Gaza: The Futility of the Israeli War

As Israeli military operations enter a fourth day, our colleague Rami Khouri has published this thoughtful, incisive analysis of why Israeli military operations against Gaza are likely to leave the country less rather than more secure:

Punishing Gaza in Vain

BEIRUT -- God punished the arrogance and hubris of the Hebrews in the Old Testament by making them wander the wilderness for 40 years before allowing a later, more humble, generation to enter Canaan. The current generation of Israeli Jews is not as proficient at learning these 40-year lessons, it seems, to judge from Israel’s current ferocious attack on Gaza.



It was exactly 40 years ago to the day -- December 28, 1968 -- that Israeli commandos raided Beirut airport and destroyed 13 Lebanese civilian aircraft, in retaliation for a Palestinian attack against an Israeli airliner in Athens. Israel aimed to inflict a revenge punishment so severe that it would shock the Arabs into preventing the Palestinians from fighting Israel.

Today, 40 years and countless attacks and wars later, Israel again uses massive retaliatory and punitive force to pummel the Palestinians of Gaza into submission. Hundreds of Palestinians have died in the first 24 hours of the Israeli attack, and several thousand might die by the time the operation ends. For what purpose, one wonders?

The past 40 years offer a credible guide, if anyone in Israel or Washington cares to grasp the historical record instead of merely wallowing in a cruel world of political lies and deceptions. Israel’s use of its clear military superiority against Palestinians, Lebanese and other Arabs has consistently led to five parallel, linked, and very predictable results:

1. Israeli power has momentarily shattered Palestinian and Arab military and civilian infrastructure, only to see the bludgeoned Arabs regroup and return a few years later -- with much greater technical proficiency and political will to fight back. This happened when the Palestinians, who were driven out of Jordan in 1970, eventually re-established more lethal bases in Lebanon; or when Israel destroyed Fateh’s police facilities in the West Bank and Gaza a few years ago, and soon found themselves fighting Hamas’ capabilities instead.

2. Israel’s combination of military ferocity, insincerity in peace negotiations, and continued colonization has seen “moderate” groups and peace-making partners like Fateh slowly self-destruct, to be challenged or even replaced by tougher foes. Fateh has given way to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and to militant spin-offs from within Fateh like the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. Hizbullah emerged in Lebanon after Israel invaded and occupied south Lebanon in 1982.

3. Israel’s insistence on militarily dominating the entire Middle East has seen it generate new enemies in lands where it once had strategic allies -- like Lebanon and Iran. Israel once worked closely with some predominantly Christian groups in Lebanon, and had deep security links with the Shah of Iran. Today -- the figurative 40 years later -- Israel sees its most serious, even existential, threats emanating from Hizbullah in Lebanon and the radical ruling regime in Iran.

4. The massive suffering Israel inflicts on ordinary Palestinians transforms a largely docile population into a recruiting pool for militants, resistance fighters, suicide bombers, terrorists, and other warriors. After decades of Israeli policies of mass imprisonment, starvation, strangulation, colonization, assassination, assault and terror tactics against Palestinians, the Palestinians eventually react to their own dehumanization by turning around and using the same kind of cruel methods to kill Israeli soldiers and civilians.

5. Israeli policies over decades have been a major -- but not the only -- reason for the transformation of the wider political environment in the Arab world into a hotbed of Islamism confronting more stringent Arab police states. The Islamists who politically dominate the Arab region -- whether Shiite Hizbullah, or Sunni Hamas or anything else in between -- are the only Arabs since the birth of Israel in 1948 who have proved both willing and able to fight back against Zionism.

All these trends can be seen in action during the current Israeli attack against Gaza: Palestinian and Arab radicalization, Islamist responses amidst pan-Arab lassitude, the continued discrediting of President Mahmoud Abbas’ government, and regional populist agitation against Israel, its U.S. protector, and most Arab governments. None of this is new. And that is precisely why it is so significant today, as Israel’s war on Gaza paves the way for a repetition of the five trends above that have plagued Israelis and Arabs alike.

The biblical 40-year time span between Israel’s attack on Beirut airport on December 28, 1968 and its war on Gaza on December 27, 2008 is eerily relevant. It is time enough for frightened and arrogant Israelis to learn that in all these years their weapons have promoted neither quiescence among neighboring Arabs, nor security along Israel’s borders. The exact opposite has happened, and it will happen again now.

Here’s something to ponder as the next 40-year period starts ticking down: The only thing that ever did bring Israelis and Arabs genuine peace was equitable, negotiated peace accords -- with Egypt and Jordan -- that treated Arabs and Israel as people who must enjoy equal rights to security and stable statehood.

Comments

[ChrisE]

There are some excellent points within this analysis- most of which I agree with. However, there are some points for further discussion..

Though you acknowledge that Israel's gravest threats are Hezbollah and Iran, the elimination of an overt external nation state threat to the security of Israel must be a major diversion from the strategic context of 40 years ago? Perhaps, so is the end of the Cold War?

I personally would not argue that Iran poses a grave existential threat to Israel. But if you argue that it does, how does this influence your critique of Israel's supposed determination to militarily dominate the region (an assertion which I feel is going a bit far)?

3. I personally see little evidence that this aim explains the demise of the Shah of Iran- though some work has rightly indicated that the conflict was politically useful for Khomeini. Internal factors are much more relevant.

5. As you partially acknowledge, a factor- but many argue not the most important. Again, the Iranian Revolution is perhaps the clearest example of this.

But anyway- regardless of the political dominance of the Islamists in the Middle East, if they even do, the current indifference of the Arab govts (which you acknowledge) is the key point. There is no Arab willingness to confront the 'zionists'. Some sources have even claimed Egypt colluded with the IDF.

It is not so much that I disagree with the substance of your individual points, rather your reading of the lessons applied over 40 years. The geo-political and strategic situation is radically altered.

I fear the real lesson that the Israelis believe relevent is that the equitable negotiated peace accords with Jordan and Egypt only occured once IDF superiority persuaded them military struggle was pointless. Applying this logic to Hamas is, of course, to misread geographical and social context and state and non state behaviour.

As many, including EA, have noted- regular and brutal displays of military superiority are not applied tactically. Rather they are part of a wider strategy of deterrence applied consistently for 40 years.

[The Intellectual Redneck]

Israeli warplanes continue to pound Hamas installations inside the Gaza strip. Speculation about a ground assault continues, but no ground assault has occurred as of this post. There has been much condemnation of Israel for over responding to the daily Hamas rocket attacks from the Gaza strip. I support the Israeli actions. If a hundred rockets were being launched into the USA from foreign soil, we would have taken quicker and stronger measures than the Israelis have.

Watch the action from a missile's eye view here. http://bloggingredneck.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow">Missile's eye view

[Mo]

[Moderator's note: These are graphic images, far more graphic than any in the US and British media, of the deaths in Gaza.]

Images of Palestinian casualties:

http://www.tabnak.ir/pages/?cid=31057

[Mo]

Does anyone remember this?

Israeli minister warns of Palestinian 'holocaust'
guardian.co.uk, Friday 29 February 2008 13.33 GMT

An Israeli minister today warned of increasingly bitter conflict in the Gaza Strip, saying the Palestinians could bring on themselves what he called a "holocaust".

"The more Qassam [rocket] fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves," Matan Vilnai, Israel's deputy defence minister, told army radio.

Shoah is the Hebrew word normally reserved to refer to the Jewish Holocaust. It is rarely used in Israel outside discussions of the Nazi extermination of Jews during the second world war, and many Israelis are loath to countenance its use to describe other events.

The minister's statement came after two days of tit-for-tat missile raids between Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip and the Israeli army. At least 32 Palestinians and one Israeli have been killed since the surge in violence on Wednesday.

Today Israel activated a rocket warning system to protect Ashkelon, a city of 120,000 people, from Palestinian attacks.

Ashkelon was hit by several Grad rockets fired from Gaza yesterday. One hit an apartment building, slicing through the roof and three floors below, and another landed near a school, wounding a 17-year-old girl.

Located 11 miles from Gaza, Ashkelon has been sporadically targeted before but not suffered direct hits or significant damage.

"It will be sad, and difficult, but we have no other choice," Vilnai said, referring to the large-scale military operation he said Israel was preparing to bring a halt to the rocket fire.

"We're getting close to using our full strength. Until now, we've used a small percentage of the army's power because of the nature of the territory."

Israel would not launch a ground offensive in the next week or two, partly because the military would prefer to wait for better weather, defence sources said. But the army had completed its preparations and was awaiting the government's order to move, officials said.

Until now, the Palestinian rocket squads have largely targeted Sderot, a small town near Gaza. Ashkelon, a big population centre only 25 miles from Tel Aviv, was caught unprepared, its mayor said on Friday.

"It's a city of 120,000 people, with large facilities – a huge soccer stadium, a basketball stadium and a beach. No one is ready for this," Roni Mehatzri told Israel Radio.

Dozens of soldiers in orange berets from the Israeli military's home front command arrived in Ashkelon and hung posters around the city telling residents what to do in case of rocket attack.

The barrage of Iranian-made Grads directed at Ashkelon yesterday came after an escalation of violence in Gaza. Israel killed five Hamas militants on Wednesday morning, apparently including two planners of the rocket attacks, in an air strike on a minivan.

Later in the day, a Palestinian rocket killed an Israeli civilian, a 47-year-old father of four, in Sderot.

Hamas, an Islamist group with close ties to Iran, has ruled Gaza since its violent takeover there in June 2006.

Since Wednesday, 32 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli missile strikes, including 14 civilians, among them eight children, according to Palestinian officials. The youngest was a six-month-old boy, Mohammed al-Borai, whose funeral was held yesterday.

There were further indications that Israel was preparing for an offensive by sending confidential messages to world leaders, including the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, who plans to visit the region next week.

"Israel is not keen on, and rushing for, an offensive, but Hamas is leaving us no choice," the Israeli defence minister, Ehud Barak, told the senior figures, according to Israel's mass circulation daily, Yedioth Ahronoth.

Security sources were quoted by both Israel Radio and army radio as saying a big operation was being prepared but was not imminent.

[Moderator's note- the link is here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/29/israelandthepalestinians1]

[Dave]

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,24855309-2,00.html

Has Hamas made any phone calls to Israelis before firing off their rockets? I'll bet not.