Israel-Hamas war: How did this happen?
Was this a black swan moment? Or could it have been foreseen?
Certainly the Israeli intelligence failure was astonishing.
And the extreme Hamas barbarity was not something observers ever associated with the Palestinian cause.
But behind those huge shocks, there were signals. A perfect storm was brewing. The moderate Palestinians were ignored, the Israelis were distracted and the Americans were disengaged.
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Three years ago I sat down with two moderate West Bank Palestinians, Hanan Ashrawi and Saeb Erekat.
Ms Ashrawi is an elder stateswoman who was at the White House in 1993 when Bill Clinton pulled the Israelis and the Palestinians together.
As Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat shook hands on the south lawn 30 years ago, Ms Ashrawi said: “The Palestinian state is emerging…”
Dr Erekat was the veteran Palestinian negotiator through every twist and turn of a peace process that never was.
Absorbing the past week’s events, I have been looking back now at my notes of our conversations.
Both warned about Hamas extremism. Both seemed defeated and despondent. They knew their decades-long drive for statehood was gone. They accepted that their own side’s intransigence had caused problems but overwhelmingly, they believed they had been undermined by America, Israel and the West.
Israeli soldiers on a tank near the Israel-Gaza border. Pic: AP
I asked Dr Erekat what he thought his legacy would be.
“Even worse than my legacy? This is what makes me very sad… I am going to be used as an example by extremists in order to show [people], in advance, their fate if they follow in my steps… of where an attempt to recognise Israel, to renounce violence and accept the two-state solution actually led,” he told me.
Our conversation was prompted by the signing of the Abraham Accords – a Donald Trump-brokered deal which normalised relations between Israel and two Gulf nations – the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. It was widely seen as a breakthrough moment for the region and a blueprint for further Israeli-Arab integration.
Palestinians wave their national flag by a destroyed Israeli tank at the Gaza Strip fence east of Khan Younis. Pic: AP
There was one problem. The Palestinians had been left out of the conversation.
The Abraham Accords was an attempt to upturn diplomatic norms; to bypass the core issue (Israel-Palestine) and solve the byproduct issues (Arab-Israeli relations) in the hope that diplomatic reverse engineering would magically fix the Palestinian issue. It was a deal driven more by economic opportunities than by political realities.
For the moderate Palestinians it was another ‘dagger in the back’, as Dr Erekat put it. He had watched as his cause was consistently undermined: the moving of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the cutting of funding, and the failure to call out or even notice the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
To Western and Gulf Arab leaders he said: “Congratulations… you have killed the two-state solution and you have killed any negotiations and I think you destroyed the Palestinian moderate camp; Palestinians who want peace, prosperity, human rights… God help this region.”
It was the last time we would speak. Dr Erekat died a few months later from COVID.
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Palestinians evacuate the wounded after an Israeli airstrike in the Rafah refugee camp, in the Gaza Strip. Pic: AP
Hamas and Iran
In May 2021 at the end of the last Israel-Hamas war, I sat down in Gaza with the co-founder of Hamas, Mahmoud al-Zahar. It was the first time any Hamas leader had spoken since his group had launched what was then an unprecedented rocket attack on civilians in Israel.
He didn’t resemble the moderates I know in the West Bank at all. He was an Islamist. And he said Israel has no right to exist.
He also viewed moderate Palestinians as losers who had proved that negotiations with Israel were pointless.
“Practically, practically, that was proved,” the Hamas co-founder told me.
“It is not my assessment. Go and ask [Palestinian president] Mahmoud Abbas: ‘Are you now saying a two-state solution is viable or not?’… He will say no… The Israelis are not going to accept a two-state solution. You are now asking me to practise a failed process?”
Across Gaza, Iran’s influence is deep. On my last visit there, posters lined the streets of Iran’s military commander Qasem Soleimani, assassinated on the orders of then-president Mr Trump.
It’s been clear for years that the leadership in Tehran has moulded Hamas extremism and leveraged the Palestinian people’s hopelessness. It is all part of its axis of influence that swings through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, down to Gaza.
Israeli soldiers take position near Israel’s border with Gaza
Israel’s caged enemy
In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warns frequently of the danger Iran poses – but he usually frames it in the nuclear context – the prospect of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons.
With Gaza, his style (his detractors would call it hubris) allowed him to think he could contain Hamas and limit Iranian influence – to his advantage.
Hamas was the enemy in a cage. Mr Netanyahu used the situation as a political tool to remind everyone why the land can never be shared.
An Israeli tank fires near Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip
More moderate Israelis, like former prime minister Ehud Olmert, who I also spoke to, and who advocates for Jewish settlement dismantlement and genuine engagement with Palestinians, were pushed aside.
Then, Mr Netanyahu prompted an internal crisis (also through his own hubris?) – his controversial legal reforms ignited the country with massive protests. The consequence was a temporary breakdown in Israeli unity. Even the top brass military threatened to resign.
It was against this backdrop that Hamas struck. The enemy in the cage got out. And it was stronger than Israel could ever have imagined.
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American disengagement
Above all that – America tried to disengage with the Middle East years ago. Forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a need to focus on China and, latterly, Russia, forced a new approach – helicopter diplomacy.
The plan was that historic normalisation deals between Israel and the Gulf Arabs would reshape the region and allow America to step back. If it had worked, it would have been a game changer.
But the Palestinians were not part of that conversation. They didn’t want to be without the commitment of statehood, and they weren’t encouraged to be because everyone knew that statehood commitment could never be delivered.
Mr Netanyahu’s politics had made it an impossibility.
Israeli soldiers surround a Palestinian who ran at them with a knife at the site of a music festival near the border with the Gaza Strip. Pic: AP
In speeches, US President Joe Biden’s top advisers hardly mentioned Israel-Palestine. Even this week as National Security Council spokesman John Kirby countered my assertion that America had disengaged, he listed Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Islamic State and Saudi Arabia but didn’t mention Israel-Palestine until I prompted him.
“You are right, I did not and I should have,” Mr Kirby said. “… because we have been continuing to want to pursue a two-state solution.”
The truth is no one really believes that a two-state solution is achievable. Western diplomats have been quietly telling me this for several years.
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And so the region’s weakest link was ignored and it ignited.
In Iran, they are no doubt delighted that a normalisation deal between their enemy, Israel, and Saudi Arabia is now in the freezer.
Mr Biden is now desperately trying to take control of the situation; to influence the remoulding of the Middle East that we are seeing.
The question is, can he? It feels out of control now.
World
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi confirmed dead in helicopter crash after charred wreckage found
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has died after the helicopter he was travelling in crashed in a mountainous area of northwest Iran.
Rescuers found the burned remains of the aircraft on Monday morning after the president and his foreign minister had been missing for more than 12 hours.
“President Raisi, the foreign minister and all the passengers in the helicopter were killed in the crash,” a senior Iranian official told Reuters, asking not to be named.
Live updates – Iranian president killed in crash
Iran‘s Mehr news agency reported “all passengers of the helicopter carrying the Iranian president and foreign minister were martyred”.
State TV said images showed it had smashed into a mountain peak, although there was no official word on the cause of the crash.
“President Raisi’s helicopter was completely burned in the crash… unfortunately, all passengers are feared dead,” an official told Reuters.
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President of Iran killed in crash
The crash happened in Iran’s East Azerbaijan province
As the sun rose, rescuers saw the wreckage from around 1.25 miles, the head of the Iranian Red Crescent Society, Pir Hossein Kolivand, told state media.
Iranian news agency IRNA said the president was flying in an American-made Bell 212 helicopter.
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Iranian TV showed the president on the helicopter during a trip to Azerbaijan
TV pictures from Sunday showed thick fog at the search site. Pic: IRNA
Mr Raisi, 63, who was seen as a frontrunner to succeed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as Iran’s supreme leader, was travelling back from Azerbaijan where he had opened a dam with the country’s president.
Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amirabdollahian, also died in the crash.
The governor of East Azerbaijan province and other officials and bodyguards were also said to have been on board when the helicopter crashed in fog on Sunday.
Iranian media initially described it as a “hard landing”.
The chief of staff of Iran’s army had ordered all military resources and the Revolutionary Guard to be deployed in the search, which had been hampered by bad weather.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi was among the first to react to the news of Mr Raisi’s death.
“India stands with Iran in this time of sorrow,” he said in a post on X.
A helicopter carrying Iran’s president crashed during bad weather on Sunday.
But who is Ebrahim Raisi – a leader who faces sanctions from the US and other nations over his involvement in the mass execution of prisoners in 1988.
The president, 63, who was travelling alongside the foreign minister and two other key Iranian figures when their helicopter crashed, had been travelling across the far northwest of Iran following a visit to Azerbaijan.
Follow live: Rescuers search for president after helicopter crash
Mr Raisi is a hardliner and former head of the judiciary who some have suggested could one day replace Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Because of his part in the sentencing of thousands of prisoners of conscience to death back in the 1980s, he was nicknamed the Butcher of Tehran as he sat on the so-called Death Panel, for which he was then sanctioned by the US.
Raisi and Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev on Sunday. Pic: Reuters
Both a revered and a controversial figure, Mr Raisi supported the country’s security services as they cracked down on all dissent, including in the aftermath of the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini – the woman who died after she was arrested for allegedly not wearing her hijab properly – and the nationwide protests that followed.
The months-long security crackdown killed more than 500 people and saw over 22,000 detained.
People light a fire during a protest over the death of Mahsa Amini in Tehran, 2022. Pic: Reuters
In March, a United Nations investigative panel found that Iran was responsible for the “physical violence” that led to Ms Amini’s death after her arrest for not wearing a hijab, or headscarf, to the liking of authorities.
The president is seen as a frontrunner to replace Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (pictured). Pic: Reuters
The president also supported Iran’s unprecedented decision in April to launch a drone and missile attack on Israel amid its war with Hamas, the ruling militant group in Gaza responsible for the 7 October attacks which saw 1,200 people killed in southern Israel.
Involvement in mass executions
Mr Raisi is sanctioned by the US in part over his involvement in the mass execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988 at the end of the bloody Iran-Iraq war.
Under the president, Iran now enriches uranium at nearly weapons-grade levels and hampers international inspections.
Iran has armed Russia in its war on Ukraine and has continued arming proxy groups in the Middle East, such as Yemen’s Houthi rebels and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
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He successfully ran for the presidency back in August 2021 in a vote that got the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic’s history as all of his potentially prominent opponents were barred from running under Iran’s vetting system.
A presidency run in 2017 saw him lose to Hassan Rouhani, the relatively moderate cleric who as president reached Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
‘Very involved in anything’
Alistair Bunkall, Sky News’s Middle East correspondent, said the president is “a major figure in Iranian political and religious society” but “he’s not universally popular by any means” as his administration has seen a series of protests in the past few years against his and the government’s “hardline attitude”.
Mr Raisi is nonetheless “considered one of the two frontrunners to potentially take over” the Iranian regime when the current supreme leader dies, Bunkall said.
He added the president would have been “instrumental” in many of Iran’s activities in the region as he “would’ve been very involved in anything particularly what has been happening in Israel and the surrounding areas like Lebanon and Gaza and the Houthis over the last seven and a bit months”.
World
Iran president helicopter crash: The ‘butcher of Tehran’ has a fearsome reputation – and many will be fearing instability
Ebrahim Raisi has been one of Iran’s hardest of hardliners, a fanatical and absolute believer in the Iranian revolution and its mission.
If he has died on a mountainside in the north of the country, as looks increasingly likely, it will be a major moment for the country and the region.
It will remove from the Middle East one of its toughest most uncompromising players.
Follow live: Rescuers search for president after helicopter crash
A man who launched the first direct attack on Israel in his country’s history and a hardliner on whose watch hundreds of Iranians have been killed in the brutal repression of recent women-led protests, Mr Raisi has a huge amount of blood on his hands.
The president is seen as a frontrunner to replace Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (pictured). Pic: Reuters
His fearsome reputation goes back to the 1980s – a period that earned him the dubious soubriquet the Butcher of Tehran.
He sat on the so-called Death Panel of four Islamic judges who sentenced thousands of Iranian prisoners of conscience to their deaths during the purge of 1988.
Mr Raisi has personally been involved in two of the darkest periods of Iranian repression. And he was seen as one of the favourite contenders to replace the elderly and ailing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
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His accession to that role would have guaranteed years more of the same… and years more meddling abroad.
Raisi and Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev on Sunday. Pic: Reuters
With Mr Raisi as president, Iran has engaged in more and more adventurous interventions beyond its borders.
With him in charge Iran has helped Houthis menace international shipping in the Red Sea; helped Hezbollah engage Israel in a seven-month duel over its northern border; aided militia in Iraq to attack, and in some cases kill, American soldiers; and helped Hamas fight its own war against the Jewish state.
After two years of unrest, economic failure and stuttering recovery from the pandemic, Iran is divided and weakened.
Its government has lost much of its credibility and support because of the atrocities it has meted out to its women.
Few outside the regime and its ranks of ardent followers will mourn a man who has overseen the death, incarceration or torture of so many.
Iranians may dare yearn for less repressive times without him. Outsiders will hope for a less troublesome Iran.
Read more:
Who is Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi?
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But there are plenty more where he came from and the Supreme Leader is likely to find another hardliner to replace him.
The fear will be of instability in the run-up to elections. The government has been undermined by recent events, its Supreme Leader is unwell.
If Mr Raisi is dead, his government will try to secure the succession as quickly and smoothly as it can.
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