Slouching Towards Gehenna

The Failure of Institutionalism

Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, December 29, 2022, Yonatan Sindel

With Netanyahu’s recent announcement that Israel will go ahead with their operation in Rafah with or without a hostage deal—the theory of American diplomacy underpinning our approach to Israel and Palestine since October 7th has conclusively failed.

I do want to say here that I don’t actually agree with a lot of people who believe that the United States is indifferent to the suffering in Gaza or the West Bank.

I tend to think that American political leaders—through a mixture of public and private signals—have sought to push Israel towards abiding by International Law regarding armed conflict. I also tend to think that American leaders have believed that they’ve been rather successful in doing so up until this point and that our approach has succeeded in making things better than they otherwise would have been.

Since October we’ve quite publicly and continuously pressured Israel to abide by its obligations regarding humanitarian aid, which in all fairness has seen some level of success as of late.

In terms of our diplomatic stance, the United States has sent other typical signals that express deep displeasure like allowing a U.N. vote calling for a ceasefire to go forward, privately refusing to back an Israeli escalation towards Iran, and President Biden has even outright stated that Israel has not done enough to protect civilians.

Washington has also levied sanctions on multiple Israeli settlers, returned to calling West Bank settlements “inconsistent with International Law,” and is considering sanctions on an IDF unit that is accused of various human rights violations.

Now, I realize most of this probably sounds like standard posturing that doesn’t really do anything. Well…that’s because it mostly is. In regular diplomatic affairs, these various actions amount to a form of communication meant to shape the behavior of another government.

When you’re unhappy with a policy you generally implement various largely symbolic (yet highly public) policies that matter quite a lot in the world of institutions.

Institutions as a general rule tend to thrive on a form of legitimacy that is granted through symbolic gestures of approval or disapproval. For instance, it matters quite a lot to a foreign ministry what form of engagements they have with other foreign ministries in normal times with normal politicians.

Your average career public servant who is primarily concerned with carrying out the minutiae of statecraft would recoil at the notion that one of his citizens could be sanctioned, or if the U.S. President openly states that your nation doesn’t take the necessary precautions to protect civilians in a warzone.

A typical government would usually then attempt to remedy the action that caused that symbolic gesture, and the world would continue. These gestures are symbolic precisely for the sake of the continuation of normal affairs once the dispute passes.

The American approach failed because it was predicated on exactly this form of institutionalism in foreign affairs with our approach to the current Israeli Government.

What the U.S. President does or does not say is relatively immaterial when Ben-Gvir is the Minister of National Security and Bezalel Smotrich is the Minister of Finance. It goes without saying, but neither man cares particularly greatly if America takes a tough public stance on the conduct of the IDF in Gaza.

In the context of Israeli domestic politics, both of these men matter to Netanyahu’s decision-making significantly more than Biden’s approval. Regarding Rafah, Itamar Ben-Gvir has now gotten his way despite months of American pressure to not go forward with a military operation in Rafah due to expected civilian casualties.

Ben-Gvir’s threats to collapse the Israeli Government far outweighs any potential one-off sanctions that the United States is considering. He is willing to implode the Israeli Government, and Netanyahu is unwilling to face criminal charges when he is no longer the Prime Minister. The calculus is fairly simple.

Smotrich meanwhile has continued to double down on his quite public desire to see Gaza (and the West Bank) ethnically cleansed of Palestinians.

Both men—as far as I can tell—very clearly understand that the United States is wedded to our theory of institutionalism to the extent that they can continue to push their policies until they get them.

Neither man—or their constituencies—cares about things like international perceptions or how Secretary of State Blinken personally feels about them. In their minds, what are a few sanctions on settlers weighed against all of Gaza?

Men who are willing to tear apart all norms, and do not care for things like public disapproval of ethnic cleansing will always be able to force their policies against institutions that are paralyzed into treating every problem as something that can be fixed by just one more stern conversation in private.

If you want a domestic example in America—just look at how well court orders and hundreds of years of legal precedent seem to constrain Trump.

If the Israeli Government is going to go the way of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, the United States cannot keep pretending that this is business as usual.

If Ben-Gvir has gotten his way, the United States needs to unilaterally recognize a Palestinian State and then establish our own relationship with the Palestinian Authority.

We need to cease diplomatic and military support to Israel and work with international organizations to impose serious material costs on Israel if we actually want to produce the result we’ve been attempting to achieve.

You can’t just keep doing the same thing over and over while hoping for different results. If we do? Then Smotrich’s loud pronunciations now will become real-world acts soon enough.