Few people get a second chance to make a first impression. New Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz, who took over from Eli Cohen on Tuesday as part of a Likud power-sharing agreement, is one of the few.
This is Katz’s second stint at the helm of the Foreign Ministry; he served briefly from February 2019 to May 2020. The first impression he left the first time around is memorable.
Less than 12 hours after taking office, Katz gave two interviews during which he lashed out at Poland, keeping alive a diplomatic crisis that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unintentionally sparked during a visit to Warsaw days earlier when he was misquoted as saying “the Poles” rather than “Poles” collaborated with the Nazis.
Asked about this, the new foreign minister said, “I am the child of Holocaust survivors, and like every Israeli and Jew, I will not compromise over the memory of the Holocaust. We will not forgive nor forget, and there were many Poles who collaborated with the Nazis.
How did Yitzhak Shamir put it – they killed his father – ‘the Poles imbibe antisemitism with their mothers’ milk.’ No one will tell us how to express our positions and opinions and how to respect the memory of the fallen. These positions are very clear, and no one among us will compromise on them.”
Obviously, the Poles did not take to this too kindly. They canceled their participation in an unusual summit in Jerusalem scheduled for a couple of days later of the Visegrad Group countries: Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, and Slovakia – a key sub-alliance in the EU that Netanyahu was working hard to cultivate.
The Poles waited for an apology from Katz, but – because it was in the midst of an election season, and apologizing to Poland is not something that would go over well with the electorate – no apology was forthcoming. And then there was another election, and yet another, and ties between the two countries never recovered until Gabi Ashkenazi immediately succeeded Katz and reached out to the Poles.
One assumes that Katz learned from that experience and will tread a bit more carefully this time as he begins his tenure as the country’s top diplomat when the country is waging a full war on one front and is fighting on several others (Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen).
Katz reported on his first day in his new/old post on X, saying that his message to the Foreign Ministry staff was succinct: “The first order of priority – the hostages, the hostages, the hostages. This is our obligation to the nation and the families.”
נכנסתי היום לתפקידי כשר החוץ. המסר שלי לעובדים היה תמציתי. בראש סדר העדיפויות - חטופים. חטופים. חטופים. זו המחויבות שלנו לעם ולמשפחות.
— ישראל כ”ץ Israel Katz (@Israel_katz) January 2, 2024
How can Foreign Ministry help try to free hostages?
Which is true. The question is, what role can the Foreign Ministry play in trying to free the hostages?
First, it can make sure its representatives abroad keep the issue on the international agenda and not let the world forget that Hamas brutally kidnapped 240 people from their homes and is still holding over 100 of them in cruel captivity.
As the world continues to be bombarded with images of suffering from Gaza, it is critical to remind everyone what and who started this war.
Secondly, regarding the hostages, Katz should ensure that the ministry’s representatives abroad continue to push their host countries to press Qatar and Egypt on the issue so that they, in turn, press Hamas. That being said, it is necessary to have realistic expectations because it is by no means clear how much, if any, sway even Qatar and Egypt have on Yahya Sinwar, holed up in Gaza and willing to bring down destruction on his people in the service of his fanatical ideals.
In addition to the hostages, there are other issues that Katz should advocate forcefully as he begins his work in the Foreign Ministry once again.
First, he needs to secure a seat for the Foreign Ministry at the table in Israel, at all the tables in Israel, where the future of Gaza – the much-touted “day after” – is being discussed.
Whatever Israel has planned for Gaza, whoever is going to take over administrative responsibility there eventually, it will be necessary to have international backing and legitimacy for the plan. The Foreign Ministry needs to be in on this conversation so that it can both give its input about what it thinks key countries will accept and also so it knows what it is advocating for abroad.
While Israel was successful, for the most part, in getting international legitimization for its war against Hamas – though that legitimization is deteriorating as the war continues – it will also need international legitimization for what it hopes to see “the day after.”
Whatever Israel hopes to see in Gaza after the fighting dies down, one thing is for sure: it will be much different than previous rounds of fighting in Gaza, where an IDF withdrawal followed a ceasefire agreement, and that was the end of that.
This time, it will be something different; whatever that “something different” is, it will need international backing and support. Katz should be enlisting the Foreign Ministry to begin securing that support already.
While under Katz’s predecessor, the Foreign Ministry expended a great deal of diplomatic energy trying to ensure legitimization for the war Israel was waging in Gaza, Katz now needs to turn the ministry’s attention to the North. And there, the ministry needs to drum up international support and legitimacy for two very different scenarios.
The first scenario is to enlist the international community to help secure a diplomatic solution to the problem of Hezbollah, parked directly and menacingly on Israel’s border. The October 7 massacre made it abundantly clear that this is an unsustainable situation, and those forces will have to be moved a considerable way beyond the border if the residents of the northern communities are to return there.
This could be done in one of two ways: diplomatically or through military action. Katz needs to ensure that the ministry is working on securing international backing and support for either one.
US envoy Amos Hochstein is expected in the region this week to try to reach an agreement with Lebanon that would negate the need for military intervention by getting Hezbollah to remove its troops and weapons from southern Lebanon as stipulated by UN Security Council Resolution 1701.
That 2006 resolution, which put an end to the Second Lebanon War, stated that there should be no armed personnel or weapons south of the Litani River except for those of UNIFIL and the Lebanese army. While the Prime Minister’s Office is in direct contact with Hochstein and the Americans on this, there are other players as well who need to be involved – namely, the French and the Germans, who were vital in getting the resolution passed in the first place.
Netanyahu speaks to the Americans, who are the prime mover on this matter, but it is quite possible that to reach an agreement, other actors will be necessary to move the Lebanese, such as the French and the Germans. Israel also should already be in contact with the other countries that currently make up the UNIFIL forces to get them as well to press Lebanon to implement 1701.
If that doesn’t work, then that leaves the military option. For this, too, Katz’s Foreign Ministry will be critical in getting legitimacy for IDF action after all other options have been exhausted, something Israel’s diplomats should already be working on with their interlocutors abroad.