Israel's immediate response has been to rely on a military approach to dealing with Hamas — like the United States immediately moved to arms in Afghanistan, and soon thereafter in Iraq.
The U.S., by my judgment, did not engage in adequate planning for “the day after” in either Afghanistan or Iraq. Leaders in the Bush Administration — Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld in particular — scoffed at the idea of even the need for day-after planning. I don't know if the Israelis are doing that yet or not. Time will tell.
Q. It’s said that the Hamas attack has endangered a potential peace accord between Saudi Arabia and Israel. How important is that?
A. The Abraham Accords are a series of agreements that President Trump initiated to declare peaceful intentions between Israel and Arab states.
Saudi Arabia was never a military adversary of Israel, but because of its political and cultural authority, Saudi Arabia has emerged as a major Arab entity. Both Israel and Saudi Arabia, although in an adversarial political relationship themselves, are also concerned about Iran.
The agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel probably has been put on the backburner. And it's not unreasonable to speculate that one of the many factors that led Hamas to launch that attack was the hope of disrupting that kind of a peaceful agreement.
What happens next depends on what kind of war Israel launches regarding a prospective invasion of Gaza. If they emphasize violence and destruction without thinking about the day after, then the Saudis are probably going to be so sickened by the civilian casualties that they will be unable to negotiate a peace agreement with Israel.
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Q. Trump has said that the Hamas attack never would have happened if he were president. Any thoughts on that?
A. I think he was blustering as a politician seeking election, more than he was expressing a rational evaluation of U.S. diplomacy.
Q. What do you make of the reaction on college campuses across the country to the escalating violence?
A. There have been shouting matches of literal and figurative varieties, and I'm not surprised emotions are intense. The devastation of Oct. 7 was so extreme and so barbaric, and so well-covered by the media, that it's hard for people who feel cultural or family-based connection to the Israeli or Palestinian communities not to become emotionally invested.
The challenge is to figure out how to continue to structure rational, productive discussions, recognizing the emotional power and poignancy of what's happening, but also trying to figure out solutions. And, I dare say, teaching our students to continue to learn.
More: ‘Shock, fear and horror’: Columbus' Jewish and Palestinian communities react to conflict
Peter Gill covers immigration, New American communities and religion for the Dispatch in partnership with Report for America. You can support work like his with a tax-deductible donation to Report for America at:bit.ly/3fNsGaZ.
pgill@dispatch.com
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: OSU historian says Israel must consider 'day after,' 9/11 in Hamas war
