Once again, as in 2006, the Israeli government has launched a war against neighbors from which it finds difficulty in extricating itself.
Of course, not launching the present war was always an option, right down to the time (Friday night?) when an irrevocable decision to launch it was taken. Not launching it might have been judged politically difficult, given the vulnerability of residents of Southern Israel to the Palestinian rockets whose firing– in continued, highly asymmetrical exchanges of fire with the IDF– became a new fact of life after the six-month tahdi’eh expired December 19th; and given, too, the imminence of Israel’s general election… But still, a responsible Israeli government could surely have used the proven Egyptian channel to the Hamas leaders to try hard to reinstate and even strengthen the tahdi’eh regime, while also reaching an agreement for the freeing of long-held POW Gilad Shalit.
That course could have been presented to the Israeli public with honor by a government going into an election. But Ehud Olmert’s government chose not to take it.
Instead, they chose to launch the present war of choice. And now, it is clear– once again, as in 2006– that they are very unclear indeed on how to end it.
And today, Olmert brushed aside reports that the Defense Ministry had been considering responding positively to an early proposal from French FM Bernard Kouchner for a 48-hour pause in the fighting, to allow humanitarian goods into Gaza, and an evacuation of the wounded. Instead, Olmert vowed that Israel would “continue [fighting] as long as necessary.”
He also (Xinhua here) said today that the Israeli military operation in Gaza Strip is “the first phase in a series of steps approved by the cabinet.”
A “series of steps”, amid reports of the call-up of additional units of Israeli ground forces? Does this sound as if the Israeli cabinet is considering a ground-force incursion into Gaza? I believe it does.
And there is some raw military logic to such a ‘”step.” Since, if the goal is to make quite sure that no-one in Gaza is capable of launching any rockets into Israel, then only the IDF/IOF’s exerting a very intrusive and oppressive form of control over the whole Strip can ensure that.
However, if Olmert is serious about wanting to halt all or very nearly all the firings of rockets from Gaza into Israel, as I believe he is, then he has two ways he can achieve that:
- 1. He could send ground troops in to occupy all or nearly all of the Gaza Strip, or
2. He could conclude a robust, and preferably also verifiable, ceasefire agreement with Hamas and its allies.
It feels to me today like we’re at about Day 20 of the 33-Day War that Israel launched against Hizbullah in Lebanon back in July 2006.
So many similarities! Including that Israel’s war goals include winning a cessation of the opponent’s firing of rockets, the release of Israeli POW(s), and also, beyond that, a significant sea-change in the political complexion of the territory from which the rockets have been fired.
In the 33-Day War, Israel won the first and second of those war aims… But it won them only through the conclusion of an internationally mediated ceasefire agreement in which it, too, was bound by reciprocal conditions. It did not win the third of the listed war aims in 2006.
The ceasefire with Hizbullah has proven remarkably robust in the 28 months since it went into effect on August 14, 2006. Including right now, I imagine Hizbullah’s fighters in South Lebanon have been working overtime to prevent any attempts the many Palestinians in South Lebanon might have hoped to make, to heat up that border with Israel, too.
… So now, Olmert is making a second attempt to force an Arab opponent to meet his demands for unilateral disarmament using brute physical violence instead of negotiation. Why does he imagine that, this time around, the attempt might end more successfully?
I have no idea.
Perhaps he thinks that this time around, Israel can rely on the power vacuum of the transition environment in Washington to ensure there is no pressure of any real kind from there for him to halt operations on humanitarian grounds?
Well, he faced no such pressure back in 2006, either.
Perhaps he thinks that this time around, Israel’s ground forces will be much more effective and well-trained than they proved to be back in 2006? (And certainly, the flat terrain of Gaza is far easier for their tanks to roll into than the hills and ravines of South Lebanon.)
But so the tanks roll in– and then what? Obviously, thousands of Palestinians might die in the event of a massive land incursion into Gaza. And given the dense patterns of habitation in the Strip, a large proportion of those killed would inevitably be civilians…
But then what? Israel’s much-vaunted ground forces with their lumbering big Main Battle Tanks would find themselves mired in the alleyways and backstreets of Gaza’s refugee camps and shanty-towns. We could expect 100 Jenins…
And then what?
Even in the many jingoistic, intensely bellophilic portions of Israel’s public, there is a real (and quite realistic) reluctance to send the country’s conscript army back into the heart of the Gaza Strip…
And meantime, what happens tothe political environment in the Middle East and the rest of the world?
There is already serious political instability threatening in Jordan, as Marc Lynch noted this morning.
Hosni Mubarak’s regime in Egypt, which has cooperated with Israel in maintaining the tight siege around Gaza for the past three years, is now coming under mounting popular pressure to accede to Hamas demands to end the siege by reopening Egypt’s border fully with Gaza. (You can see some recent videos of Cairo street protests here.)
These two countries’ governments are bulwarks of US power and influence in the Arab world…
But US influence in the Middle East and worldwide is anyway nowhere near as strong as it was back in 2006. So even if the Bush administration– and perhaps even the Obama administration from January 20 on– want to continue shielding Israel from the mounting international chorus that is calling for a ceasefire, it won’t have the same muscle to do so this time as it used in 2006.
In fact, today as in 2006, Israel’s defiance of the international campaign for a ceasefire could well contribute significantly to a continued erosion of Washington’s worldwide influence.
I see that the EU has now taken up Kouchner’s original call, which had been for a 48-hour humanitarian pause, and has been discussing strengthening it into a call for a lasting ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
This is interesting. There is a significant difference between a humanitarian pause and a lasting ceasefire.
So Olmert brushed aside the earlier humanitarian pause idea– and now the Europeans are coming back with an even stronger suggestion.
If he carries on brushing off not only the Europeans but also the rising chorus of other voices calling for a ceasefire, then might the international momentum shift even further towards calling for an immediate, authoritative, UN-led peace conference to hammer out the details of a permanent Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, as I hope it does?
Notable, too..,Breaking news here… that this time around Condi Rice has apparently come to the conclusion that she can’t hold out against the worldwide momentum for an immediate ceasefire, and this evening she joined the representatives of the other three “Quartet” powers in calling for “”an immediate ceasefire that would be fully respected”.
Hurray!
Now let’s see how the UN, the EU, Russia, and the US can work together to being that about… Immediately!
… But meantime, let’s be clear in all this. Olmert can end this war any time he wants. But if he wants to end it in a way that results in an assured end to the firing of rockets into southern Israel, then he is going to have to get into a negotiation that also includes Hamas.
The Olmert government and its friends in Washington can rant on all they want about “terrorism.” But their invocation of the discourse of (anti-)terrorism rings horribly hollow to a world public now seeing the face of the humanitarian disaster and mass killings, including of civilians, that the people of Gaza are now suffering.
They ranted on about “terrorism” in the case of the war against Lebanon in 2006, too. But that did not prevent them, at the end of the day, from engaging in negotiations that also, indirectly, involved Hizbullah. And those negotiations “worked”, from, Israel’s perspective, in bringing about the end of Hizbullah rocketings of northern Israel, and the return of the remains of the lost POWs.
They also worked for the Lebanese, by allowing a restoration of calm that allowed them to bury their hundreds of civilian dead and start, slowly, to rebuild their shattered towns and villages.
This time, too, negotiations that involve Hamas can “work” for Israel, by bringing about an end to rocketing and the return of Gilad Shalit (who apparently was among those injured in the recent bombing.)
But let’s take this idea of a simple “ceasefire” between Israel and Hamas very much further. Let’s give it some real political strengthening, as the latest EU moves suggest. Indeed, let’s see it as a speedy segue into the final, durable Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement that those two peoples, all their neighbors, and the rest of the world all so sorely need.
H,
I have anxiously waited for your analysis on how to conclude this horrendous episode of violence, human loss, sheer suffering and human destruction. Its all to be denounced, in my view.
I do believe that Bernard Kouchner has the right idea-the conclusion of this horrendous violence must be the establishment of a PERMANENT cease-fire *PERMANENT* is the word he uses to describe his initiative.
Thanks for the posts. Too bad that a seeming small few react rather distastefull to what you have to say, rather than actually read it and consider it for its substance and seasoned analysis.
” Why does he imagine that, this time around, the attempt might end more successfully?
I have no idea.”
I think I have.
Olmert, like 99% of the Israeli political-military class – and doubtless a very large proportion of the Israeli public too – has only one way of dealing with “the Arabs”. Use overwhelming force. When that doesn’t work (and it rarely does) use even more overwhelming force. When that doesn’t work….. well, you get the idea. Classic colonial mentality – The natives only understand the language of force”.
We need to give up on this widely-held idea that Israeli ‘leaders’ are somehow more intelligent than others – we are talking about people who still haven’t come round to the often-proved notion that air power alone is a blunt (but incredibly lethal) instrument. But yes, this is beginning to look more and more like August 2006. Even allowing for the fact that Hamas’ capabilities are much lower than those of Hizballah, it is highly unlikely that the Israelis will risk their precious conscripts in any genuine fighting. And so, hundreds of Palestinians casualties later, we will likely see Israel accepting a deal it could have had months, if not years, ago. Fools.
Helena–
You are assuming that Israel WANTS to end the war. I don’t think that is necessarily the case. Here is another article, this one from an op-ed piece the right-wing Jerusalem Post, that cogently argues that it is politics, rather than security, that is driving “Operation Cast Lead.”
The Politics of Air Strikes :
Dec. 30, 2008
Michael Freund , THE JERUSALEM POST
The operation in Gaza is just a few days old, but Israel’s leaders already seem confused about the objective. Echoing the lack of strategic clarity that characterized the conduct of the Second Lebanon War, our decision-makers have wasted little time in offering a series of muddled, and often contradictory, assertions regarding the goal of the present campaign against Hamas.
This does not bode well for the days and weeks to come.
Speaking in the Knesset on Monday, Defense Minister Ehud Barak was adamant, declaring that “we have an all-out war against Hamas and its kind.” This would clearly seem to indicate the IDF intends to obliterate the terrorist movement and remove it from power. After all, what else could “all-out war” mean, other than reentering Gaza and flushing out the Hamas regime?
But Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, in US television interviews on Sunday, offered an entirely different perspective. On NBC’s Meet the Press, she insisted that “our goal is not to reoccupy the Gaza Strip.” And when asked by Fox News if Israel was planning to topple the Hamas regime, Livni said, “Not now.” But wait, it gets better.
Vice Premier Haim Ramon told Channel 10 television the other day that the present operation would only cease once Hamas is removed from power. “We will stop firing if someone takes responsibility for what happens there – anyone except Hamas,” he insisted.
So which is it? Is the current campaign aimed at removing Hamas or simply delivering a blow to its terrorist infrastructure? It would be comforting to think the different messages being offered are all part of a well thought-out plan aimed at confusing the enemy.
Comforting, but extremely naïve. For if past experience is any guide, the more likely scenario is that the government does not have a clear sense of what it hopes to achieve on the battlefield.
NOW DON’T get me wrong. I am all in favor of the use of force against Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Just last week, I wrote about the need to reassert complete military control over Gaza, put Hamas leaders on trial for war crimes and rebuild and repopulate the ruins of Gush Katif.
But it is hard to escape the nagging feeling that what is really motivating our politicians right now is not bullets, but ballots. With elections looming in just six weeks, and polls indicating that Labor and Kadima are headed for the opposition benches, both parties have suddenly rediscovered the need to defend the country and its citizens.
Bear in mind that Livni has been foreign minister since May 2006, and Barak has served as defense minister since June 2007. During that period, literally thousands of rockets, mortar shells and other projectiles have been fired at the South, and yet the government refrained from taking concerted action to stop it. Indeed, since January 1, Palestinian terrorists in Gaza have fired more than 3,000 Kassam rockets and mortar rounds at communities in the Negev.
And yet, the military campaign only began on December 27. So the question remains: What took so long? Sure, the so-called cease-fire with Hamas was in effect until December 19. But that was a cease-fire in name only, one which the terrorists brashly and repeatedly violated.
On June 12, for example, Hamas fired a barrage of more than 50 mortar shells, Kassam and Katyusha rockets at the South. Similarly, on November 14, it bombarded towns in the Negev. Yet in neither instance did Israel undertake a large-scale military operation.
So it seems somewhat odd that precisely 45 days before the elections, with their fortunes sagging at the polls, Barak and Livni suddenly seem compelled to act to stop the rocket fire.
And not surprisingly, it is already paying political dividends, at least for Barak’s Labor Party. On Sunday, Channel 10 reported the results of a poll which was conducted after the air strikes on Gaza the previous day. It showed Labor soaring to 16 seats from a projected 10 in earlier surveys. That is a gain of 60 percent in just a matter of days.
YOU MIGHT be wondering why any of this matters, as long as the IDF is getting the job done in Gaza. But that is precisely the point. If in fact this current operation is guided by political calculations, rather than straightforward military and security considerations, you can rest assured that it will end as soon as the political objective is achieved, with strategic concerns coming in a distant second.
And so, rather than achieving all-out victory, which is what is so desperately needed, we might very well find ourselves in a situation where Hamas is battered, but left standing, or perhaps replaced with a corrupt and hostile Fatah-run regime. In either scenario, it will only be a matter of time before the rocket fire returns, just as it has in the past.
So while there is of course reason to rejoice that we are at last defending ourselves, we should not delude ourselves into thinking that our leadership has gotten it right this time. Chances are that even as they pull the trigger, they are keeping a steady eye on the polls.
So now more than ever, we need to raise our voices and make clear to the politicians that nothing short of total victory in Gaza will do. It is time to reverse the disaster of the August 2005 pullout, and restore control over the area. Anything less will only mean continued turmoil and terror.
Israel did not start this conflict, nor did we seek it out. But we know how to end it, so let’s make sure that, once and for all, that is what we do.
***********
All the helpful suggestions about how to attain a ceasefire and/or end the Gaza war are irrelevant if that isn’t what Israel’s decision-makers want to do. With a laundry list of objectives that just keeps growing, no sooner will one be achieved than another will be invoked as the “real” reason to keep fighting. And as the author, Michael Freund suggests, when it is politically expedient to end the Gaza war, it will not be because the security of the people of Sderot. I hope President-elect Obama understands this.