Escalation x2 (Yossi Alpher- March 17, 2025)
Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent NJN's views and policy positions.
Q. On Sunday, PM Netanyahu announced that his government intended to fire Shin Bet head Ronen Bar, radically exacerbating relations between the government and the security community and fueling an atmosphere of national crisis. What happened?
A. The backdrop is criticism of Netanyahu by the Shin Bet domestic security service that has emerged into public view. Of special note is an investigation into suspicious links between Netanyahu’s senior aides and the Qataris (“Qatargate”) when Qatar was, with Bibi’s okay, funding Hamas prior to October 7.
A public threat by Bar’s predecessor, Nadav Argaman, to expose additional problematic acts by the prime minister helped escalate the situation. The Prime Minister’s Office accuses both Shin Bet heads, current and former, of losing the PM’s trust and undermining an elected government that enjoys a popular mandate.
The Bar firing, an affair that is developing as we write, is linked to Gaza, which in turn is linked to Yemen and the Trump administration. See more below. But first, the second front of escalation.
Q. On Saturday, the US launched an air and naval offensive against the Houthis in northern Yemen. The IDF is attacking select terrorist targets in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. Hostage talks with Hamas are stalled and Israel is threatening to renew the Gaza war. Can we expect missiles and rockets on Tel Aviv?
A. The short answer is: we should be prepared at least for missiles from Yemen and possibly for symbolic rocket fire from Gaza. That could mean cancellations by airlines and security-related complications for daily life in parts of Israel, not to mention possible casualties.
Q. US President Trump has vowed to end Middle East wars (and the Russia-Ukraine war). Why has the US attacked Yemen?
A. This is the first major use of force by the second Trump administration. It is totally inconsistent with Trump’s declared policy of employing negotiations and ‘deals’ to end Middle East and other wars. Trump’s rationale for the attack appears to reflect frustration over deadlocked US efforts to deter the Houthis from disrupting Red Sea shipping and to deter their backers in Tehran, and frustration with deadlocked Gaza hostage and ceasefire talks that feed into Houthi aggression.
Nor could Trump miss a chance to try to “one up” the Biden administration’s earlier efforts to deter the Houthis: “Joe Biden’s response was pathetically weak, so the unrestrained Houthis just kept going. The Houthi attack on American vessels will not be tolerated. We will use overwhelming lethal force until we have achieved our objective.”
The Houthis, and Iran which arms and backs them, are tough adversaries. They are almost certain to escalate against Israel, whose retaliatory attacks have failed to deter them. Unless Trump plans to conquer the Houthis’ mountain redoubt in northern Yemen at a heavy cost in American lives, he too could fail. So this is a risky and disturbingly paranoid departure for his administration.
Q. Exactly how does this link up with Gaza, which is well over 1000 miles away from Yemen?
A. The immediate Middle East backdrop to the US attack is failure by Trump’s envoys, Steve Witkoff and Adam Boehler, to bring about a renewed Israel-Hamas ceasefire and hostage-release process. Boehler, who broke precedent by directly engaging Hamas, has been relieved by Trump of his mandate to gain release of US citizens held as prisoners by Hamas. The impression in Israel is that Boehler’s direct approach to Hamas, and its failure, actually ended up setting back efforts to renew the process.
Suspension of the Gaza ceasefire, coupled with the hostage freeze, have led Israel to cut off humanitarian aid to the Strip, causing renewed civilian hardship there. Not surprisingly the Houthis, who ceased firing their Iranian missiles at Israel when the ceasefire with Hamas went into effect in January, responded with renewed threats against Israel and immediate renewal of their attempt to blockade the Bab al-Mandeb Straits at the southern entrance to the Red Sea.
Note the domino effect: global shipping via Egypt’s Suez Canal link between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, which was virtually shut down by the Houthis after October 7, 2023 when Hamas attacked Israel, is once again threatened. This in turn affects the global economy. Trump’s surprising gambit to directly attack the Houthis could at least in the interim make things worse for Israel, Egypt, and--indirectly by prolonging the Gaza hostage crisis--Gazan Palestinians.
Q. Is there an Israeli political backdrop to this new escalation threat?
A. Definitely. Prime Minister Netanyahu is constantly trying to balance Trump’s pressure to renew the Gaza ceasefire and prisoner-hostage exchange with counter-pressures within his coalition. Netanyahu’s messianic Orthodox coalition partners oppose any ceasefire, even at the cost of hostages’ lives. His ultra-Orthodox Haredi partners are holding the coalition hostage until they get a new law enshrining their very unholy exemption from military service.
If the squabbling coalition does not pass a budget by the end of March, new elections are automatically mandated. Netanyahu wants to avoid elections for fear lest loss of power affect both his standing in a long-running court case and his stonewalling of efforts to launch an inquiry into his own role in the October 7 disaster. That means bribing these coalition extremists by avoiding hostage deals and at least threatening more war with Hamas.
Netanyahu’s relations with the security community, which supports a renewed ceasefire while nevertheless is obliged to prepare an exhausted IDF for yet another round of fighting in Gaza, are strained. His decision Sunday to fire Bar exacerbates those relations to an unprecedented level. Bar has made clear that he will not go quietly: he is challenging Netanyahu’s motives. Attorney General Gali Baharav Miara, another key national gatekeeper whom Netanyahu mistrusts and wants to remove, is intervening.
Q. Efforts by Trump emissaries to forestall renewed Gaza-related violence ended up focusing on an exchange, thus far abortive, for one live IDF hostage and four dead hostages, all US-Israeli dual citizens. Why?
A. The US is traditionally, and understandably, committed to rescuing its citizens from prison in hostile countries or from entities like Hamas. This is Boehler’s mission. The stalemate in broader efforts to restore the Israel-Gaza ceasefire/hostage/prisoner momentum and avoid renewed Gaza fighting reportedly led to an American proposal for a US-Hamas deal involving only five US citizens, dead and alive.
The Israeli public reacted to reports of this deal negatively. Awarding priority to US dual citizens over the remaining two dozen or so live Israeli hostages suffering in Hamas captivity and a like number of dead Israelis had a bad taste to it. Moreover, if there are no more US citizens held in Hamas tunnels in the Strip, might Trump conceivably lose interest? On the other hand, Israelis do not hide their gratitude to the Trump administration for all it is doing on behalf of the hostages.
The abortive American-Israeli hostage deal was reportedly one of the factors in Boehler’s removal from the Gaza file. In parallel, the very stalemate exacerbated by that deal could well be a factor in the US decision to commence bombing the Houthis in Yemen. If a hostage-prisoner exchange and ceasefire renewal were in the offing, the US would presumably hold its fire to avoid sabotaging it.
So would the IDF, which has apparently now commenced pinpoint Gaza attacks as a prelude to ending the ceasefire or as a way of renewing military pressure on Hamas without restarting all-out war. Or even, conceivably, with a new chief of staff anxious to please Netanyahu, as an escalatory measure ‘inadvertently’ leading to a full-fledged renewed conflict seemingly mandated by Hamas’s insistence that Israel agrees to end the conflict and leave it in power in Gaza.
Q. Bottom line?
A. Lest we forget, the Shin Bet under Ronen Bar was responsible on October 7 for early warning of a Hamas attack from Gaza. It bears a lot of the blame for that intelligence failure, which has led to the Houthis’ involvement in the conflict. Bar has acknowledged his responsibility and declared his intention to resign. In this context, the head of IDF intelligence and a number of additional key figures have already resigned.
The only senior official bearing responsibility for the October 7 massacre and the ensuing war who has not acknowledged his failure and offered to resign is Netanyahu himself. It is Netanyahu’s in-your-face refusal to do so that lies at the heart of the current escalation on two fronts: domestic and distant.
The Trump administration's offensive against the Houthis is totally inconsistent with Trump’s rhetoric about generating and maintaining peace in the Middle East. We must stop trying to rationalize Trump’s strategic thinking. It is clearly unpredictable and hence dangerous.
Israelis must prepare for renewed missile and rocket attacks with all their attendant ramifications for the economy, the burdens of IDF reserve call-ups, and Israelis’ peace of mind. If fighting in and around Gaza now escalates, Netanyahu will have found a new/old way of distracting the public from his evasion of responsibility, his coalition difficulties, and his legal problems.
In the déjà vu department, I am reminded of the history of US passports in the hands of IDF soldiers. Until around 1970, an American who entered IDF service was obliged to give up his US citizenship. In 1964 I was one of a bare handful of Americans who did so. Eventually, the US Supreme Court changed all of that. Compare to today, when Israelis are speculating ruefully that their sons and daughters heading for IDF service should arrive in the army with a second passport as a potential ‘get out of jail free’ document…