Episode Notes:

Michael Koplow, the chief policy officer at the Israel Policy Forum, joined the WarCast again to discuss the latest from the war in Gaza. The conversation touched on the state of the ground campaign, Israel's relations with Jordan, the northern front, the threat from Yemen, post-combat options for governance, and the politics of the U.S. congressional debate on a supplemental for Israel.

[:27] Ground operations

[2:54] Relations with Jordan

[4:35] Dealing with the "Axis of Resistance"

[6:52] The threat from Yemen

[8:48] End of "mowing the grass"

[11:42] U.S. funding for Israel

Episode Transcript

Aaron Stein: My name is Aaron Stein and I am the Chief Content Officer at War on the Rocks. You are listening to the WarCast, the members-only podcast for what you need to know now. Hello and welcome to the WarCast, where today I am joined again by Michael Koplow, Chief Policy Officer at the Israel Policy Forum. Mike, it's good to have you back on the show.

Michael Koplow: Hey, Aaron. Good to be here.

Aaron Stein: So since we last spoke, the ground invasion has begun, although I think it's not going as many people envisioned it, as this large big push-in, but it certainly seems like there's a strategy to besiege Gaza City and perhaps cut the Gaza Strip in half. What are your take and thoughts on the ground invasion basically a week in?

Michael Koplow: I think that you are correct in your description that it's not necessarily going the way people expected because the IDF has sent armored units and infantry in, but certainly not everybody that has amassed on the border and they're also doing things in a relatively slow and methodical fashion as opposed to racing in and trying to get into Gaza City as fast as possible. This started on Friday night, and it looks like in the beginning they were only going a few kilometers in, clearing out tunnels, clearing out nests of Hamas fighters, and they slowly circled Gaza City on three sides. And now just today there are reports of tanks and troops in Gaza City itself. They really have been, I think, up until this point, taking their time particularly on the outskirts of Gaza City. And if it goes on like this, then I expect we will continue to ramp up every day a bit more.

But of course the danger of something like this, where you go so slowly is that it is more methodical, it is more careful, but it also creates more time for outside criticism. The casualty numbers of course continue to go up every day, and that's on both sides, that today for the first time we have larger IDF casualty numbers as well. So that all creates political pressure and as the Palestinian casualties continue to pile up and as IDF casualties start to also get high, and I think that now the IDF death toll is now up to 15 since the ground operation started, you never know what that's going to do in terms of support for what's taking place.

Aaron Stein: So let's pivot to some of the regional repercussions. I want to start first with one of the things that you flagged last week, which is relations with Jordan. I think the news came out this morning, we're recording this on Wednesday, November 1st, that the Jordanians have recalled their ambassador and they have basically told the Israelis don't send an ambassador back to Amman. I think the Israeli head ambassador had been recalled. Is this prelude towards a complete rupture in relations or is this Jordan trying to check the box to do the bare minimum?

Michael Koplow: No, I don't think this is going to lead to a complete rupture of relations. The Jordanian foreign minister said that this is going to be the case while the war is going on and until the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is over. So that obviously provides a bunch of wiggle room since either of those things can be declared over when they're actually over or sooner or later. Ultimately the Israeli-Jordanian Peace Treaty is too important to both sides for this to be the ultimate rupture. But unlike the relationship with Egypt, which is far more security based, the relationship with Jordan obviously has a security element, but it's not only that.

There are more political sensitivities inside of Jordan than there are inside of Egypt regarding Palestinian issues. Not to say that there aren't those in Egypt as well, but it's more acute in Jordan. And so whenever you have a flare-up between Israel and Palestinians or really large-scale fighting like we're seeing now, Jordan is generally going to feel the pressure more than the Egyptians will. But I don't think this is going to lead to an ultimate rupture. It's going to just be a continuation of a difficult relationship that has been the case for a long time.

Aaron Stein: The other external actor of course is Iran and Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Lebanon. Or well, maybe the leader of Lebanon, maybe that was a Freudian slip. But the leader of Hezbollah in Lebanon has been putting out these rather strange videos online, previewing some major statement that he's going to make on Friday. Thus far despite it being more violent than the status quo, it does seem like the rules of the road in the post 2006 environment has held. And I would also contend that the rules of the road between the US and Iran and Iraq and Syria have largely held, even if it's uncomfortable. What are your thoughts on this? And of course, Nasrallah could give a barn burner of a speech on Friday and things could go to hell. But again, Wednesday.

Michael Koplow: I agree entirely. There seems to be very clear boundaries at the moment between these various Israel and Hezbollah encounters, which are taking place every single day. And the boundaries are anti-tank missiles and rockets and mortars at Israeli positions and Israeli strikes in return. At this point, I think you have 60 Hezbollah fighters that have been killed in these exchanges and I think we're still in single digits of Israeli soldiers who have been killed in these exchanges. So this seems to be on both sides, the quote-unquote acceptable price of doing business. And it's pretty clear that the Israelis, at least for now, don't want to escalate with Lebanon, even though when this is all done, I think that the danger of leaving Hezbollah in place with everything that it has is going to be taken, not that it wasn't taken seriously before, but I think it's going to be treated as a more urgent problem.

And on the Lebanese side, Hezbollah seems to not want to escalate things right now either. So yeah, the rules are holding. I think as we've spoken about before, there's all sorts of miscalculation and human error that can happen and the wrong thing gets hit and too many casualties and this all goes to hell. But yeah, for now it's holding and yeah, we'll see what Nasrallah says on Friday. It would be a little strange if he were going to announce that he's launching a big operation and telegraph it so far ahead of time, but we'll see what he says.

Aaron Stein: I guess if we were to talk about the proliferation, one, proliferation is a pro tool, so you can cut these videos pretty quickly and make them look dramatic. One case where there is a noticeable uptick, where I think this is a new variable in the regional balance is that the Houthis in Yemen keep trying to hit Israel with missiles, IE repeating some of the things that they were doing against the Saudis during the Saudi intervention and the Yemen Civil War. What are the Israelis thinking about the Houthis, in many cases, not quite making it? The missiles are falling in Jordan. I think some fell in Egypt and one was definitely intercepted over the Red Sea, I believe. But this is a new dynamic. What's your take on this?

Michael Koplow: It is a new dynamic. I think Israelis would be surprised if this becomes a routine thing. I think that the Houthis, they don't want to be left out. They want to make their presence felt as everyone else is gearing up to confront the Israelis. And to the extent that Iran is orchestrating all of this behind the scenes and they don't want to risk a big flare-up in the north that will lead to Hezbollah's destruction, and this almost seems like a low-cost way of making sure that its proxies remain engaged with Israel, but not in a way that's going to tip everything over.

As you point out rightly, so far, no actual damage on the ground has been done. It seems like the United States and Israel are able to deal with this pretty effectively with the technology that they have. But it certainly is a reminder that this isn't just about Hamas. There is a much larger Iranian game taking place in the region. And again, when this is done, I think these are all things that Israel is going to end up factoring in when it reconsiders its own strategic doctrine because before it viewed itself as being able to wait and effectively having deterrents against all these actors, and that's going to be rethought in a number of ways.

Aaron Stein: So I have two more questions. One will be about Israel, one will be about domestic US politics. The first about Israel is there's a general consensus amongst the analysts, and I think this is prevalent in Israel as well, is that the mowing the grass strategy is over, in that this idea of just factoring in quote-unquote "small" war every five or so years just to sort of keep things in the boundaries in Gaza or in the north needs to be reevaluated. And yet they face the same challenge over and over again, which is that they will soon be able to encircle and besiege Gaza City. I do expect the Hamas infrastructure in that city to collapse under siege. Who's going to take it over? And they don't seem to have an answer, so I'm wondering, is this really uprooting the grass and is it just going to be reseeded?

Michael Koplow: That's the big question. It's what a lot of folks, myself included have started to think about and work on and make suggestions. Ultimately, to me, the best scenario here is two phases, a short interim provisional phase where some outside coalition of states take over to administer Gaza and provide security in interim. I think that Egypt and Jordan, particularly Egypt, would be at the top of that list.

And in ideal world, you would have contributions as well from Abraham Accord states, and even from the Saudis, all under the auspices of either the US or NATO directing things. Though I find it very hard to envision a scenario in which you have American or NATO boots on the ground providing security. But certainly being the security overseer and organizing these things diplomatically I think is going to be important for the United States to do. Ultimately, that should lead to the return of the Palestinian authority to Gaza, but that can't happen on day one.

And it also frankly can't happen if the Israelis don't do something to address the larger situation in the West Bank and the larger context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because just trying to hand Gaza over to the PA after two or three years of an interim administration and saying, "Great, you have it back now, but all of the things that applied before 2007 still apply now, and we're still not going to have a real political process and we're still not going to really move toward any sort of negotiations or agreement or Palestinian statehood."

That's a political loser for the Palestinian authority and it's a security loser for the Israelis because when we talk about doing something that's going to eliminate this tactical need to mow the grass every few years, there's no way of getting around that if you aren't going to have some sort of larger political process that addresses the larger problem as opposed to just seeing all of these as targeted security issues to be dealt with. So I hope that that is the direction in which the Israelis are moving, and if it's not, it's where they should be moving

Aaron Stein: US House put up their own funding bill, $14.3 billion dollars. I believe that would be for presidential drawdown authority, IE taking stuff out of the US stockpiles, giving it away and then using the money to buy stuff to replace the stockpiles. But House Republicans tried to offset this with changes towards funding for the IRS. Again, this is not a domestic political podcast. We're not going to talk about this other than where do you see American where domestic politics on this funding issue factoring into how the Israelis are thinking about the conduct of the war?

Michael Koplow: I don't think the Democrats are going to vote for this bill with the $14 billion dollar offset coming from the IRS. The White House has already issued a statement saying that they're going to veto it. And I think that the Israelis at the moment, they do not want to be a political football any more than they have been over the past few years. And you're certainly not going to get any Israeli official to come out and say that they're annoyed or angry about the House Republican bill, but ultimately Israel wants to be able to have access to weapons and to be able to rearm and the Israelis understand full well what the politics of this are here in the United States and what it means to tie this to defunding the IRS.

So I'm sure that the Israelis would very much like this to go away and be resolved as quickly as possible in a way that both parties can support. Because even with the increasing partisan divide over Israel that we've seen over the past 10 to 15 years, this is absolutely not the time where anybody in Israel wants to be seen as tilting toward either Republicans or Democrats.

Aaron Stein: That's a fair answer, and I don't think a hot take in thinking this bill is dead on arrival. But with that, Mike, I know you have a train to catch to New York, so thanks for taking the time out.

Michael Koplow: Thanks a lot, Aaron.