--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's another year, but we got the same wars. Hamas and Israel have been at it for 100 days as of this week. 100 days of hope and despair and hope again. 100 days that I enter Omar's room and tell him to be strong. And I pray. We got another deal to deliver humanitarian aid to Gazans. Qatar says it has brokered an agreement that would get medicine delivered to Israeli hostages in Gaza in exchange for medicine and humanitarian aid for Palestinian civilians. And the war continues to expand. And this was the fourth day of U.S. strikes in less than a week on Iran-backed Houthi militants who've been attacking merchant ships in the Red Sea. Before this spins further out of control, we wanted to ask how it could end. What would a permanent ceasefire look like? How would we get there?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We found a guy who says he knows how this story ends. We're going to ask him to share on Today Explained.
--:-- [Music starts playing again]
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today Explained, Sean Rameswaram for I'm joined by Professor Emeritus Ian Lustick of the Political Science Department at the University of Pennsylvania. He's been writing and thinking about the Israel-Palestine conflict for... For 55 years or so, ever since I lived in Israel for six months in 1969, as a student then, I published my first article on what do West Bank Arabs really want back in just two years after the Six-Day War. And I've been studying it professionally, working in the government, working in consulting, teaching ever since.
--:-- Ian Lustick: Most recently, he wrote a piece for Time called History Tells Us How the Israel-Hamas War Will End.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I have really been through so many of these wars. I remember the Six-Day War. I didn't remember the 56th War, the 73th War, the War of Attrition, 69-70, the Lebanon War in 1982, the Second Lebanon War in 2006. And one of the things that all of them have in common, they don't end because Israel's announced war aims have been achieved. They end because a superpower orders Israel to stop.
--:-- Ian Lustick: So that means I was pretty certain and still am certain that this war will end not when Israel's expanding list of war aims is accomplished, but when the United States, the reigning superpower, decides to turn on the red light.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The professor postulates that none of this will stop until the United States says it should, which might seem kind of like a head scratcher since the United States, by all accounts, is supporting Israel.
--:-- Ian Lustick: We asked him for the history here. 1948, there was a civil war first between Israel and Palestinians for many months that resulted in the displacement of many Palestinians. And then Israel was created. And I therefore formally declare Israel admitted to membership in the United Nations. The British finally left, and the Arab states invaded Palestine. That war continued until 1949.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But there was a point, Israel was in Sinai. It also was poised to attack and capture the West Bank. In both cases, the decision was not to do it because the British threat to end the Jewish state altogether if Israel dared to attack the West Bank or did not withdraw from Sinai.
--:-- Ian Lustick: After weeks of stalemate, the Suez crisis burst dramatically into the news again, for Israel has invaded Egypt. 1956, Israel, Britain and France attacked Egypt after Egypt signed an arms agreement with the Soviet Union and nationalized the Suez Canal. There was a quick war in which the British and the French were stopped, were forced to withdraw because the United States and the Soviet Union ordered them to.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Israel was ordered out of the Sinai and out of the Gaza Strip in March 1957 by President Eisenhower. As it is the manifest right of any of these nations to take such decisions and actions, it is likewise our right if our judgments so dictate, for we do not accept the use of force as a wise or proper instrument for the settlement of international disputes.
--:-- Ian Lustick: Who told Ben-Gurion, Ben-Gurion initially, his war aim was to never leave Sinai because that's where the Jewish people were created. Eisenhower told him, well, if you want to stay in the Sinai, you're not going to get any American ships visiting a lot through the Gulf of Aqaba.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Those were enough to get Israel out of Gaza and out of the Sinai. In 1967, Israel was faced with threats from Arab countries to attack, which seemed credible. Israel preemptively attacked and destroyed the Egyptian air forces and took over the Sinai, took over the West Bank, and took over the Golan Heights within five days.
--:-- Ian Lustick: On the sixth day, the military was still fighting against Syria, wanted to expand the war and the United States and the UN told Israel no you have until 2 o'clock today to stop. And the order was given by Defense Minister Dayan that even if the military commanders continued to fight they would not even get any more air cover.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The fighting was now stopped. After three weeks of wrestling with the Middle East, it's a real pleasure to come home tonight to the peace and quiet of Texas politics. Israel. More than two years ago, there was a battle here. Grim reminders of that six-day fight still lie rusting near the borders.
--:-- Ian Lustick: In 1969, 70, Israel was fighting on the canal and the Jordan River, the Suez Canal, a war of attrition, artillery, exchanges and bombing that were taking a toll on Arab communities, Arab armies, but it's also on the Israeli army. And this fighting continued through 69 and 70.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In the summer of 1970, because the Soviets put 50,000 advisors in Egypt and a crisis was brewing between the United States and the Soviet Union over this, the United States put tremendous pressure on Israel in the summer of 1970. and Israel finally agreed to 242, to the resolution that other countries had agreed to after the Six-Day War that said that Israel would withdraw from territories captured in 1967 as part of a peace agreement.
--:-- Ian Lustick: Israel had refused to accept that because part of its coalition wouldn't go along with it. Under American pressure, Menachem Begin's party, the right-wing party, left the coalition and Israel made peace and the war of attrition stopped.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It is an all-out war. That's how Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan describes an invasion of the Golan Heights and the east bank of the Suez by Syria and Egypt. In 73, that war continued after a few weeks. The Israeli army under Ariel Sharon crossed the Suez Canal into Egypt proper, into Africa, and was surrounding and was about to destroy the Third Army.
--:-- Ian Lustick: The UN passed a ceasefire resolution, the UN Security Council, and that ordered Israel to stop on October 22nd. It did not stop. The United States was engaged again in a super-duper crisis with the Soviet Union. We obtained information which led us to believe that the Soviet Union was planning to send a very substantial force into the Middle East, a military force.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Our nuclear missiles were put on alert, yellow alert, and the United States ordered Israel immediately to stop fighting and return to the lines it had held on October 22nd and to allow resupply of the Egyptian Third Army. That's immediately what Israel did and the war stopped.
--:-- Ian Lustick: I think I could safely say that the chances for not just a ceasefire, which we presently have, and which of course we have had in the Mideast for some time, but the outlook for a permanent peace is the best that it has been in 20 years.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And we could go on with the 1982 Lebanon War, the 2006 Lebanon War, both of which involved ceasefire decisions by the UN or the United States and France imposed on Israel that brought about an end to the fighting. Every one.
--:-- Ian Lustick: I think to some people listening, this might sound sort of paradoxical because the United States is such a supporter of Israel, because the United States is in a way funding these wars, even if the United States might want them to stop, that it takes the United States to stop the wars in Israel that they are funding, to stop this country that the United States is supporting.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How does that work? It works in this way, and I'm going to tell a story that might be odd. It has to do with Cuba. Cuba! There are two issues in international politics where the United States' position is what you call in statistics three standard deviations from the norm. That means completely weird. One of them is Israel. When you vote on settlements or you vote on whether there should be a ceasefire in Gaza, the entire General Assembly, 150 countries, will vote one way. The United States, Samoa, and Israel will vote another way.
--:-- Ian Lustick: The other issue that's like that is Cuba. The UN votes to end the embargo against Cuba. All 180 countries in the UN vote against it except for the United States and Israel who vote for the boycott. And that's odd on its face because Israel supposedly opposes boycotts. But in this case, it's the United States and Israel together that vote to boycott Cuba.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So what do these two questions, Israel and Cuba, have in common? They both are the questions where there are foreign policy lobbies in the United States that are single-issue movements and have decisive political importance domestically for the president.
--:-- Ian Lustick: The Cuba lobby in Florida and the AIPAC, the Israel lobby, all over the country. Those are by far the most powerful foreign policy lobbies. When push comes to shove for a president, it's domestic politics that counts always.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So American foreign policy interests only carry American policy so far. It's when the United States fears a regional war or a confrontation with another great power that the president can say, all right, domestic political costs I'll pay will be tolerable because it will be seen to be a vital national security interest now.
--:-- Ian Lustick: So what every president is looking for is saying, when will the cost to me of putting the pressure I need to put on Israel to stop it be lower than the cost of allowing Israel to continue fighting?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In past wars, those wars have been so quick, that's been an easier question. In this context, it's been a tougher one for the Biden administration, And it's a sharper learning curve. I don't think as many people in the Biden administration understand the history as well as they should be understanding.
--:-- Ian Lustick: OK so this war won't stop until the United States says stop. But when is that going to happen? More with the professor when we return on Today Explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for Today Explained comes from Built Rewards. These days, it seems like everybody has a rewards program. You swipe your card and you get one cent on the hundred dollars. But with your rent, frequently, you just pay month after month. You never get anything from it other than that roof over your head. Not anymore, says Built Rewards. Built Rewards says it lets you earn points on your rent. By paying rent through Built, they say you can earn flexible points that can be redeemed toward hundreds of hotels and airlines, perhaps a future rent payment, your next Lyft ride, and so much more.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: When you're ready to travel, they say Bilt points can be converted to miles or hotel points all around the world. You can earn points on rent and around your neighborhood wherever you call home by joining Bilt.com slash Explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T dot com slash explained. Support for Today Explained comes from Upwork. If you run a business, you know that scaling your business requires the right expertise at the right time. I sometimes wonder how many of you are running businesses out there. I would love to know. Please email me, noelle at king dot com.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: With Upwork, you can find specialized freelancers in IT, web development, AI, design, admin support, marketing, and more experts who they say are ready to help you take your business to the next level. With more than two decades of experience, Upwork has a simple and ambitious goal to pioneer a better way of working. Companies at every stage turn to Upwork to get things done and find more flexibility in the way they staff key projects and initiatives by accessing a global marketplace full of top talent.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's U-P-W-O-R-K.com, Upwork.com.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today Explained is back with Professor Ian Lustick, who said earlier in the show that Israel's wars end when a superpower says they should, not when Israel achieves their aims.
--:-- Ian Lustick: We're absolutely committed to achieving our war games, our war goals. Destroying Hamas. To prevent anyone from ruling or having influence in Gaza who will educate children to hate Israel. Releasing the hostages. To establish a buffer zone controlled by Israel inside this small Gaza Strip all along the border to distance the Palestinian population from Israeli settlements inside of Israel proper.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Making sure Gaza doesn't become a threat again. to prevent the Palatinean authority of having any role in the reconstruction or rule of Gaza. Making sure that we can return our citizens in the north and in the south. And of course, we're aiming not to have to rebuild Gaza, have other people do it, even though it was Israel that did the destruction.
--:-- Ian Lustick: You know, those are just part of the list that you can find. And for that, we'll apply maximum power with maximum precision everywhere that's needed.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So how has President Biden responded to Netanyahu's war aims here? And how has his response changed over the course of these 100 days of war?
--:-- Ian Lustick: Well, I think the most dramatic thing that we saw was right after the Hamas Islamic Jihad attack, the United States turned on the green light, which is what the United States typically does when Israel is at a war. Oh, go ahead.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Defend yourself or do whatever you call defending yourself.
--:-- Ian Lustick: My administration was in close touch with your leadership from the first moments of this attack. We're going to make sure we have what you need to protect your people, to defend your nation.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And later this week, I'm going to ask the United States Congress for unprecedented support package for Israel's defense.
--:-- Ian Lustick: However, within a few days, the Biden administration realized that there were extreme, there were forces in Israel who wanted to attack Lebanon. The United States was concerned, as it always gets concerned in Middle Eastern wars, that its larger regional and international interests would start to be impacted.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Biden became very concerned, I think, at the comments by some Israeli leaders that we should actually reduce our effort against Hamas and attack Hezbollah now.
--:-- Ian Lustick: We've always wanted to do that. This is a window of international acceptance, but Israel would go through an unprecedented amount of damage. And of course, so would Lebanon.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's the kind of war that Biden went to Israel to prevent. On the surface, it looked like he was there to support Israel, and he was. But you'll notice that it wasn't him who was embracing Netanyahu. Netanyahu embraced Biden.
--:-- Ian Lustick: Netanyahu desperately needed that sign. But what was going on politically was that once the United States, American president, is there, if Israel does something right away after the president is there, it implicates America as if America had told Israel, yes, attack Lebanon. And that is not something that an Israeli government can do. It cannot betray America so completely.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So that's one thing that we have to understand. The question of whether this catastrophe is going to become a super catastrophe. But still, I feel like you saw from the bear hug with Netanyahu to President Biden urging caution about the civilian death toll in Gaza, you did see a sort of progression in his approach where he started to caution and warn Netanyahu more in say month two month three
--:-- Ian Lustick: You used the word caution I think that right. I said at the beginning the United States turned on the green light. When Biden went there and started talking about war crimes international law you have to respect international law, he's turning on the yellow light, the caution light.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It got brighter and brighter, but it's not red yet. And that's the question. When is it going to turn red?
--:-- Ian Lustick: Now, when the United States plays footsie with U.N. security resolutions and seems to maybe be prepared to support one, even if it doesn't have any teeth, it's brightening that yellow light. When they allow a resolution to go through that calls for a ceasefire or when they tell Israel they're going to, that's a red light.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's why those resolutions constantly being proposed at the U.N. Security Council are very important. and important because we can see how close the United States is to ending the war.
--:-- Ian Lustick: From all the history that you carry around with yourself, that you've lived through, that you've studied, what will Netanyahu do to trigger the red light?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I don't think it's necessarily anything that Netanyahu himself will do that he hasn't already done. I think part of it will be the realization that you can't end the war in the Gulf with the Houthis until the Gaza war ends.
--:-- Ian Lustick: And you can't eliminate the probability of escalation in the Gulf or in Lebanon until the war ends in Gaza. There is a constant danger. There have been over 350 Palestinians killed in the West Bank since the beginning of this war.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: These are things that the Biden administration can only lose. It's losing politically already. The progressive wing of the party is weakening its support for President Biden.
--:-- Ian Lustick: That's a crucial issue for him. This is new. We haven't seen that kind of political factor in the equations that presidents have had to solve in the midst of Middle Eastern wars before.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it's hard for me to predict exactly how important it is, but I'm pretty sure that it will mean something as this election cycle moves forward.
--:-- Ian Lustick: I'm glad you brought up the election because I do wonder if this isn't resolved by November, what it looks like if President Biden loses the election.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If he loses the election, I mean, I don't see any real difference in a way. That is to say, the Trump administration, if you look at the Trump administration and the Obama administration, the trajectory of Israeli policies and the status of peace negotiations was the same. They didn't go anywhere and the settlement continued and the prospects for peace were zero.
--:-- Ian Lustick: So I don't really see much of a difference between the second Obama administration and the Trump administration. And I don't see much difference in the Biden administration.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The Biden administration was doing nothing to advance a peace process. This is getting into another topic. But when this war ends, when the shooting stops, there will be a renewal of a pseudo-peace process because the image of a two-state solution peace process is politically valuable to a president.
--:-- Ian Lustick: Even if he knows that there never will be success, the idea of doing something, of seeming to do something, of keeping alive the image of that possibility is very important, not just for the United States but for Israeli governments, for the Palestinian Authority, which gets hundreds of millions of dollars in aid every year from the international community, and from peace process industry.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: People like me and foundations who are constantly trying to find ways to bring peace or at least raise money for their organizations in the hopes that peace process will work. But that's another – that's the question of – we're going to see a diplomatic theater, about a four-year diplomatic theater once this shooting stops.
--:-- Ian Lustick: Do you think there could be a outcome from this particular conflict that would prevent another one in three or four years that could break this cycle that you've alluded to where eventually the United States or the UN has to step in and say that's enough?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well I think so I think it's possible I don't think it's very likely but it's possible and one of the things that is I could be surprised by the effect of the devastating losses that Israel has experienced and the effect of the global isolation that Israel is going to experience as a result of the impressions that most of the globe has about what Israel is doing in Gaza.
--:-- Ian Lustick: Those two things could impact Israeli public opinion in a way that produces a leadership that rejects what's called the mowing the lawn strategy, that every three years we need a war not to convince the Arabs that we can be lived with, but just to destroy their capabilities to attack us for another couple of years.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Now, if that were abandoned, Israel would have to come up with an actual image of peace There are so many issues, and they're so emotional. The pain that Jews and Palestinians have been suffering is incalculable. And my hope is that the ignorance which most people have about this conflict can be reduced and that people can start to grapple with the real issues and not the issues that arise from fantasies that they have about this conflict.
--:-- Ian Lustick: Professor Emeritus Ian Lustick, political science, UPenn. He's got a whole bunch of books about this conflict. Most recently, Paradigm Lost, From Two-State Solution to One-State Reality.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Our program today was produced by Isabel Angel and Amanda Luellen. We were edited by Amina Alsadi, mixed by David Herman, and fact-checked by Laura Bullard, with help from Hadi Mawagdi.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today Explained is honored to now air on Connecticut Public Radio, WNPR. Hello, Susan. Thank you for listening. Thank you.
