BREAKING: Major escalation coming in Gaza. Also: Is Trump throwing Israel "Under the Bus"?

Events are complex and evolving rapidly this week. We break it down for you.

Due to rapidly evolving events, this post is a bit longer than usual, but we believe it will be valuable if you are concerned about recent developments in Israel and the Middle East.

BREAKING: It appears that in the next 24 hours, Israel is about to massively escalate its military campaign in Gaza, to levels that have not been seen since October 7, 2023, with the potential goal of entirely seizing all of Gaza under Israeli control.

For weeks Israel has been warning of an expanded military campaign if a hostage deal is not reached, recently setting a deadline upon the end of U.S. President Donald Trump’s visit to the Middle East. That visit ends today.

In recent weeks, tens of thousands of IDF reservists have been called up, and over the past 24 hours Israel has launched an intensified air campaign against high value Hamas targets in Gaza: both are considered to be preparations for the upcoming escalation. Unless a hostage deal is reached within the next 12 hours, which seems unlikely, we should expect this escalation to begin by tomorrow.

Photo: Explosions in Gaza by Jaber Jehad Badwan via Wikimedia commons.

Until now, the IDF has stuck to a strategy of launching discrete attacks in Gaza and then quickly leaving. This new strategy appears to be one of taking territory and holding it indefinitely under IDF control.

We tend to be cautious about predicting the future, as we believe it is already difficult enough to correctly understand the present. However, in this case, the relevant elements seem sufficiently clear, and we wanted to give our readers a “heads up” before events unfold.

A clarification on negotiations:

Some critics inside and outside of Israel have claimed that Israel turned down a Hamas offer to release all of the hostages in exchange for an immediate and permanent end to the war, which would effectively leave Hamas in power. In truth, Hamas never proposed any such deal, rather this was only a possible “framework” suggested by Egypt and Qatar.

Israel rejected the Egyptian/Qatari framework, instead remaining committed to the American “Witkoff” framework: which would end the war in exchange for Hamas disbanding, disarming and releasing all hostages. This is because leaving Hamas in power would not only represent an ongoing danger to Israel, but would also signal to the world at large that Hamas’s October 7, 2023 massacre had been, in effect, a success: Israel would be seen as defeated, defeat-able, and vulnerable. Even if Israel had agreed to the Egypt/Qatar framework despite the risks, that would have marked only the beginning of a long negotiation process during which Hamas would likely have made additional demands, as Hamas itself had never actually agreed to this framework.

Is America throwing Israel “under the bus”?

Photo: U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanhau by U.S. Embassy, Israel via Wikimedia Commons.

As U.S. President Donald Trump wraps up his Middle East tour, inking deals and making promises, a number of foreign and Israeli headlines claim that the United States is intentionally leaving Israel in the dust: perhaps even dangerously so. Most of these stories are not highly credible: based often on anonymous sources, and spread by analysts or publications that have a specific agenda. When we analyze the specifics of developments in Yemen, Qatar, Gaza and the Palestinian Authority, the truth is far more nuanced.

Yemen: Israel was blindsided when the President suddenly announced on May 6 a cease-fire with the Houthi terror organization, leading to Israeli and international headlines implying that the US/Israel relationship had soured. Yet the United Kingdom appeared to be equally caught unawares, which is all the more startling as the Royal Air Force had been actively participating in the U.S. led airstrikes. So in the final analysis, the surprise around Yemen appears to be just one more example of Trump‘s shocking communication style, rather than anything related specifically to Israel. More importantly, Trump didn’t place any restrictions on Israel, and indeed Israel’s dramatic strike on the Houthi controlled Sanaa airport, as well as additional subsequent strikes, came after the US ceasefire announcement.

Gaza: There seems to be a parallel in Gaza, with the stunning release of Israeli soldier and U.S. citizen, Eden Alexander, who was held hostage by Hamas in Gaza for 584 days, enduring starvation and torture. Israel had apparently not been involved in negotiating Alexander’s release, leading to claims that the Trump administration is, once again, sidelining America’s closest ally. Yet it seems Alexander’s release was “unconditional,” meaning that Hamas extracted no costs or agreements from the United States or Israel. Indeed, Israel is continuing its military campaign in Gaza, and Hamas is forced to continue negotiating while “under fire.” As explained above, Israel seems on the verge of expanding its Gaza operation, which includes the use of U.S. military aid, and apparently is occuring without U.S. objection.

Qatar: The oil rich and terror linked Gulf state gifted the United States a luxury airplane, which Trump claims will be used as a new Air Force One.

The statement, though dramatic, does not exactly make sense. Air Force One is not an “airplane“ but it’s actually two identical airplanes — so technically it’s a fleet. (The idea is that the president must never be delayed in a foreign country due to a mechanical issue, so if needed they just swap in the second, identical plane, and no one’s the wiser.) In other words, a gift of one airplane is insufficient to be “Air Force One.”

Furthermore, Air Force One requires so much costly retrofitting, that the physical airplane is actually a minority of the total cost. An Air Force One retrofit costs billions of dollars, and takes several years - longer than a presidential term. Trump has already said that at the end of his term the Qatari plane will be donated to the Trump presidential library, which means it apparently won’t be in use for a subsequent president either - in other words, unless there is a major break in retrofitting protocol, the Qatari plane simply won’t ever be used at all.

In short, the whole Qatari gift just doesn’t make any financial or logistical sense other than as a grand but empty gesture.

Palestinian state recognition: Ahead of Trump’s Middle East visit there were rumors throughout Israeli press that he planned to unilaterally announce recognition of a Palestinian State. However, those rumors appear to have all come from one single place: an anonymous “Gulf diplomatic source” speaking to the publication The Media Line. Anonymous sources are notoriously unreliable unless corroborated by other sources or evidence. In this case, the sourcing was both weak and uncorroborated, and indeed, the rumors turned out to be false. In fairness to The Media Line, the publication was open about the nature of their source and did not claim that it was necessarily correct.

Iran: This is the most concerning topic to Israelis.

A bit of nuclear background: there are two major components to any nuclear program - the “reactor” which is the device itself, and the “enrichment” which is essentially the fuel production. There are roughly 20 countries in the world that have civilian nuclear reactors for electricity production but no weapons program, and most of those countries do not have their own enrichment facilities. Instead, these countries purchase nuclear fuel from abroad.

The nuclear enrichment level required for civilian use is far lower than that that needed for a weapon, therefore the ability to “cheat” and upgrade nuclear fuel to weapons grade, depends not on whether one has a nuclear reactor, but on whether a country has its own enrichment facilities. While it is not impossible for a nation state (such as Iran) to build an enrichment facility, it is very difficult to do so secretly, as the project is large and complex. For this reason, the enrichment question is really the key to producing a safe and successful agreement with Iran.

Trump has a variety of influences around him: there’s the Kushner/Rubio camp that tends to see the world more or less as Israel does, there’s the “Tucker Carlson style” isolationist camp, and Trump has another politically active son-in-law besides Jared Kushner: Michael Boulos, who is originally Lebanese and whose family is well connected in the Arab world. The “Boulos camp” apparently tends to the more Iranian/Qatari point of view.

It is not clear which influences will most impact Trump’s thinking, however, the White House rhetoric on Iran, through originally chaotic and contradictory, has become increasingly clear and firm over time: tending more toward clear pressure against nuclear enrichment, which Iran claims is an unacceptable “red line.” Therefore, even on Iran there is room for cautious optimism from an Israeli point of view, given the trajectory of negotiations.

Saudi Arabia, Syria, and more: It would take an entire treatise to break down every deal and conversation that occurred over the past week. However, it is safe to say that in every case the reality is less dramatic than the headlines. While America’s interests are not always exactly the same as Israel’s, there is a clear alignment. The United States has not (yet) taken actions that overtly harm Israel, and in any case, America has not limited Israel’s “freedom of action” to protect its own security needs, even when Israel’s needs diverge from the those of the United States.

In short, this is not a simple question, however to paraphrase Mark Twain: the rumors of the death of the Israel/America relationship have been greatly exaggerated, at least so far.

We hope this overview proves helpful as together, we all examine the developing picture of the Middle East and the world at large. We will of course continue to update you as events unfold.