DEL.ICIO.USIsrael cannot ‘free’ Gaza of Hamas with war
Thursday, January 08, 2009
The border between a necessity and a mistake isn’t as clearly marked as the border between nations. So when Israeli troops crossed the line that separates Israel from Gaza this week, they may also have strayed across the line into a mistake.
It’s impossible to argue that Israel had no right to respond as it has. With Hamas firing missiles into Israeli territory, Israel had every justification and indeed obligation to stop those attacks. The most fundamental duty of any government is to protect its people, and when the people have the tragic history of the Jews, that duty is close to sacred.
(Of course, Hamas and its supporters claim similar justification, arguing that it fired the missiles because Israel had sealed off Gaza and barred all but subsistence aid, denying its people a right to make a living. To which Israel responds that the embargo was necessary because Hamas is a terrorist group that refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist, to which Hamas responds … well, the mutual recrimination can go all the way back to the days of the Bible.)
However, whether Israel had the right to respond militarily is a very different question than whether it was wise to do so in such all-out fashion, moving from a quite effective air campaign to outright ground invasion.
As powerful as it is, Israel’s military cannot impose peace. Any victory it achieves will be temporary; any cessation in missile launches will be fleeting. The idea that the Israeli military can “free” Gaza from the grip of Hamas over the long term is implausible.
And that’s the core of Israel’s predicament. In the short term, it has every advantage. It has the military might, the economic strength, the backing of the world’s sole superpower. In the short term, it has the ability to crush Hamas and is doing so.
But in the long term, the balance of power changes. The missiles acquired by its Arab enemies get longer in range and heavier in payload with every passing year. The Palestinians are producing many more babies than the Jews, threatening to change geography by demography, and international support for Israel, particularly outside the United States, is waning. According to our own analysts in the CIA and elsewhere, America’s power and influence will decline in the years to come, at least in relative terms, and so will its ability to protect Israel.
Conversely, while the policy of Hamas and the Palestinians may seem extremely self-destructive and foolish — exposing their own people to death and destruction on a massive scale — there is a perverted wisdom to it in the long term. By provoking attacks such as the bombing of the school at Jabaliya, which killed an estimated 40 civilians, including 10 children, Palestinian extremists ensure a simmering wrath against Israel that will nurture their cause for generations.
Somehow, Israel has to break that cycle. Somehow, it has to stop sacrificing its long-term survival hopes for short-term returns. But it will not do so without outside pressure, and that help can come from only one place — the United States.
In that regard, President Bush has done Israel no favors. Rather than push Israel and its enemies to compromise, his unquestioning support has created a false sense of security for Israel. It has lulled its leaders and its people into believing that long-term survival really can be attained largely through force of arms, even though the map and demography say otherwise.
That hands-off approach has had an impact on many Palestinians as well. With no hope of intervention from the Americans, they have taken help where they could find it, from Iran. Through Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, the mullahs in Tehran have what they long sought, a role in attacking Israel and by doing so winning standing in the Islamic world.
And so the spiral deepens into dark familiar violence. For both sides, war now feels natural, almost safe, certainly safer than the risk of trying to change things. And their “friends” are all too willing to supply the means to make war, but balk at helping them find peace.
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