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“War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothin’!” — Edwin Starr, 1970

Some wars are absolutely necessary, though, and this is one of them.

The struggle to kick the Jews out of the Middle East has been led by various entities with the help and connivance of others since the beginning of the 20th century. In the 1930’s it was the Mufti and his followers. Later Egypt and Syria (primarily) picked up the standard, both by making war directly on the Jewish state and by supporting various Palestinian terrorist factions, notably the PLO.  Today it’s Iran.

Iran, which until very recently was flush with oil money, may be more dangerous than Nasser’s Egypt was. It will certainly become so the day it becomes a nuclear power. Today’s Iranian strategy is to weaken Israel through asymmetric low-level conflicts with non-state proxies such as Hamas and Hezbollah, and ultimately to destroy Israel in a regional war in which the primary weapon will be short and long-range missiles fired from Syria, lebanon, and even Gaza.

But Israel is far too strong to be defeated in such a war today. Her enemies understand that quite well despite the bombastic propaganda they broadcast. They prefer to continue applying military and diplomatic pressure to weaken Israel and strengthen its antagonists Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as to press the campaign to delegitimize Israel throughout the world and reduce her support — especially in the US.

The plan includes psychological warfare against Israel, to cause Jews to emigrate, to weaken their commitment to military service and to make them lose confidence in the very proposition that Israel can maintain herself in the Mideast. The Hamas rocket attacks, although they have killed ‘only’ about 16 Israelis since 2001, have had a great deal of effect. The fundamental purpose of a state is to protect its citizens, and it appeared that Israel was incapable of doing that.

What has happened this week is that Hamas — or whoever is calling the shots — miscalculated. Perhaps they believed their own propaganda that Israel was politically incapable of fighting, that the army was not better prepared than in 2006, that Israel was not psychologically capable of accepting the casualties that an all-out war with Hamas would entail, that Gaza was no different than Lebanon, that world opinion could be mobilized to end any conflict to their advantage, that they had built up their military strength and fortifications enough to resist anything the IDF was likely to throw at them.

As a result they expected that nothing would happen, or that Israel’s response would be ineffective. They chose a convenient pretext to resume rocket attacks, which had slowed during the ‘calm’ that had been in effect, firing over 100 rockets into Israel last week. But Israel already had contingency plans in place and they have been activated.

The official goals of the operation are to end the rocket fire, destroy the stockpiles and stop the weapons smuggling that has enabled Hamas to build up its capabilities. Unofficial goals may include crippling Hamas by killing its leadership. Even more important, I think, is to restore the ability to deter aggression from the proxies, the gradual escalation of which has been chipping away at the self-respect of the Jewish people, the very heart of Zionism.

What’s next?

This morning there was a news item that the IAF had destroyed 40 smuggling tunnels in 4 minutes. Like the punchline of the unpleasant lawyer joke (“What do you call 500 dead lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?”)  this is only a good start. There are literally hundreds of such tunnels, and the only way to eliminate them will be on the ground. I expect that also there will be special forces operations — they may already be underway — to capture or kill Hamas leaders or even to free Gilad Schalit. And of course many of the rocket launchers and their operators will have to be taken out on the ground.

Israel has said that civilian casualties are light, but we can expect that Hamas and friends will be screaming ‘massacre’ as they did in 2003 when they invented the ‘Jenin Massacre’.  There are already demonstrations all around the world and among Arab citizens of Israel in opposition to the attack. I am waiting for Peace Fresno to mobilize in opposition to the ‘holocaust’.

It seems that this time Israel has done its diplomatic homework. Non-hostile governments so far have of course called for an end to the fighting, but also indicate understanding of Israel’s position. Hamas is also not everyone’s favorite social club; for example, the Mubarak regime’s most dangerous internal enemy is the Muslim Brotherhood which gave birth to Hamas. Many developed countries have had enough of Islamic terrorism.

I’m convinced that the team of Ehud Barak and Gabi Ashkenazi can achieve their military objectives given the appropriate amount of time. As always, it will come down to a race between the progress of the IDF and media-fueled diplomatic pressure to back off before a conclusive victory is obtained.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Hamas, Gaza

The so-called ‘truce’ or ‘calm’ between Israel and Hamas seems to be over, with tens of rockets daily flying into Israel from Gaza. Israel’s government has apparently decided to take some kind military action; allowing Hamas to bombard Israelis is not an option any longer.

To answer the question “what should Israel do?” we first need to ask what Hamas is doing and what it wants. Bradley Burston presents the view of Gen. (ret.) Shmuel Zakai:

Israel must … understand that Hamas is a pragmatic organization, Zakai continues. “The moment that the organization understands that Qassam fire is contrary to its interests, it will stop the fire…

“An integrated approach, on the one hand, includes demonstration of military might, a demonstration of the heavy price Hamas would have to pay if the firing continues, and on the other hand, also using a carrot, to cause Hamas to understand that refraining from firing exactly serves their interests.

He believes that Hamas would have – and still would – accept a bargain in which Hamas, the only power who holds sway over the multiplicity racketeers and gunmen of Gaza’s many armed groups, would halt the fire in exchange for easing of the many ways in which Israeli policies have kept a choke hold on the economy of the Strip.

Gen. Zakai is right and wrong. He is right that Hamas is pragmatic — in a sense. But he is wrong in thinking that Hamas would consider improving Gaza’s economy to be in its interest. Here is how Barry Rubin sees Hamas:

From a Western moderate pragmatist standpoint, Hamas’s decision [to end the cease-fire] makes no sense for several reasons:

• Hamas cannot defeat Israel militarily. Thus, fighting won’t improve Hamas’s strategic situation or bring victory.
• Israeli counterattacks will cause both injuries and material damage in the Gaza Strip, inflicting big costs on Hamas’s domain and subjects.
• Returning to warfare will ensure Hamas remains politically isolated and blocks international recognition or aid that would help its cause or end economic sanctions against the Gaza Strip.
• Going back to fighting makes certain that the Gaza Strip faces continued, even heightened, reductions in the material let in, thus ensuring more Palestinian suffering there.

And Hamas is seemingly making three additional mistakes regarding timing.

The first is that it is ending the cease-fire while George W. Bush is president. Certainly Israel feels freer to hit back at Hamas now than after Barack Obama is inaugurated simply because the new administration would want to avoid a crisis before it consolidates its plans and team. Also, the US is likely to prefer quiet as it begins withdrawing from Iraq.

Second, the cease-fire is being suspended on the eve of a major Palestinian crisis as Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas announces a self-extension of his term in office. One might think Hamas would prefer to keep the Israel front quiet for a while to focus on battling Fatah and the PA.

Finally, there’s the Israeli election campaign. While this doesn’t make large-scale retaliation inevitable, such a move would make the current government more popular with the electorate.

Therefore, Hamas’s behavior, an outside observer can easily conclude, seems stupid. But having built a mass movement, sizable army, seized the Gaza Strip and built broad support throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds, Hamas may be composed of genocide-oriented fanatics but not fools. What then explains this apparently silly behavior?

Here’s a case study of how Middle East politics really work:

• Hamas really believes its own propaganda, expecting victory despite the odds. Costs and casualties are irrelevant. The battle will go on until total victory even if that takes decades. This indicates Hamas will not moderate – the same applies to Hizbullah, Syria and Iran.
• At the same time, Hamas is not only indifferent to its own people’s welfare, it [is] actually seeking to inflict suffering on them as a political strategy. The worse off Palestinians are, Hamas believes, the more likely they will fight and die. This “the worse things are, the better they are” is the exact opposite of Western perspectives.

But Hamas goes even further. It knows suffering can be blamed on Israel. Western pragmatists reason that obviously the Palestinians must prefer peace, prosperity and statehood. Rejectionism must then be due to desperation and the lack of a good offer or faith in the West. In fact, though, the situation is not due to our mistakes but to their deliberate choices.

Thus, Hamas can well conclude that the best way to put pressure on Israel and – in its own mind at least – gain Western help is to be more radical, not more moderate.

Then, too, setting off a crisis, Hamas expects, will draw peacekeepers like hardworking ants, giving press conferences in which they will insist that “something must be done to defuse the crisis.” That “something” usually seems to be unilateral Israeli concessions. In short, the international community may rush in to save Hamas or the Palestinians in spite of themselves.

At the same time, though, Hamas believes that its intransigence and aggressiveness will increase support in the Arab and Muslim worlds. As with Hizbullah, waging a war and portraying it as victory – even though the facts are otherwise – makes one a hero and attracts financing. This is also a judgment regarding Palestinian responses. More popular support can be garnered by producing martyrs than by producing higher living standards. Thus, Hamas will do better in its rivalry with the PA by fighting Israel than by fighting poverty.

Hamas’ pragmatism is not the pragmatism of someone like Gen. Zakai, who naturally sees the welfare of one’s civilian population as a high-priority goal. But it is actually a pretty clear-headed understanding of what is required to defeat a liberal democracy like Israel and a corrupt secular nationalism like Fatah.

The best strategy for Israel is not a large-scale ground invasion, and especially not one which ends in a reoccupation of Gaza. This would give the maximum advantage to Hamas, which cares little about military casualties and actually welcomes civilian ones.

I vote for decapitation: kill the Hamas leaders and destroy as much military infrastructure as possible without causing mass civilian casualties.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Hamas

Yesterday I wrote a very pessimistic piece about the pressure that I expected the Obama administration to put on Israel for an immediate withdrawal from the West Bank. Here’s a much more reassuring view of the same issues.

Let’s hope he’s right and I’m wrong.

Not the Center of the World
by Barry Rubin

Israel isn’t going to be the center of the world for the Obama administration and that’s a good, if ego-disappointing, thing. Both the pro-Israeli right’s paranoia and the wishful thinking of the anti-Israeli left in the United States (and, in the latter category, Europe plus the Middle East as well), are operating out of expectations rather than the actual situation.

What can be safely assumed is something along the following lines:

• The Obama administration will put the main emphasis on domestic issues rather than foreign policy. It faces humongous problems at home and has gigantic ambitions to change America, for better or worse.

Of course, foreign policy has a way of imposing itself on the White House through crises, though many of these might not come from the Middle East or at least the part where Israel is located. Still, what this means is that presidential prestige won’t be involved at high levels or consistently to wage campaigns unless really deemed unavoidable.

• The administration’s Middle East priority will be dealing with Iraq. If you want, you can add Afghanistan and possibly Pakistan. The key point, though, is that withdrawing at least American combat troops successfully from Iraq, no matter how many months it takes precisely, must top the list. This will take massive amounts of policymaker time and political capital, both domestic and international.

• No doubt there will be much apparent activity on peace process stuff including endless delegations, speeches, and other showpieces. Nevertheless, the administration will put little effort behind it. Many academics, journalists, and ideologues haven’t yet gotten the word but the kind of Washington types who will actually make government decisions understand this issue isn’t a panacea for all problems, Middle East or global.

• They also know there aren’t quick or easy solutions. So while the Obamaists criticized Bush for not doing enough on the issue, deep down they know that not a lot could be done. Policymakers, and especially Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton, aren’t going to waste time on issues that won’t make them look successful.

• Consequently, there will be no all-out effort to pressure Israel into major concessions because everyone who counts knows these aren’t going to lead anywhere.

• Rather, the administration will certainly expect Israel to keep things quiet so as not to interfere with its Iraq strategy.

• Periodically, Hillary will make some demand on Israel regarding minor points in order to make her look good and give the illusion of success and progress. She’ll be angry if she doesn’t get what she wants. But what she will want will be fairly petty stuff.

• And she isn’t going to make nice with Hamas and Hizballah, whatever the administration does with Iran and Syria.

• If Bibi Netanyahu is Israel’s next prime minister there’s certainly potential for friction between him and Obama. But if Israel has a national unity government, Bibi continues talks with the PA, seeks to strengthen it against Hamas, and even keeps chatting with Syria–even knowing these negotiations won’t lead anywhere–bilateral relations should be okay.

• This administration will probably never support an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, but if Israel’s leaders deem such a strike necessary for national survival, they should go ahead anyway and the relationship will weather the crisis.

• The long-touted idea of creating a U.S. Middle East coordinator has run into trouble because Hillary and others won’t give away turf to someone who reports directly to the president. Such a person wouldn’t influence Afghanistan or Pakistan policy (which might get a separate coordinator) or the withdrawal from Iraq (which will have its own czar as well as being overseen by NSC chief General James Jones), nor in dealing with Iran (which remains with Hillary). It isn’t even clear if that person would get the Syria portfolio. So they’d end up as a sort of equivalent of former British prime minister Tony Blair, running around cajoling people to be friends.

• The administration will try to engage Syria and Iran but won’t get anything real out of them. Let’s see how long it takes the administration to realize this.

• Even Arab states have largely stopped their old propaganda line: “Solve the Arab-Israeli conflict and all other problems will disappear. Of course, there’s a wide gap between what’s said in private and in public.

In reality, though, Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia are scared of Islamism; Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia are afraid of Iran, Shia Muslim power, and Islamism; smaller Gulf states are just interested in making money and living well (not that there’s anything wrong with that); Lebanese are desperately trying to survive an Iran-Syrian onslaught; and Iraqis are trying to end their internal conflict and build a stable government.

That doesn’t mean regional leaders won’t keep using Israel as scapegoat. They’re unable and unwilling to make peace; but they don’t want war either and are more interested in getting U.S. protection from Tehran than a Palestinian state. They’ll simultaneously be pleased if Israel destroyed Iran’s nuclear facilities and denounce Israel for “aggression.” Why not have your baklava and eat it, too?

We’re in a new Middle East, or rather a battle between two new Middle Easts. This isn’t the old Middle East of Arab nationalist regimes striving for regional hegemony and using the Palestinians as a tool in that battle. Nor is it the new Middle East of 1990s’ hopes for peace and democracy.

The choice is between the Iran-Syria model for a region of “resistance” (fighting Israel and America as top priority; installing Islamist regimes) and that of Arab states resisting Islamism and Iranian hegemony.

Anyone unprepared to deal with these realities is incapable of understanding what’s going on now and what will happen in coming years. The Obama administration is wrong in making conciliation with sworn, ideologically sincere enemies its main theme rather than building a united front against radical Islamism and Iranian imperialism. At the same time, though, it doesn’t seem to be intoxicated with the bash-Israel-and-save-the-world fantasy.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), with Walter Laqueur (Viking-Penguin); the paperback edition of The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan); A Chronological History of Terrorism, with Judy Colp Rubin, (Sharpe); and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley). To read and subscribe to MERIA and other GLORIA Center publications or to order books, visit http://www.gloriacenter.org.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Obama, Middle East, Arab-Israeli conflict

News item:

The UN Security Council approved a resolution Tuesday stressing that the Israeli-Palestinian peace process initiated by the United States last year is irreversible and urging intensified efforts to achieve peace throughout the Middle East.

The vote was 14-0, with Libya abstaining because the resolution did not condemn Israel’s “siege on the Gaza strip” and intensified settlement activities.

The resolution, co-sponsored by the United States and Russia, backs “the determined efforts” by Israel and the Palestinians to conclude a peace treaty and fulfill the vision that they can live peacefully side by side as independent democratic states.

Translation: the US and the ‘quartet’ will force Israel back to pre-1967 borders, soon.

With the accession of the Obama administration, we can expect that the White House and Defense Department will be on the same page with the State Department about this. Therefore, this will happen. It will happen even if the Likud wins the upcoming elections and forms a right-wing coalition, and even if the handful of American Jews who disagree burn tires in the streets of Brooklyn.

At a minimum it will mean a withdrawal from most of the West Bank, possibly allowing for minor border adjustments to include some major settlements in Israel. It’s not clear when/if the Golan will go back to Syria and it’s not clear what else the ‘peace’ treaty will dictate about refugees, the Temple Mount, etc.

The position of the Right that Israel must retain all of the Land of Israel is moot. It will not happen. The position of the Center (that’s me) that Israel must not withdraw from any territory until there is a Palestinian leadership that actually is prepared to live at peace is moot. There will not be time. The position of the Left that such a withdrawal would be a Good Thing, is … about to be proven wrong.

Tens of thousands of Jewish residents will be relocated, the exact number being dependent on the aforementioned border adjustments, because ‘Palestine’ must be Judenrein (even though Arabs can be full citizens of Israel). If the experience of the 8,000 Jewish residents of Gaza is a guide, this will be at least a disaster  (I don’t know what it will be if there is violent resistance, as did not happen in Gaza).

The puppet Fatah government of the West Bank, even if it is protected by NATO troops will either fall and be replaced by Hamas, or it will be “unable to control” terrorist elements. Israel will therefore be sandwiched between terrorist proxy armies on her northern, southern and eastern borders. The narrow 9-mile wide ‘waist’ of Israel near Kfar Saba, the so-called “Auschwitz borders” will return.

So what must Israel do before this comes to pass? Several things come to mind:

• The security fence should be completed, and Israel should seek US support for it to mark the eastern border.
• The IDF should develop strategies for fighting terrorism from the West Bank without the ability to maintain a permanent presence there.
• The IDF should develop strategies to decisively defeat Hamas and Hezbollah.
• The state should prepare for an influx of former settlers who must be provided with housing and jobs. Israel should demand sufficient compensation from the Quartet to ensure that what happened to former Gaza residents will not happen again (and their needs must finally be met).
• The state should expect the demands of the Israeli Arabs for ‘national rights’ to take center stage once the ‘occupation’ can’t be used as the explanation for Arab ‘anger and frustration’.

These are dark times for the Jewish State. In a sense, I agree with the despicable PM Olmert when he says that Israel has to live with a reality that includes giving up the territories.

The difference is that Olmert pretends that Israel has some volition in the matter, and that it is possible to achieve ‘peace’ — whereas I see that Israel has no more choice than Czechoslovakia did in 1938, and must prepare for war.

Technorati Tags: Israel