The Israeli operation in Gaza is uncannily similar to the operations conducted in the West Bank nearly seven years ago in response to suicide bombings in Israel. An earlier column in this series provided an analysis pointing to the “… systematic process of dismantling [of] the apparatus of the Palestine National Authority.”
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The article continued:
“Much of the military action has been directed against the police and security forces of the PNA, with substantial numbers having been killed and many more hundreds taken into custody. Police stations and barracks have been destroyed, as have intelligence and security centres. Moreover, and in some ways much more significant, there has been the destruction of the PNA’s administrative infrastructure.
“Information on this remains incomplete but is sufficient to show that there has been widespread destruction of offices and facilities of PNA ministries and Palestinian non-government organisations. The Ministry of Local Government and the Ministry of Education in Ramallah have been ransacked by Israeli troops as has the Palestinian Bureau of Statistics.”
At that time, some analysts anticipated that the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) would extend their actions into Gaza, but international opposition to the casualties and destruction in the West Bank, and internal concern over the consequences of such an escalation prevented that. Instead, the emphasis remained on the West Bank, with the construction of the massive security “wall” and forceful control over the Palestinian population movements within the wall, both of them fuelling a burning resentment.
The first five days of the military in Gaza were almost entirely focused on air attacks and naval bombardment, the stated aim being the bring to an end the firing of the crude unguided rockets, often home-made, that have plagued those areas of Israel close to Gaza. In practice, as in the West Bank in 2002, the attacks have been directed mainly at the Hamas administration, with destruction of many of the government offices as well as buildings of the Islamic University. The Gaza police have been particular targets, one of the earliest attacks killing around 60 cadets attending a graduation ceremony at the Police Academy.
Even so, by the fifth day of the conflict, the impact on the rockets being fired from Gaza appeared minimal. At least 60 were launched that day, three reaching as far as the Negev city of Beersheba, 46 kilometres from Gaza, and others reaching Ashkelon, with its oil terminal, and Ashdod further north along the coast, which is Israel’s fifth largest city and a major port. Informed Israeli sources indicate that Hamas still has 2,000 available for use, some of them able to reach deep into Israel. Most are home-made but some have been smuggled in through tunnels under the border with Egypt and these may include missiles with a substantially longer range.
Most international opinion has been critical of the sheer scale of the Israeli military action, especially in terms of the civilian casualties, but there is little sign of this having any impact on Israel’s conduct of the war. It may partly be a case of carrying out the attacks while President Bush is still in power, and the internal dynamics of the forthcoming Israeli is also relevant, but there are broader issues that do much to explain the Israeli motivations.
The conventional view is that Israel is a singularly powerful state possessed of some of the world’s most advanced military forces. As such it is streets ahead of any neighbouring Arab country and incomparably better armed than the Hamas militias. In one sense this is certainly true, but it masks a reality that Israel has become more and more vulnerable to forms of irregular warfare and simply doesn’t know how to handle them except by responding with massive force.
The first indications were back at the time of Operation Peace for Galilee in the summer of 1982. That took powerful Israeli ground forces right up to West Beirut in an operation that was supposed to counter unguided rockets being fired by Palestinian militias into Northern Israel, but was actually intended to destroy the PLO as a functioning paramilitary organisation. After the massacres at the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps in September of that year, Israeli ground forces withdrew from the area immediately south of Beirut but remained in occupation of much of southern Lebanon. Within three years the occupation became untenable in the face of guerrilla actions by Hezbollah paramilitaries and the IDF withdrew from almost all of the country having had 300 of its soldiers killed.
From then on, the focus in defence strategy was on the Israeli homeland, with a determination to use considerable force against any direct threat. It was an approach that got a rude awakening when Israel came under Scud missile attack from Iraq on the second night of the 1991 Iraq War, and the winter nights that followed were far more traumatic than most outside observers appreciated. The memories of that period were significant in motivating the assault on Hezbollah in 2006, not least because the rockets then being launched from Lebanon were stark reminders of the vulnerabilities exposed 15 years earlier.
Hezbollah was not defeated and while an uneasy peace persists, it is now much more heavily armed, with longer range missiles that could threaten Israel right down to Tel Aviv and beyond. Now, Israel faces increasingly sophisticated irregular warfare from Hamas and believes that it is essential to bring this to an end. The problem is that such an overwhelming use of force simply has to work, which is why the conflict may still be in its early stages.
It has to work for three reasons. One is that Hamas itself must be so weakened that the rocket attacks will cease or be reduced to an absolute minimum. The second is that there must be no risk whatsoever of any paramilitary group developing similar tactics in the West Bank. A nightmare for the more thoughtful Israeli military planners is that any perception of success for Hamas stemming from the use of the rockets could well lead to groups on the West Bank developing the same tactics. Given the geography of the occupied territories, that would put all the heavily populated areas of Israel at risk. Finally, massive use of force in Gaza is intended to send a message to Hezbollah that Israel has learnt from its failure in 2006 and will never tolerate further rocket attacks from southern Lebanon.
However strong the support is within Israel for the military operation in Gaza, the chances of it working are remote. Unless Israel re-occupies the whole of the Gaza strip and maintains rigid control over a deeply antagonistic population of nearly 1.5 million Palestinians, the rocket attacks will almost certainly continue. What has to be appreciated is that there is now widespread knowledge of how to construct crude but deadly devices from quite basic materials using equally basic machinery. Moreover, the very intensity of the Israeli military action demonstrates how effective these rockets can be in their political impact.
What has evolved with the development of these rockets in Gaza over the past two years is actually far more significant than most people realise. It is at least as important as the rapid evolution of improvised explosive devices in Iraq and Afghanistan, with all the effects that they have had and continue to have. Those crude Gaza rockets have either to be countered or Israel will see its security deteriorate still further. Many Israelis see this, but their fundamental mistake is to believe this is a problem with a military answer.
Some time in the coming years there will be the realisation among astute Israelis that there is no alternative to a negotiated and fair settlement with the Palestinians, both in the West Bank and Gaza. It is just possible that the disaster that is now unfolding, for Israelis as well as Palestinians, will actually hasten that realisation.
What, Exactly, is Israel's Mission?
By NEVE GORDON
The first bombardment took three minutes and forty seconds. Sixty Israeli F-16 fighter jets bombed fifty sites in Gaza, killing over two hundred Palestinians, and wounding close to a thousand more.
A few hours after the deadly strike, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert convened a press conference in Tel-Aviv. With Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni sitting on his right and Defense Minister Ehud Barak on his left, he declared: "It may take time, and each and every one of us must be patient so we can complete the mission."
But what exactly, one might ask, is Israel's mission?
Although Olmert did not say as much, the "mission" includes four distinct objectives.
The first is the destruction of Hamas, a totally unrealistic goal. Even though the loss of hundreds of cadres and some key leaders will no doubt hurt the organization, Hamas is a robust political movement with widespread grassroots support, and it is unlikely to surrender or capitulate to Israeli demands following a military assault. Ironically, Israel's attempt to destroy Hamas using military force has always ended up strengthening the organization, thus corroborating the notion that power produces its own vulnerability.
The second objective has to do with Israel's upcoming elections. The assault on Gaza is also being carried out to help Kadima and Labor defeat Likud and its leader Benjamin Netanyhu, who is currently ahead in the polls. It is not coincidental that Netanyahu's two main competitors, Livni and Barak, were invited to the press conference – since, after the assault, it will be more difficult for Netanyahu to characterize them as "soft" on the Palestinians. Whether or not the devastation in Gaza will help Livni defeat Netanyhu or help Barak gain votes in the February elections is difficult to say, but the strategy of competing with a warmonger like Netanyhu by beating the drums of war says a great deal about all three major contenders.
The third objective involves the Israeli military. After its notable humiliation in Lebanon during the summer of 2006, the IDF has been looking for opportunities to reestablish its global standing. Last Spring it used Syria as its laboratory and now it has decided to focus on Gaza. Emphasizing the mere three minutes and forty seconds it took to bomb fifty sites is just one the ways the Israeli military aims to restore its international reputation.
Finally, Hamas and Fatah have not yet reached an agreement regarding how to proceed when Mahmoud Abbas ends his official term as President of the Palestinian National Authority on January 9th, 2009. One of the outcomes of this assault is that Abbas will remain in power for a while longer since Hamas will be unable to mobilize its supporters in order to force him to resign.
What is clearly missing from this list of Israeli objectives is the attempt to halt the firing of Qassam rockets into Israel's southern towns. Unlike the objectives I mentioned, which are not discussed by government officials, this one is presented by the government as the operation's primary objective. Yet, the government is actively misleading the public, since Israel could have put an end to the rockets a long time ago. Indeed, there was relative quiet during the six-months truce with Hamas, a quiet that was broken most often as a reaction to Israeli violence: that is, following the extra-judicial execution of a militant or the imposition of a total blockade which prevented basic goods, like food stuff and medicine, from entering the Gaza Strip. Rather than continuing the truce, the Israeli government has once again chosen to adopt strategies of violence that are tragically akin to the one's deployed by Hamas, only the Israeli ones are much more
lethal.
If the Israeli government really cared about its citizens and the country's long term ability to sustain itself in the Middle East, it would abandon the use of violence and talk with its enemies.
Neve Gordon is the chair of the Department of Politics and Government, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, and is the author of Israel's Occupation, University of California Press, 2008. His website is www.israelsoccupation.info
[DEBAT] Gaza: hope after attack
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