As I write this, Israeli forces have cut the Gaza Strip in two, and are surrounding Gaza City.
It’s almost as if I have no influence over global affairs.
I put a lot of effort last week into arguing that Israel’s planned incursion into Gaza should be called off, for reasons both practical and humane, fearing a counterproductive bloodbath with no clear end game, as well as a wider war. I made that argument despite my own vehement rejection of any moral equivalence between Hamas and the Israeli Defence Forces, and my acknowledgement of Israel’s right, indeed duty, to defend its citizens. You can see the problem here: it’s almost impossible to reconcile the opposing truths in this abhorrent new reality. In any case my argument, that it was better to return to a messy, indefinite regime of containment, rather than inflict the sort of agony we now see in Gaza, was never going to win the day. It was always a non-starter politically, not to mention emotionally, and there were also sound strategic arguments that augured against it. Indeed the majority view, at least among the analysts and pundits I follow, was that a return to anything resembling the pre-massacre status quo would be, under the circumstances, not only impossible, but also a profound strategic blunder.
The logic of this position, which would have been familiar to anyone majoring in strategic studies during the Cold War, derives from traditional deterrence theory, which would hold that the threat posed by Hamas is only one factor in the equation. It goes like this: the enemy, manifestly, was insufficiently afraid of the consequences of aggression. Despite the credibility of the retaliatory threat, they were not deterred. Now, deterrence, having failed, needs to be reestablished, rapidly and emphatically, lest other enemies of Israel sense weakness and calculate improved odds of seizing a deadly opportunity. Everyone is watching how Israel responds to the almost unimaginably horrific assault on October 7, and waiting to see if the Jewish State is too riven by internal divisions, and too fearful of the costs, to act decisively. The Israelis have to demonstrate the opposite. It follows that anything short of an all-out effort to eradicate Hamas would be a potentially fatal display of weakness, guaranteeing further, even more lethal attacks, and not just out of Gaza.
David French, writing in the New York Times, put it this way:
At the same time, progressives calling for a cease-fire in Gaza threaten to hand Hamas the greatest victory of its existence. If Hamas can wound Israel so deeply and yet live to fight again, it will have accomplished what ISIS could not — commit acts of the most brutal terror and then survive as an intact organization against a military that possesses the power to crush it outright. I agree with Dennis Ross, a former U.S. envoy to the Middle East: Any outcome that leaves Hamas in control in Gaza “will doom not just Gaza but also much of the rest of the Middle East.”
The hell of it is, I’m not really sure I disagree. I don’t think anyone really knows what Israel’s best way forward looked like on the morning of October 8. I was right, I think, that an invasion risked a humanitarian disaster (has indeed already caused a humanitarian disaster), a spread of hostilities to other fronts (it’s already spread to Syria and Yemen), the involvement of other countries (again, see Yemen and Syria), and a military failure that does little beyond establishing the conditions for the next bloody conflict (or perhaps a victory that does the same). Yet French and the others are equally right, surely, that Israel can never really be safe until Hamas is destroyed, and may even be correct in thinking that having now crossed the Rubicon, the Israelis have to win, whatever it takes, and that if any vestige of Hamas remains at the end of this, it will embolden not just the jihadists in Gaza, but Israel’s enemies across the Middle East. If Hamas gets away with its terrible crimes, what will the much more dangerous Hezbollah make of it? What will Iran, already pulling the strings on jihadist groups throughout the region, urge its proxies to do?
Believe me, I understand. I was steeped in this logic throughout my academic years, and I was, you can be sure, a true believer, but now that I’m much further down the road what troubles me is the absence of thought about why deterrence failed, why it’s quite likely to fail again, just as it has so often in the past, and whether deterrence can ever be a successful substitute for eliminating the conditions that make it necessary.
This cycle of horrific violence will never end until something akin to justice, fully endorsed by the nation of Israel, is provided to the Palestinian people. It’s true that nothing can be done to negotiate with Hamas, which seeks as a matter of quasi-religious dogma the complete eradication of Israel, and, to hear its leaders talk, of the entire Jewish race, which is yet another factor favouring the invasion; it’s perfectly reasonable to contend that there can be no renewal of a peace process so long as Hamas is on the scene. Very well, then. There’s no point in arguing about it anymore anyway, so fine, let’s think about what comes next, and how the removal of Hamas can be used as an opportunity to begin again down the long, rocky road to peace. Words fail me, trying to express properly how difficult this will be for all concerned. Lasting peace seems impossible when you begin to think of everything that would need to happen.
To begin with, Israel has to withdraw from Gaza, and that means somebody else has to come in and govern the place with enough of a firm hand to prevent the regeneration of Hamas, or the rise of something just like it. The Palestinian Authority, struggling to survive on the West Bank, unloved and distrusted by its own people, is far too feeble to fill the bill (which is how we got Hamas in the first place). Who then? Who’ll want to take that on? Can anybody prevent the undoubtedly embittered youth of Gaza from falling once more under the sway of extremists?
If a suitable new government can somehow be conjured out of somewhere, the next task will be the reconstruction, and then some, of everything that Gazans will need to live, and I do mean everything. In the aftermath of this war, Gaza will be in ruins. It’s estimated that over 25% of all permanent structures in the Strip have already been destroyed. Rebuilding will cost a fortune, and with all that money sloshing around, the process will be prone to corruption. Who supplies the umpteen billions of dollars? Who manages a clean and competent operation to reconstruct most of what amounts to a city state of over 2 million people? The logistics and infrastructure requirements will be mind-boggling.
Then there’s the West Bank. Any sort of peaceful two-state solution requires the concept of Greater Israel to be discarded, completely, for all time. The policy of annexation has to be abandoned. More than that; the settlors have to be withdrawn, and the land has to be given back (though there may in some cases be land swaps that both sides can accept). The settlors, of course, will dig in their heels, believing, as many apparently do, that they are on some sort of Divine mission. Force will probably be required to root them out, and the political situation within Israel will be both toxic and dire. The Palestinians, recall, have no monopoly on extremists. There are many on the Jewish side who’ll find it heretical to contend that no, actually, the Supreme Being of all the Universe does not insist that they own the entirety of that tiny corner of this little planet.
I forgot to put first things first: Netanyahu has to go, hopefully to prison where he belongs. Somebody reasonable, and able to sell the painful compromises to come, will have to replace him, and I have no idea who that would be or even if the Israeli political process is at this point capable of elevating such a person to authority. Maybe, in the wake of all this tragedy, there’ll be an opportunity.
If all those hurdles are somehow cleared, the Palestinians themselves will have to abandon their hopeless dreams of a right of return, and say yes to a good deal when it’s offered. This is by no means certain when, as Israeli statesman Abba Eban once famously put it, the Palestinians have never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.**
It all sounds vanishingly unlikely, doesn’t it? Yet if nothing along those lines is even attempted, what will all of this have been for? What good will come of it?
Meanwhile, what can only be characterized as a brutal military operation continues. We’re told to expect a long and difficult campaign, requiring months, maybe more. Civilian casualties may mount to levels that nobody in the international community can stomach, and it’s probably the case that Israel could be fighting this war by means that would wreak somewhat less death and destruction. They will tell you, however, that there’s no kinder, gentler way to destroy an extremest army of fanatics who embed themselves within civilian neighbourhoods and place their most important infrastructure in, around, and beneath hospitals, schools, mosques, and other people’s homes. They aren’t wrong. There are military realities here that only the ill-informed and the intellectually dishonest won’t acknowledge.
Take, for example, the extensive underground tunnel network constructed over many years by Hamas, so large and elaborate that its nickname is the “Gaza Metro”. These tunnels have to go, correct? Well, if you intend to go about that in the best way possible, then earth-penetrating bombs that burrow deep underground before detonating will have to be dropped. Inevitably, nearby buildings will then collapse into the resulting sink holes. The above-ground infrastructure of Hamas must also be destroyed to the fullest extent possible before moving in with troops. Bombing is the best way. Given where Hamas sets up shop, thousands of civilians will pay the price.
That doesn’t mean the bombing is indiscriminate, or that civilians are being targeted. It means that the steps necessary to achieve the vital military objectives of the invasion are deadly for the innocent. They’re collateral damage. And yes, that’s horrific.
That’s just the start of it, and it only gets worse from here. They could lay siege for a time, which is gruesome. They could flood the streets of Gaza City with armour and infantry and conduct the deadliest urban firefight since Stalingrad. Also gruesome. They may well end up doing both, or they may proceed slowly and deliberately, building by building, one block at a time. In the end, whatever the strategy, it probably won’t make much difference to the harmless people who never wanted anything to do with this, and wish only to survive. Meanwhile, the Americans and others can try to persuade the Israelis to pause hostilities long enough to evacuate civilians, but remember, Hamas will try to prevent them from going, and a cease fire that allows an enemy on the ropes to regroup, replenish, and reposition is tactically unsound, almost to the point of military malpractice. Anyway, it’s hard to know how many of the innocent could actually get out, and how much of a difference it would make. The Americans could point to the example they set when the Marines were tasked with retaking Fallujah during the Iraq war, prior to which most civilians were allowed to get out first (though between 500 and 700 were still killed). The Israelis will counter that this situation is different, and they don’t have the luxury of being able to hold off for days on end without sacrificing vital military advantage.
As I predicted, they’re also telling us that calls for restraint are a bit hard to take from the folks who firebombed whole cities throughout Germany and Japan during WW II (100,000 souls, more than died at Hiroshima, were incinerated in just one nocturnal assault on Tokyo), before dropping a couple of atomic bombs to seal the deal, and we won’t even get into what went on in Viet Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, and during the ruthless, years-long drone campaign to target terrorists all over the Middle East.
Who’s right? Everybody. Nobody. You tell me. I’ll say this though: this was always going to be terrible. Once the decision was taken to invade, almost everything we’re seeing now was bound to happen. You may think that Israel nevertheless had to move in to destroy Hamas, or perhaps you thought there was another way, as I did, and I can see both sides, but I have no patience for those who seem to think that sure, Israel should take it to Hamas where they live, but dammit they should be doing it more nicely. It depends, honestly, but yes, civilian casualties can be somewhat mitigated. Israel, in its single-minded pursuit of military objectives, may not be doing enough to spare innocent lives, granted. Just don’t sit there and promote the fantasy world in which pitched battle is joined with 25,000 entrenched jihadists in the midst of the most densely populated parts of densely-populated Gaza, yet thousands, indeed tens of thousands, of innocent bystanders aren’t killed in the crossfire before it’s over. That was never how this was going to work.
No assessment of the current horror show means anything if we can’t be honest with ourselves, and with each other, about the ugly truths that make all of the existing alternatives so awful, each in its own ugly way.
**All that and we still haven’t dealt with Hezbollah, and its Iranian sponsors. I can’t bear to think about what that means, just now.
the needlefish 