Pogrom in Hebron? NYT ignores…

Haaretz’s Ami Issacharoff had some striking reporting of the rampage militant Israeli settlers in Hebron went on through the Palestinian parts of the city yesterday, after the IDF evicted some of their fellow-settlers from a Palestinian-owned building, as per Israeli High Court order.
Issacharoff unabshedly described what happened during the rampage as “a pogrom”. He wrote about the enraged settler civilians attacking with stones and flames a Palestinian family home in which 20 family members– 17 of them women and children– cowered in terror. And as the pogromists attacked, people described as “security guards from Kiryat Arba” stood round the house preventing the Palestinians’ neighbors from coming to their aid.
He wrote:

    The brain requires a minute or two to digest what is taking place. Women and children crying bitterly, their faces giving off an expression of horror, sensing their imminent deaths, begging the journalists to save their lives. Stones land on the roof of the home, the windows and the doors. Flames engulf the southern entrance to the home. The front yard is littered with stones thrown by the masked men. The windows are shattered and the children are frightened. All around, as if they were watching a rock concert, are hundreds of Jewish witnesses, observing the events with great interest, even offering suggestions to the Jewish wayward youth as to the most effective way to harm the family. And the police are not to be seen. Nor is the army.
    Ten minutes prior, while the security forces were preoccupied with dispersing the rioters near the House of Contention, black smoke billowed from the wadi separating Kiryat Arba and Hebron. For some reason, none of the senior officers of the police or the army were particularly disturbed by what was transpiring at the foot of Kiryat Arba…

Issacharoff was one of a group of Israeli journalists who decided to abandon the “neutral observer” role and intervene to try to save the family members from the lynch mob:

    A group of journalists approach the house. A dilemma. What to do? There are no security forces in the vicinity and now the Jewish troublemakers decided to put the journalists in their crosshairs. We call for the security guards from Kiryat Arba to intervene and put a halt to the lynch. But they surround the home to prevent the arrival of “Palestinian aid.”
    The home is destroyed and the fear is palpable on the faces of the children. One of the women, Jihad, is sprawled on the floor, half-unconscious. The son, who is gripping a large stick, prepares for the moment he will be forced to face the rioters. Tahana, one of the daughters, refuses to calm down. “Look at what they did to the house, look.”
    Tess, the photographer, bursts into tears as the events unfold around her. The tears do not stem from fear. It is shame, shame at the sight of these occurrences, the deeds of youths who call themselves Jews. Shame that we share the same religion. At 5:05 P.M., a little over an hour after the incident commenced, a unit belonging to the Yassam special police forces arrives to disperse the crowd of masked men.

These journalists deserve the highest awards possible, for their integrity and courage.
And the New York Times? Its writer Ethan Bronner (or his editors?) made no mention at all of what was happening to Hebron’s indigenous and rightful Palestinian residents during the day yesterday. Their account portrayed what was happening as only an intra-Jewish drama. They had space to give detailed accounts of what the Israeli settler women were wearing, and an incendiary quote from someone from a pro-settler party. But the fact that the lives of 20 members of the Abu Sa’afan family were directly threatened during an anti-Palestinian pogrom, conducted by Jewish extremists while the Israeli security forces stood aside– ?
Nah, no room for that in the New York Times.

Paulson fails to melt Chinese hearts

Time was, when there was a problem of any size in the global economy, the countries affected would send their finance ministers running to Washington to get help from the two big Washington-based financial institutions, the World Bank and the IMF. No longer. Today, it is US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson whose country is in deep, deep trouble. And he’s gone cap-in-hand to the only place that can throw a lifeline to him (and all the rest of us in the western world): Beijing.
Paulson’s mission has not, thus far, been going very well.
This is a huge, truly world-defining story. I don’t know why the WaPo hasn’t given it a lot more prominence.
The Daily Telegraph‘s Malcolm Moore reports from Shanghai today that Lou Jiwei, the chairman and chief executive of China’s biggest sovereign wealth fund, the $200 billion China Investment Corporation, said that China

    had no intention of “saving” the West from the financial crisis. “Right now we do not have the courage to invest in financial institutions because we do not know what problems they may have,” said Mr Lou.

Continue reading “Paulson fails to melt Chinese hearts”

Khomeini of Palestine

In this BBC report, I saw some quotes used from a former member of the Al-Aqsa brigades whose given name was “Khomeini.” Not surprisingly the young man’s age was given as 29.
It takes me back to when I was working in Beirut in ’78. So many of the Palestinians there were euphoric about the downfall of the (strongly pro-Israeli) Shah. Yasser Arafat incorporated the theme of “Today, Tehran; tomorrow Jerusalem!” into all his rhetoric… Small surprise that this young man’s parents– like, I’m guessing, many others in the Muslim world– gave their son the name of Khomeini that year.
1978 was also the year of the Camp David agreements. I remember that one mother in heavily Shiite South Lebanon gave birth to triplets, and the family were so optimistic about the prospects of regionwide peace after the accords were signed that they named the babies “Carter”, “Begin”, and “Sadat.”
H’mmm. I wonder whether those guys are still walking around with the monickers they were given that year?
(I find it significant that Khomeini Abu Amera, 29, of Jenin never judged it necessary to change his name even during the extremely bloody eight-year war between Iran and Iraq.)

Rafsanjani: Embassy “should not have been taken.”

In reviewing Iranian reactions to the Obama election and emerging team, I came across a recently translated report of comments made by Iran’s still influential Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani on November 4th — on the anniversary of takeover of the US Embassy by Iranian students in 1979. Ordinarily, such days are filled with chants of “Marg Bar Amrika” (death to America).
Yet on this occasion, 29 years later, Rafsanjani, son of the revolution, flatly questions the taking of the Embassy as a mistake.

Continue reading “Rafsanjani: Embassy “should not have been taken.””

Welcome new thinking on the Palestine Question

In Washington today former deputy speaker of Israel’s Knesset Naomi
Chazan had some great advice for President-elect
Obama. Noting that Israel’s election comes just 20 days after Obama’s
inauguration, she said Obama should wait 20 days before announcing the
US’s new policy on the Arab-Israeli peace– “but he shouldn’t wait any
longer than 21 days.”

The US might, she said, present its own peace plan. (She didn’t spell out whether Obama should do that right then, or a little later.)

Chazan– who is one of the smartest and most well-grounded people I
know, of any nationality or gender– also argued
convincingly that the whole process that goes back to Oslo and running
right through Annapolis “has dead-ended.” She said the whole way the
“peace process” has been framed and organized since Oslo needs to be
reframed, and gave some excellent suggestions on how to do this.

She was speaking along with Daniel Levy at the New America Foundation,
at an event co-hosted by the strongly pro-peace New Israel Fund, of
whose board she is president.

Chazan  provided these three examples of the kind of reframing
she envisaged:

  1. “We need to recognize
    the asymmetry there is both on the ground and at the negotiating table,
    between the Israelis and Palestinians, and find ways to rebalance that.
    So far, since Oslo, the negotiations have all tended to create a false
    idea that there is symmetry between them. There isn’t.” Later,
    Levy  amplified that point, saying that just leaving the two
    sides in a room together to deal with everything through bilateral
    negotiations wouldn’t work. Chazan agreed. Both of them said the US
    needs to play a much more activist role in the negotiations than it did
    in the whole “process” from Oslo through Annapolis.
  2. “We need to go back to looking at the root causes of the
    conflict. There’s always been this idea that doing this would be
    unhelpful to the negotiations, but actually there are ways it could be
    helpful.” Later, in response to a question about the Palestinian
    refugee issue, she spelled out that rather than dealing with it just in
    a distant and sort of technical way, if the Israeli government would
    agree to make some kind of public acknowledgment that Israel’s actions
    had “helped to create” the problem and wanted to join with others in
    finding a solution, that was the kind of action that could help move
    the whole process forward.
  3. “We could also think of trying to separate the issues of
    ending the occupation and dismantling the settlements.” In the
    discussion period she noted that the fact that settlement dismantlement
    had always, in the Oslo-to-Annapolis process, been an explicit item on
    the agenda gave the settlers and their supporters a big cause to
    mobilize around and, in effect, gave them a veto over the whole
    negotiation. “But how about if we didn’t say anything explicit at all
    about the settlements or the settlers but just reached an agreement by
    which Israel would withdraw completely to the Green Line or a line near
    it with negotiated changes, handing the area over in the first instance
    to an international or NATO force, perhaps without doing anything
    explicit to dismantle the settlements? What would the settlers do then?
    They lose their veto.”

Chazan’s visit to Washington is timely indeed. As I noted here
on Monday, when Obama announced his foreign policy team in Chicago
earlier that day, he also made prominent mention of the need to work
rapidly “a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians.”

Continue reading “Welcome new thinking on the Palestine Question”

Random Notes from Old Mexico

o Taking a car, even a ’74 Volksy pop-top, across the U.S. border far into Mexico requires an import permit which is paid for at the border by posting a bond on a credit card. The windshield sticker which serves as evidence of the bond is good for six months and must be removed by Mexican customs before its expiration. It doesn’t take too long, and the lady that handled it was efficient. Presto, you’re driving in a foreign country with a different culture. That means narrow roads with no shoulders where the multitude of roadside crosses and shrines say: Pay attention.
o The first problem came soon. We got temporarily lost in the entry city. There were no signs. If you don’t know the way you shouldn’t be there! Next came the lengthy and repeated road repairs, requiring extensive travel over rutted dirt paths behind creeping semi-trucks. There seem to be two kinds of roads in Mexico (toll roads excepted), those being rebuilt and those that should be! I exaggerate. I later found that the vibration from the rough trail had loosened and removed the (tightened, I had checked it) thumbscrew that holds my starboard air filter together, with the possible ingestion of dust into the engine. Oh joy.

Continue reading “Random Notes from Old Mexico”

Burying the SOFA (WA) text: Mission Accomplished?

I just saw Phyllis Bennis on the Real News Network talking about the Obama foreign policy team. She did a terrific job. Except at one point, a couple of minutes in, she made quite a point of saying that the Bush administration “hasn’t shown us the American text of the SOFA”, that they “haven’t made it public”, etc… And therefore that she still didn’t really believe it said that all the US troops would be out by the end of 2011.
But Phyllis! The text of the SOFA (more accurately, a “Withdrawal Agreement,” as it is titled) was posted on the White House website last Thursday.
But actually, the fact that even a savvy, go-getting analyst like Phyllis Bennis hadn’t seen it by the time she recorded the RNN segment– maybe yesterday afternoon?– means that the White House’s strategy of “publishing the text by stealth” seems to have worked!
Last Thursday was, you see, Thanksgiving Day here in America. A great day for the President’s media people to “bury” news that they’re not too happy or proud about…
(I blogged about it on Friday. I guess Phyllis Bennis wasn’t reading JWN either…)
But it’s true that the release of the official English-language text of the SOFA/WA has gathered just about zero discernible coverage in the US MSM. That, despite the fact that this really is, the crowing “accomplishment” of a war that has cost more than 4,200 American lives, drained our country’s treasury, and considerably damaged our standing all around the world.
You’d think the MSM would have had some interest in the final text of the agreement?? But no…
So the burying strategy apparently worked.
The writer of this fascinating AFP article from last Wednesday (Nov. 26) tells us, however, that the timing of the release was not determined only by a desire to ‘bury’ it away from the US news media as much as it was by a desire to ‘bury’ it away from Iraq’s parliamentarians before they held their crucial vote on the agreement later that same day.
The AFP piece said this:

    three officials in Washington said the administration of US President George W. Bush has withheld the official English translation of the agreement to suppress a public dispute with the Iraqis until after the parliamentary vote.
    The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the official English language text of the agreement was designated as “sensitive but unclassified.”
    “There are a number of areas in here where they have agreement on the same wording but different understandings about what the words mean,” said one US official.
    The White House National Security Council said it had held up the translation’s release until the Iraqi parliament votes.
    “We plan to release it soon,” said spokesman Gordon Johndroe. “We are waiting for the Iraqi political process to move further down the road.”
    In the event the SOFA is approved, the US could simply circumvent parts of the agreement, said officials.
    For example, for the provision that bars the US from launching military operations into neighboring countries from Iraqi territory, the administration could cite another provision that allows parties to retain the right of self-defense — such as pursuing groups that launch strikes on US targets from Syria or Iran.
    The provision that appears to require the US to notify Iraqi officials in advance of any planned military operations and seek Iraqi approval for them could also be altered, said the officials.
    Some US military figures find the provision especially troubling, although US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, head of the US Central Command David Petraeus and the top US commander in Iraq Raymond Odierno have all endorsed it…

So they’re saying that the “self-defense” provision could be used to over-ride the “not using Iraqi terrain for attacks against others” provision, and that the notification provision could simply “be altered”, unilaterally by the US side at some point?
I doubt if the Iraqis or anyone else in the International community would see matters that way.
Anyway, go back to my post from last Friday to see the points I made there about the “exact” meaning of the all-important Article 24 regarding the “total” nature of the December 2011 withdrawal and the fact that both the Arabic and English texts have been described by the parties as “equally binding.”

Obama’s foreign affairs team and Arab-Israel diplomacy

His foreign affairs team comes, now, as no surprise. But what was welcome in his speech in Chicago today was the prominent mention he made of the need to find “a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians.”
That’s especially welcome, coming a few days after the veteran Clinton-era peace processor Aaron Miller came out swinging with a public argument that an Israeli-Palestinian peace is just too difficult, so Obama shouldn’t even make any effort at reaching it but should focus on brokering a Syria-Israel peace instead.
Let’s hope wiser heads prevail! Significant though a Syria-Israel peace would be, by far the greater worldwide symbolism– and by far the greater actual, continuing human suffering— attaches to the horrible structural and physical violence of the Palestine-Israel conflict.
Plus, once there’s a final peace between Israel and Palestine, an Israel-Syria deal can fall into place extremely easily. (Its parameters have long been well known.)
The reverse is decidedly not the case.
So if a choice has to be made between the two tracks, Obama should plump for the Palestine track as the highest priority.
But here’s an important idea: Why should he feel he needs to make some kind of a contrived “choice” between the two tracks, anyway?
Why not aim at a speedy, grand settlement of all the outstanding portions of the Arab-Israeli dispute, all at once?
This is really not such a radical idea. In the great peace settlements of earlier eras– 1815, 1919, 1945, etc– huge numbers of outstanding disputes, some of them of very lengthy duration, were all resolved together, as a kind of a “package deal.”
Compared with those earlier, continent- or globe-girdling grand settlements, resolving Israel’s outstanding conflicts with Syria, Palestine, and Lebanon “all in one fell swoop” looks very do-able indeed, almost picayune. And right now, with the Saudi peace plan of 2002, there’s a great vehicle for getting into that comprehensive negotiation.
President Obama could also build on the precedent of the 1991, Bush-I-era Madrid peace conference, which also aimed at a comprehensive settlement of all the outstanding tracks of the Israeli-Arab dispute.
One big advantage of this approach, compared with trying endlessly– yet again!– to take partial or incremental steps along each of the tracks separately is that the “pain” of the settlement, in terms of the concessions that all the parties will need to make from their long-held political positions, will be a one-off thing, rather than a scary and continuing “death from a hundred cuts.” Meanwhile, the “gain” of the settlement, in terms of the huge relief the citizens of all these countries will win from the burdens of war, occupation, and international estrangement, will be much more definitive and palpable than any “gain” they could reasonably expect from partial settlements.
Ending the Arab-Israeli conflict in its entirety will also breathe huge new life into the relationships Israel has with Egypt and Jordan, which remain very strained even though both those countries have long had formal peace treaties with Israel.
Ending the Arab-Israeli conflict in its entirety on terms that are fair and enshrine the key principles of human equality, international legitimacy, and a commitment to setting aside all forms of violence will allow Palestinians, Syrians, Lebanese, Israelis, and all the other peoples of the Middle East to breath a huge sigh of relief… to build new kinds of relations with other… and to move into a much more hopeful future.
So that’s why I’m glad Barack Obama put such an emphasis on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It’s not that the Israel-Syria track is insignificant. It’s not. But it’s a dangerous illusion to think that brokering peace on that track could be any kind of a substitute for doing the hard diplomatic work that’s so urgently needed on the Palestine track.
Actually, it’s an even more dangerous illusion to believe that any “peace broker”– whether it continues to be overwhelmingly the US or shifts to being a more genuinely international effort– has to make a “choice” between pushing on the Palestine track or the Syria track.
Go for the whole grand Arab-Israeli settlement, Obama! That is the way to truly transform the Middle East– as well as our country’s relationship with the whole of the rest of the world.

US-China: A good Bush record

Thomas Christensen, who was deputy assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific affairs in Condi Rice’s State Department from 2006-08, has an informative little piece in today’s WaPo lauding the improvements the Bush administration has made in the relationship with China.
He writes,

    U.S.-China diplomacy has moved beyond managing problems between the two sides to focus on coordinating responses to problems around the world. That was an important and innovative step for both countries to take. The U.S.-China Senior Dialogue on political and security affairs, led by Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte, addresses such global issues. Our regional assistant secretaries of state and their Chinese counterparts also hold intensive discussions. Ten years ago, officials in these positions probably wouldn’t even have known each other’s names.

I think this is really good news, and I commend Sec. Rice and the President on having brought about an improvement in this literally world-defining relationship.
Christensen notes the contribution this Washington-Beijing track made to defusing the tensions over North Korea, in particular.
However, he seems a little over-laudatory when he writes that Washington has been working continuously on tamping down Taiwan-China relations by “demanding that the two sides settle their differences peacefully.”
How was that compatible with the $6.5 billion arms sale to Taiwan that Washington announced in early October?
Christensen omitted to mention, too, that the early months of the Bush administration were notably not marked by an eirenic approach to China. (See under “Hainan Island Incident.”) It was only after that incident got resolved through diplomacy that Bush started adopting a stance toward Beijing that was markedly more cooperative than confrontational.
(Or did that shift happen more evidently after 9/11? Help, anyone?)
Actually, I have a niggling concern that Obama might feel the need to shift back some toward a more shrill and accusatory stance towards China. There are lots of longterm human-rights activists in and associated with his emerging administration. But these are overwhelmingly the kind of activists whose (extremely occidocentric) definition of “rights” focuses much more on civil and political rights than on social and economic rights, and who might for this and a number of other reasons judge it a good idea to start getting accusatory towards China…

Israeli analysts prepare next war against Lebanon

In the latest issue of its quarterly journal, Tel Aviv’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) carries two (or three) articles debating in some depth whether– in the event of a new war against Lebanon that one writer describes as “inevitable”, Israel should actively target institutions and facilities of the Lebanese state, or just “restrict” itself to targeting Hizbullah.
The plainest case for targeting Lebanese national institutions directly is argued in The Third Lebanon War: Target Lebanon (PDF), by Maj.-Gen. (Retd) Giora Eiland, a former national security adviser to PMs Sharon and Olmert and before that head of the IDF’s planning and operations branches.
A more nuanced view– but one that concludes that launching a large-scale, and possibly also lengthy, ground operation in Lebanon is “inevitable”– is argfued by Yossi Kuperwasser in The Next War with Hizbollah: Should Lebanon be the Target? (PDF). Kuperwasser is a former head of the IDF’s intelligence research division.
Now, I understand that it’s the job of planners within the active-duty military to “plan for the worst.” But it’s fairly depressing that a publication that aims at a broad portion of the international political elite should give so much space to people making arguments completely based on the premise that Israel “has no alternative” but to go to war against Lebanon (or Hizbullah) sometime in the (possibly near) future. In addition to those two technical-military articles, the issue also contains one by Israeli exerts arguing– especially in light of Israel’s experiences during the 33-day war of 2006– that Israel should spearhead an attempt to get the laws of war changed to be more in its favor. (Surprise, surprise.)
Nowhere in this journal is there any hint that actually, within the context of a comprehensive Israeli-Arab peace settlement, there is a strong scenario whereby Israel might never “need” to go to war against Hizbullah or Lebanon ever again. (Ah, but if there’s not a salutary little war from time to time, how on earth can all the Israeli military companies that these men doubtless consult profitably with, ever keep their sales and profit figures up?)
Actually, the arguments both men make are really weak. They exhibit strategic short-sightedness, tactical idiocy, and severe historical airbrushing (mendacity.) Perhaps that’s because they’re writing here for an “international”, English-language audience that they expect– based on the rock-star welcome they get in most US think-tanks– will ignore the facts and just lap up every word that they write?
Strategic shortsightedness: Neither Eiland nor Kuperwasser can provide a convincing answer to the question, “Yes, but then what?” regarding all their arguments about how (not whether) to fight another war against Lebanon.
In his piece, Eiland makes a couple of arguments. He notes that Hizbullah has become stronger within the Lebanese state than it was at the time of the 33-day war. (Note, though, that he completely fails to explain that it was precisely the ferocity of the assaults Israel made on Lebanon during that war that spurred, that outcome…) So he concludes from that that, to fatally weaken Hizbullah it will be necessary to damage the Lebanese state a lot, too.
He also argues from the “precedent” of the massive, destructive campaign Sharon waged against the PA in June 2002. He writes that there, the real target was Hamas, but Hamas had won a lot of support from the PA, which had strong political support from the west.
“The US sanctioned an Israeli operation against Hamas,” he writes,

    but had a hard time accepting the operation as Israel planned it – an operation against the Palestinian Authority.
    The US at first demanded that Israel leave all West Bank cities (area A) within forty-eight hours. Notable Israeli steadfastness maintained that this time it was impossible to return to the familiar rules of the game whereby only the terrorists are targeted, and the sponsors (the Palestinian Authority) remain immune. Israel’s firmness, which stemmed from a lack of other options, was successful. Israel had to concede on one matter only, stopping the siege of the muq’ata in Ramallah, home to Arafat at the time. On the other hand, the new policy (Israeli control over all Palestinian areas) was well received and commended by the international community.

So, he writes, it would probably be similar with an attack on Lebanon. The “west” might complain a bit at first… but “Israeli firmness” in pursuing its own goals would win the day and even become “well received and commended” by the international community.
His conclusion:

    There is one way to prevent the Third Lebanon War and win it if it does break out (and thereby prevent the Fourth Lebanon War): to make it clear to Lebanon’s allies and through them to the Lebanese government and people that the next war will be between Israel and Lebanon and not between Israel and Hizbollah. Such a war will lead to the elimination of the Lebanese military, the destruction of the national infrastructure, and intense suffering among the population. There will be no recurrence of the situation where Beirut residents (not including the Dahiya quarter) go to the beach and cafes while Haifa residents sit in bomb shelters.
    Serious damage to the Republic of Lebanon, the destruction of homes and infrastructure, and the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people are consequences that can influence Hizbollah’s behavior more than anything else…

Yes, Gen. Eiland, but then what??
So Israel succeeds in completely or substantially destroying the entire physical infrastructure of the state of Lebanon… (Assuming that the post-2008 model “international community” allows it to do this, which I actually doubt.)
And then what?
Israel has a failed state on its northern border and substantial portions of the international community up in arms… And that’s going to “solve” your Hizbullah problem, how?
I believe that Gen. Eiland is urging coordinated use of air and ground force attacks against Lebanon. In which case we could assume that the ground troops might be in control of substntial chunks of Lebanese territory.
Which takes us Back to the Future! Israeli troops bogged down in Lebanon, for 22 long years after 1978, 18 years after 1982.
The very conditions that created and incubated Hizbullah in the first place.
Why should anyone buy your crazy, inhumane, and go-nowhere arguments?
And then there’s Gen. Kuperwasser, who is much more explicit about the need for the “large scale ground operation” in Lebanon, even if he questions whether all the facilities of the Lebanese state as such should be targeted along the way.
Here’s what he writes about the ground op that he argues for:

    If there is another round between Israel and Hizbollah, Israel will not be able to make do with standoff counter attacks on Lebanese targets, and will probably have to launch a large scale ground operation. While Hizbollah will be able to exact a not inconsiderable cost from Israel for such an operation, the IDF has the ability to take control of the organization’s operational territories in southern Lebanon, including north of the Litani River, and if necessary, also in Beirut and the Bek’a valley. Such an operation, together with inflicting damage on infrastructures that serve Hizbollah, is the only one that will stop the firing, create a new reality in the field, and enable examination of the possibility of establishing a different arrangement with regard to relations between Israel and Lebanon in general and the Shiite community in particular.

So, you “stop the firing” of Hizbullah’s rockets onto northern Israel. Okay. And you “create a new reality in the field”… which is one in which Israel is left in control of very large chunks of Lebanese territory…
And then what?
(See my note about the IDF’s post-1978 and post-1982 occupations of south Lebanon, above.)
All Kuperwasser tells us about the political-strategic goal to be sought through this operation is “examination of the possibility of establishing a different arrangement with regard to relations between Israel and Lebanon in general and the Shiite community in particular.” Whatever that means. May 17 agreement, anyone?
These guys are strategic-thinking kindergartners, honestly.
Regarding their tactical skills, they don’t seem much better, either. Eiland writes,

    There is one way to prevent the Third Lebanon War and win it if it does break out (and thereby prevent the Fourth Lebanon War): to make it clear to Lebanon’s allies and through them to the Lebanese government and people that the next war will be between Israel and Lebanon and not between Israel and Hizbollah.

Yeah, well. The military planning required to prevent a war (through deterrence) is quite different from that required to fight one. Actually, Eiland doesn’t seem terribly interested in trying to prevent the next “Lebanese War,” at all. Only, perhaps, the one after that. (See note on the Israeli military industries, above.)
And then, from Kuperwasser we have this truly hilarious and ahistorical explanation of how “the next war” against Lebanon that he favors could actually work out, politically, to help realize the fuzzily defined political-strategic endpoint that he seeks:

    the Israeli goal might be to weaken Hizbollah and strengthen the moderate parties in Lebanon, while damaging the organization’s ability to rehabilitate itself and continue controlling southern Lebanon and presenting itself as the defender of Lebanon, similar to Israel’s strategic objectives in the Second Lebanon War (even if they were not explicitly defined as such). Other objectives in this context could be strengthening moderate elements in the regional system and increasing Israeli deterrence, in part to increase the chances of achieving a favorable peace treaty with Syria and to weaken the extremist elements in the Palestinian system.

Note how he’s effortlessly adopted the misleading and content-free US label of “moderate” to describe what are, actually, pro-US forces within Lebanon. But then see how he is advocating an almost exact replay of what the Israeli leadership attempted to do in 2006: Namely, to attack Lebanon’s civilian state facilities with the aim of turning as many Lebanese as possible against Hizbullah… while “strengthening” Israel’s general deterrent p;ower throughout the region.
It backfired badly in 2006, didn’t it?
Why on earth should anyone assume it might work better next time?
And this brings me to the whole question of these two mens’ extreme historical airbrushing (mendacity).
Actually, from Willem Buiter, I just learned a new word that’s very handy in this context: Publikumsbeschimpfung, which means insulting the intelligence of your audience.
Both Eiland and Kuperwasser insult our intelligence primarily through their reliance on a crucial but completely false assumption about the 33-day war, namely that Israel did not, actually, target any non-military facilities pertaining to the Lebanese state during that war, and, by clear implication, that that very ‘restrained’ approach to warfighting helped deny Israel the victory it could otherwise have won. But just look at the record of that war, including both the roster of the sites that Israel attacked during it– road systems, bridges, civilian factories, a power station– and the extremely bellicose statements from military and political leaders spelling out that “Once it is inside Lebanon, everything is legitimate“, “we will turn Lebanon’s clock back 20 years,” etc.
So Eiland and Kuerwasser are asking us to forget all that… Asking us to forget, too, that Israel’s use of massive overkill tactics against Lebanon backfired badly in [’06, and that after 33 days of assaults they were still unable to impose their will on the Lebanese people or their political system.
This, though the war occurred less than 30 months ago.
Publikumsbeschimpfung, indeed. (Taking the public for chimps, perhaps?)
At one level, I suppose we could read these two guys’ fevered and ill-informed writings as further evidence– if evidence still be needed– of the sterility of what passes for Israeli strategic “thinking” in the present era. After all the INSS, formerly the Jaffee Center, is not chopped liver. It’s the flagship of Israeli strategic-affairs think-tanks.
The problem for these guys, and for all their counterparts in the military-industrial complex throughout the western world is that the world has changed a lot in the past 15 years. Foreign wars have become just about unwinnable. Israel’s performance in Lebanon in 2006 is Example A in that regard. They had overwhelming superiority over Hizbullah at every single step on “the escalation ladder.” But still, they were unable to achieve their strategic goals!
So if foreign wars are unwinnable, then people– taxpayers, conscripts’ families, and others– might soon start to ask, “Why wage them? And why invest such a lot of our country’s treasure in the military industries that help us prepare for them?”
But if that were to happen, what on earth would happen to the military industries and their hordes of nicely paid consultants??
A problem, I think, not just for Israel but also for the US, Britain, and the rest of NATO…
But here’s the good news: There are many, many better ways to resolve conflicts and address fears of insecurity than through war.,