A fortnight ago, Jake Sullivan, the US president’s national security adviser, argued in the Atlantic magazine that “the many positive developments in the Middle East have allowed the administration of US President Joe Biden to focus on other regions and different issues”. According to him, “the region is calmer today than it was two decades ago.” This statement was corroborated by US intelligence, which now publicly reports that “the US has not monitored any imminent attack on Israel in the past few days.”
But the unfolding Israeli-Palestinian war has disproved such judgements. Now in a statement to CNN, U.S. officials say they have received no warnings through intelligence that Hamas was preparing an attack on Israel. They say they have been “monitoring signs of rising tensions in Gaza in recent months, but there was no tactical intelligence to warn that an attack of this magnitude would occur on this day.” U.S. and Israeli intelligence officials are now being asked why they failed to gather information that would have helped predict an attack.” They are now collecting and analysing reports to determine “what was missed.”
There are various theories. One: intelligence agencies passed on all the necessary information, but it was “misinterpreted.” The second: some external force was at work, which specially prepared Hamas in order to change the balance of political and geopolitical forces in the Middle East. The third version: some “deep forces” stimulated the course of events, the ultimate goal of which should be the abolition of the Palestinian problem in its current version. Finally, the fourth version: the Hamas attack is somehow connected with the internal political struggle in Israel and the goal is to destabilise the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu. There is a political crisis in Israel and someone inside the country needs this war.
So far it is stated that the Hamas attack was well prepared. The Washington Post reports that “the size and scope of rocket attacks fired by the resistance toward Israel were unprecedented,” and there were “bitter accusations against Israeli security officials about the deterioration of the country’s deterrent capabilities.” And this when a few weeks ago the Israeli media were reporting Hamas movements in the West Bank. In addition, back in April, there was evidence that the Aman Intelligence Division’s research team had issued an “emergency warning” to the political leadership of the security service and the leadership of the Israeli army that “Israel’s deterrence of its enemies is being undermined.”
Answers to each of the versions cited would not only allow us to adequately diagnose the situation, but also to understand how events in the region might develop further. In such a context, other US statements sounded intriguing. After “in-depth discussions of the situation,” Washington said that “it is too early to say whether Iran was directly involved in the attack,” noting that “there is no indication in that direction at this time.” Moreover, a White House spokesman said Sullivan had a telephone conversation with Egyptian intelligence director Abbas Kamel about the Hamas attacks. At the same time, he, firstly, disavowed the common judgement among experts that the Hamas attacks were initiated by the process of normalisation of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. In his words, “that road is still long.” Second, he reiterated that “it is too early to determine Iran’s role in the Hamas attacks on Israel.”
All of this suggests that Washington, presumably not by accident, is trying to put Iran and Saudi Arabia outside the brackets of the current acute crisis, to contain the Palestinian-Israeli armed escalation by narrow geographical borders. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has held consultations with officials from Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Britain, Germany, Egypt and Lebanon. But that is one side of the problem. The second is that there is no clarity about the prospects for a solution to the Palestinian problem and the possible role of Hamas in this process. Finally, there is another trend: the regional problem is beginning to be locked into the contractual capacity of the head of the Israeli government, Benjamin Netanyahu. In a situation of a sharp deterioration of Israeli-Palestinian relations, the process can either be frozen or set back. In the second case, the “war party” will be strengthened in Israel, and supporters of another solution will be swept off the political stage.
But “détente” must come as quickly as possible. An important part of this process lies with Washington and its willingness to follow one of the outlined scenarios. As things stand, regional players will be forced to take sides one way or another, which will lead to a widening of the conflict. For now, as Israel’s Channel 13 predicts, “the coming weeks in the region will be very tense.” Therefore, the only solution to avoid an expansion of the war is for the international mediators to succeed in organising a settlement, as they have done in the past, otherwise the whole region could explode.
Stanislav Tarasov, IA REX