Trump’s ‘dead cat diplomacy’ altered Gaza war

Opinion

When Donald Trump called Benjamin Netanyahu on Oct. 4 to tell him that Hamas had agreed to at least some of his 20-point ceasefire plan, the Israeli prime minister’s equivocal response was he saw “nothing to celebrate, and that it doesn’t mean anything.” According to reports, the U.S. president fired back: “I don’t know why you’re always so f—ing negative. This is a win. Take it.”

Trump’s visceral response is less important than the fact that it became public only hours after this private conversation. By comparison, although Joe Biden’s frequent excoriations of Netanyahu were well documented, they were never made public immediately after he uttered them.

Trump’s scolding of the Israeli leader, on the other hand, was intentionally leaked to publicly paint Netanyahu as the intransigent party should negotiations over ending the war collapse. Unencumbered by nuance or subtlety, Trump’s “dead cat diplomacy” in recent weeks has proven to be his single most effective leverage in bringing Israel and Hamas to this agreement.

The practice of dead cat diplomacy was first articulated by former U.S. secretary of state (1989-1992) James Baker, during his incessant diplomatic efforts to coax the Syrian, Israeli and Palestinian teams to attend the historic 1991 Madrid peace conference. Despite making eight trips to the region in as many months and drawing on seemingly every resource and skill in his diplomatic toolbox, Baker was repeatedly frustrated by each party’s objections to attending the conference.

Running out of options, Baker concluded that under such circumstances, the only leverage left at his disposal was to publicly lay the blame for killing the negotiations (the metaphorical dead cat) at the doorstep of an intransigent negotiator.

Soon, dead cats began appearing at the metaphorical doorsteps of the key negotiators. Palestinian negotiator Hanan Ashrawi recalled that Baker’s favourite expression to egg the Arab delegations on was “Don’t let the dead cat die on your doorstep!” After he told the Palestinians, “I am sick and tired of this. With you people, the souk [market] never closes. I’ve had it. Have a nice life,” they dropped their demands immediately.

Threatening to drop the dead cat at the doorstep of Syrian foreign minister Farouk al-Sharaa was equally effective. Baker shouted at Ashrawi over the phone, “You just tell Mr. Sharaa that the whole thing is off. I’m going home. I’m taking the plane this evening and he can go back to Syria. As far as I’m concerned, it’s finished!” after which he hung up abruptly. Ashrawi delivered Baker’s threat to the Arab group.

In her 1995 memoir, “This Side of Peace,” Ashrawi recalled that “everyone was convinced that Baker was serious, and we urged the Syrians to accept an Arab compromise.”

Despite the special relationship between the U.S. and Israel, Baker did not hesitate to lay equal blame for the stalled negotiations on the intransigent Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir, telling him: “I’m working my ass off, and I’m getting no co-operation from you. I’m finished … I’ve got to say I’m basically disinclined to come here again.” On the way to the airport, Baker told his aide Dennis Ross: “I’m going to leave this dead cat on his doorstep.”

The cumulative effect of Baker’s dead cat diplomacy was that no party wanted to appear publicly as opposing peace. As his aide Aaron David Miller recalled: “No one wanted to be in that position.”

As I wrote elsewhere, dead cat diplomacy is likely to be effective when three conditions are met. It must be perceived by the intransigent parties as a last-chance threat, it must be perceived as a credible move by the third party and there must be internal factors which limit the intransigent party’s capacity to ignore the threat.

Trump plays the blame game

Notwithstanding the considerable differences in diplomatic nous between Baker and Trump, it is clear that at least in his negotiating an end to the two-year war between Israel and Hamas, Trump’s laying of dead cats at the Israeli and Hamas doorsteps has been perceived by both parties as last-chance and credible threats, while capitalizing on their increasingly untenable domestic standings.

Trump’s calling Netanyahu “always f—ing negative” is but the latest dead cat laid on the Israeli leader’s doorstep. It was preceded a few days earlier by a humiliating and (public) strong-arming of Netanyahu to apologize to the Qatari prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, for Israel’s failed assassination attempt of Hamas negotiators in Doha on Sept. 9.

As one Israeli pollster noted: “For the first time Netanyahu cannot disregard the wishes of an American president, because of the way Trump operates. Trump is unpredictable and will not fall in line with the Israeli position.”

This was perfectly illustrated by the image of Netanyahu reading out his apology from a script while Trump was resting the telephone on his lap in the Oval Office, which was a blunt — and public — rebuke of the Israeli leader: you are solely responsible for this chaos, and you’d better apologize, or else.

A few days later, Trump posted on his Truth Social account an image of the protests in Tel Aviv to end the war and against Netanyahu, showing a large banner that read: “It’s now or never.”

Such public amplifying of the voices of Netanyahu’s critics at home has left no illusions as to who Trump was blaming for the stalemate. “He was fine with it,” Trump said following his conversation with Netanyahu last week. “He’s got to be fine with it. He has no choice. With me, you got to be fine.”

Trump has been equally expedient in laying dead cats at Hamas’s doorstep. First, by ironing out his peace plan with Israel while excluding Hamas from the process, and then by turning to his TruthSocial platform to single out Hamas as the remaining obstacle to ending the war, following his joint press conference with Netanyahu in the Oval Office.

Intentionally or otherwise, this Trumpian bludgeoning contained all the hallmarks of dead cat diplomacy. It emphasizes that this is a last-chance opportunity and that the threat is credible, the U.S. president having already shown his support for Israeli military action in Gaza. It also capitalizes on Hamas’s increasingly isolated position, noting that it is the only party to not accept the plan and that the release of hostages held by Hamas was the difference between peace and hell in the Middle East.

Trump’s deployment of dead cat diplomacy may lack the finesse and strategic patience of Baker’s approach, but its raw, theatrical force has nonetheless reshaped the negotiating landscape. By publicly blaming Netanyahu and Hamas, isolating them diplomatically, and making clear that one of them will be remembered as the obstacle to peace, Trump has created precisely the kind of last-chance, credibility-laden pressure that dead cat diplomacy relies on to succeed.

Whether this results in a lasting peace remains uncertain. But what is clear is that Trump’s willingness to weaponize public humiliation and blame has, at least for now, jolted two entrenched adversaries closer to compromise than years of cautious mediation ever did. Dead cat diplomacy may yet earn Trump his coveted Nobel peace prize.

» Asaf Siniver is a professor of international security at the University of Birmingham, England.

» This column was originally published at The Conversation Canada: theconversation.com/ca