In Watani’s previous editorial, I reviewed an interview with American political scientist and international relations scholar John Joseph Mearsheimer by Tom Switzer, Executive Director of CIS. Mr Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago; he belongs to the realist school of thought. CIS is the Centre for Independent Studies based in Sydney; it is a public policy research organisation primarily focused on tackling Australian local issues, but also regional and international affairs.
During the interview, Mr Mearsheimer attempted to answer the question of “Why Israel is in deep trouble”. He confirmed that amid its persistence in ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, the Israeli leadership lacks any vision to the situation following a ceasefire, hence the deep trouble it is in. In the second part of this invaluable interview, which was attended by a host of researchers and people interested in politics, Mr Mearsheimer replied to questions by the audience. I here print some of these questions and Mr Mearsheimer’s answers.
All those points you made about escalation dominance and the fact that the Israelis are now bogged down in Gaza, aren’t you overstating your point about Israel’s grim security outlook? After all it’s not declared but they do have nuclear weapons… so are you being overly gloomy about Israel’s security outlook?
Mr Mearsheimer: I think there’s no question that nuclear weapons are the ultimate deterrent… I think that no country would try to inflict a decisive defeat on Israel because it has nuclear weapons, but the problem is that Israel has an internal problem, the point about nuclear weapons applies if you’re talking about Iran hitting Israel… But Hamas is not another country, Hamas is inside greater Israel. What Hamas is doing is executing a rebellion or executing an insurrection, and nuclear weapons don’t do anything for you in that regard.
Let’s turn to Rafah, the southern city in Gaza, now the Israeli leadership seems to believe that a full-scale ground military invasion of Rafah will finish the job of eliminating Hamas, you’ve said that that’s not realistic… and your critics would say that Hamas needs crushing, and if Hamas keeps control of Rafah and the people, it wins.
The Israelis may believe that Hamas needs to be crushed and you can understand given what happened on October 7th why they feel that way… The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have articles dealing with the fact that Hamas is almost impossible to defeat, they’re just not going to defeat them. This is why I said ethnic cleansing is so attractive to the Israelis, ethnic cleansing solves the apartheid problem.
What about the two-State solution?
Every American president since Jimmy Carter has pushed hard for the two-State solution… because we think the two-State solution is the only reasonable way to get out of this conundrum. What has to be done here is that the Palestinians have to be given self-determination, they need a sovereign State of their own and this is what the two-State solution was designed to do. And American leaders understood that if the Israelis did not agree to a two-State solution, you were going to have trouble for as far as the eye can see… But what happened on October 7th is really not an anomaly; there was the first intifada in 1987, then the second intifada in 2000, and these were Palestinian insurrections… Netanyahu is playing divide and conquer. Netanyahu had quite good relations with Hamas before October 7th because Hamas doesn’t want a two-State solution, and Netanyahu doesn’t want a two-State solution, and from Netanyahu’s point of view the real threat was Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority. And you notice that the Americans have been saying that what we need to do in Gaza is put the Palestinian Authority in control… Netanyahu has made it unequivocally clear this is not happening and that’s because the Palestinian Authority has reconciled itself to a two-State solution and that’s nightmare news for Netanyahu.
You’ve talked about how Israel is now stuck in Gaza, do you see a similar trap for the US?
Well, the United States is not going into Gaza… we’re not putting forces in there, but we are joined at the hip with Israel… As long as Israel is bogged down in Gaza and having all sorts of problems… it has huge consequences for us. We end up vetoing Security Council resolutions that we don’t want to veto; it ends up poisoning our relations with the Egyptians and the Jordanians… As I said before we’d like Mahmoud Abbas to come in take-over… That’s what we want to do because this is not in our interest to let this go on, but the problem we face is we can’t get the Israelis to go along with us.
You said the options are a one-State solution, two-State solution, continued apartheid, or ethnic cleansing, and for those of us that believe that ethnic cleansing and apartheid are not acceptable and that want to see the maintenance of international law, that leaves us with the one-State or two-State, and many experts are saying the two-State is not possible given the patchwork of illegal settlements. So what would have to change in the future to bring about a one-State solution?
I think Israel is in deep trouble, I think the Israelis will continue to push at ethnic cleansing… The sort of long-term future of Israel is in question for a lot of reasons… Immediately after October 7th, some 500,000 Israelis left the country… Somebody from the Polish foreign policy establishment was telling me you’d be amazed at how many Israelis are applying for Polish citizenship… and the same is true with other European countries… This is a country that just has lots of problems and where this all goes, I don’t know.
Watani International
14 June 2024