A profound pessimism has taken hold of Israel
Pastor Dale Morgan
A profound pessimism has taken hold of Israel*
The war in Lebanon and rockets from Gaza have reinforced a great mood
swing. People no longer seem to want a peace deal
Jonathan Steele
Friday November 10, 2006
The Guardian
The Israeli artillery fire that claimed 18 civilian lives in Beit Hanoun
this week is the worst single attack in Gaza for six years. Whether it
will prompt an end to Hamas's moratorium on suicide bombings hangs in
the balance, but the attack - said by Israeli officials to be an error -
has clearly put Israel on the moral defensive.
Even if the shells had been properly aimed, they would still reflect the
same shockingly disproportionate response that Israel inflicted on
Lebanon this summer after two soldiers were captured in a cross-border
operation by Hizbullah guerrillas. Three months after the 34-day war
against their northern neighbour, Israelis are still debating what, if
anything, it achieved.
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Israel failed utterly to achieve the stated goal of its prime minister,
Ehud Olmert: getting the soldiers back. Nor, in spite of relentless
bombing and repeated incursions by Israeli troops, did Israel succeed in
eliminating the threat from Hizbullah's short-range rockets, hundreds of
which remain in south Lebanon.
The UN resolution that ended the war calls for Lebanon's government to
take control of the border regions, but - as most observers predicted -
neither the Lebanese army nor the enlarged international force is
willing to disarm Hizbullah. Indeed Hizbullah has emerged from the war
not only with greater support among Arabs around the Middle East but
also with new clout in Lebanon, where it is pressing the government for
more cabinet seats.
It is a spectacular litany of failure for a confrontation about which
the analyst Ze'ev Schiff said: "Israeli civilians have not suffered such
frontal attacks since Israel's war of independence in 1948."
Naturally, Israeli officials dispute this. While admitting to surprise
at the sophistication of the rocket-launching platforms and
communications technology in the underground bunkers that Hizbullah has
built since Israel withdrew from its previous occupation, they say
Israel has destroyed most of them in the border areas. Though not
disarmed, Hizbullah will not be able to rebuild its infrastructure so
near Israel again. Israel also says it has the names of at least 500
Hizbullah fighters who were killed, making a large dent in the militia's
strength.
Shlomo Brom, who headed the Israeli armed forces' strategic-planning
department in the 1990s, argues that the main failure was political.
"Olmert's stated goals in the first days of the war had nothing to do
with the real goals," he says. "I was astonished by him and the defence
minister. I couldn't imagine that these goals were what the military
proposed. It's obvious that you cannot rescue soldiers with a war. The
most you can do is to capture people from the other side and do an
exchange."
Brom believes the air force achieved considerable success in the first
10 days of the war by hitting most of Hizbullah's long-range rockets,
doing enough damage to force Lebanon's government to confront Hizbullah
politically, and showing that Israel's threats to strike hard were
credible. The error was to launch a ground invasion with troops who were
unprepared for determined guerrilla fighters. The techniques used in the
West Bank, where the army largely operates as a gendarmerie rather than
a fighting force, were insufficient. "We went into a bad ground war
because of a failure to stop in time," he says.
While the experts argue over how much was achieved, the public is in a
state of shock and frustration. Anything less than victory is seen as a
serious setback, and people blame the military as much as the
politicians. Schiff says the war "gave Israelis a sense of impotence".
The war's biggest winners were the West Bank settlers. Olmert's plans
for a partial pull-out have been shelved, and the political consensus
for withdrawal has gone. Israel left Lebanon in 2000 and Hizbullah built
up an arsenal of rockets, Israelis say; it pulled out of Gaza in 2005
and Hamas and Islamic Jihad are importing explosives and rockets through
tunnels from Egypt in an effort to copy Hizbullah.
"There's a big 'I told you so' which the settlers are exploiting and
it's very hard to argue against," says Tom Segev, a historian who
opposed the Lebanese war from the first day. He deplores the fact that
so few people criticised the war's rationale rather than just
complaining about its outcome. Peace Now, the mainstream anti-occupation
movement, broadly supported the war. Even Meretz, the small leftwing
party in the Knesset, was split, with some members in support of the
war, others silent, and only a few willing to denounce the war as soon
as it began.
If the settlers were the main winners, Gazans were the main losers.
While the Lebanese war was under way, the world ignored Gaza. Israeli
troops killed 300 people with scarcely a line in the media. This week's
world outcry has at least put Gaza back in the headlines.
But for Palestinians to launch homemade rockets into southern Israel is
pointless and counterproductive, serving only to strengthen Israelis'
hardline views. Meanwhile, the US is arming Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah
organisation for a confrontation with Hamas that risks plunging Gaza
into all-out civil war. It wants thousands of rifles to be sent to Fatah
from Egypt and Jordan, and is seeking to persuade Israel to permit the
Badr brigade, a pro-Fatah militia stationed in Jordan, to cross into Gaza.
Five years ago most Israelis seemed to want a deal with the
Palestinians. The war with Lebanon and the rockets from Gaza have
reinforced the mood swing that Sharon launched with his mantra: "Israel
has no partner for peace." Segev is deeply pessimistic: "It's no longer
politically correct to say one believes in peace. Young people don't.
It's legitimate to hate Arabs and want them to disappear somehow."
Looking back on the decades since Israel occupied the West Bank and
Jerusalem, Segev adds: "In 1967 there was a choice: give the territories
back and make peace, or settle them and make Israel strong. It hasn't
worked. What a terrible waste of time the last 40 years have been."
Gideon Levy is one of the few Israeli journalists who still goes to Gaza
- a venture that increasingly requires physical as well as moral
courage. "A generation on both sides is growing up which never meets
each other. In the past there was a relationship. Palestinians were
working here. The relationship was unequal, but it wasn't just a matter
of hate. Everyone believes we are facing monsters, not human beings."
Desperate words, but they have the ring of truth.