Andrew Sullivan has a useful roundup of Gaza reactions that gives a lot of food for thought. He just misses Daniel Larison's sudden return to the keyboard. Though, as much as I like Larison, I think he's pretty off-base in that post, and doesn't really seem to understand what this operation looks like to Israelis. (In particular, he mistakenly believes that Israelis see the Gaza op as another Lebanon. While that perspective may eventually develop, even the Israeli left wing is behind the current campaign, and every Israeli I've spoken to sees the current operation as a massive improvement. Update and caveat: the press is beginning to whisper.)
What I want to make clear is that I'm not against a ceasefire in principle. I'm simply against a ceasefire for its own sake. I don't believe that we will be saving more civilians now by halting this operation before it has run its course than we would by allowing the IDF to achieve its strategic goals.
What's been so frustrating to me is not the international community's dedication to preserving civilian life. Rather, it's this pernicious habit of Western governments to simply sit and do nothing in Israel and the territories for years at a time, and then at the first sign of serious violence to swoop in and demand that it be stopped. What does this accomplish? I hear so many critics of the current operation asking for a ceasefire to preserve innocent life. But where were they when there was a chance to preserve the innocent life already lost? Where was the West when Hamas might still have been a containable problem? I worked for months at a NGO that daily begged the US to intervene in the conflict more forcefully on both sides. I spun my wheels to all manner of people in my home country, trying to get them to understand how much more we could be doing for Israelis and Palestinians -- to no avail. Now I sit and listen to the faux outrage and recriminations coming from that same country, and so many others who could have actually done something, when it mattered, and all I can do is shake my head.
The time for moral and diplomatic arguments has passed. Those who want to see a ceasefire put into play need to develop a tactical argument. Is there such an argument to be made? I don't think so.
The IDF's stated goals are vague. They have backed down from trying to topple Hamas completely, which is good, because they can't. (And even if they could, what good would come of such an effort? Another Israeli occupation? A lawless terror state? No thanks.)
Instead, the new goal is to put an end to rocket attacks, and to position Israel for another ceasefire agreement. I don't think anyone knows how many rockets Hamas has left, or if there are any more tunnels capable of bringing in more. Yesterday about 60 rockets landed, up from about 40 the day before. Today, 10 have landed so far. Whether we'll start to see a diminishing number remains an open question, as does whether that pattern would actually mean anything.
Put bluntly, there really isn't anything strategic for Israel to gain from a ceasefire right now. Disarming Hamas is the first step to an even greater goal (from my perspective): easing the Gaza blockade. Only then, very slowly, will moderate Palestinian leadership have room to work. If Israel is to maintain credible deterrence it cannot open the blockade to a government that is still attacking every day. Once Hamas's military capability has been eliminated, a window of opportunity opens.
Critics like Larison point to Lebanon and say that, because Hizbullah was able to seize political power there, the entire Israeli strategy of using force against guerrilla armies is useless. This is to take the Lebanon analogy too far. Hamas is already in power -- they have nowhere to go but down. Popular support for Hamas is widespread, and attacks by Israel are not going to shore up what is already well established.
Instead, the Israeli campaign is about establishing leverage for a real ceasefire. Engaging in a temporary ceasefire now will not disarm Hamas, which jeopardizes any actual ceasefire and any opening of the blockade. David Grossman, in the Times, points out that 'the war is not going anywhere;' -- as in, if Israel feels the need to reengage Hamas, they'll be right where we left them. True enough. But if Israel gives up the initiative now, allowing Hamas to regroup, a ground operation will be much more difficult, and one of the big purposes of the air strikes will have been sacrificed. And acknowledging that ultimately, the only way for Israel to ensure that Hamas has been disarmed is via ground work, there's really no sense in allowing such an operation to get more risky, especially if one grants that Israel will eventually be heading back into Gaza (which is where the smart money is).
The best solution remains to finish the operation as quickly and effectively as possible, with an eye toward renegotiating a ceasefire once such a renegotiation is in Hamas's interest.
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Rather, it's this pernicious habit of Western governments to simply sit and do nothing in Israel and the territories for years at a time, and then at the first sign of serious violence to swoop in and demand that it be stopped. What does this accomplish? I hear so many critics of the current operation asking for a ceasefire to preserve innocent life. But where were they when there was a chance to preserve the innocent life already lost? Where was the West when Hamas might still have been a containable problem?
What point would that have been? The best time to crush Hamas would have been during its early days. You recall, the time when Israel fostered and supported Hamas as part of its strategy to weaken popular support for the secular PLO. That's not a criticism. Egypt did the same thing with the Muslim Brotherhood to weaken support for secular opposition groups. It seemed like a good enough strategy at the time, but the blowback has been extraordinary.
Would the time have been post-Oslo, when the world applauded the return of the PLO to the Palestinian territories, and Israel agreed to arm its men? Do you recall why the PLO needed to be armed? What faction it was that they were expecting to have to suppress and, perhaps, battle in order to gain control of the territories? (Would it help if I told you, "It starts with 'H""?) Didn't the world support that process?
Maybe the time would have been that of the last Palestinian election, when it seemed all-but-inevitable that if Hamas were allowed to participate it would win a substantial number of seats in the Palestinian parliament. Really, that would have been a good time for the Bush Administration to say, "Maybe we should postpone the election", but really, that would not have affected Hamas.
Really, the way to "contain" Hamas would have been to come to a workable peace deal back in the mid 1990's. Do I need to revisit the collapse of Oslo, the false equation - in which the west was complicit - of Fatah and Hamas to avoid resumption of peace talks, and the other events that led to the present crisis?
Your essential argument seems to be that it's pretty obvious what Israel needs to do to achieve peace, but Israel's not willing to take the necessary steps to achieve peace and western nations are reluctant to bring it to heel. And that frustrates you. But these are Israel's choices to make, not the west's. What action or pressure do you imagine that the west can assert to make Israel take actions that its leaders argue are against its self-interest? And what makes you believe that the west the best judge of what's truly in Israel's self-interest?
As you apparently believe that there is a military solution to the power of Hamas, could you please do me the favor of describing how past military interventions in the Palestinian territories have diminished Hamas? Did Hamas lose control? Did the rockets stop flying? Could it not reasonably be said that you are advocating doing the same thing, but expecting a different result?
I think it will disappoint you to learn that I'm thinking on a much smaller scale, but that is the truth. I don't pretend to have a fifteen-year plan for Israel that stretches into the future, let alone one that reaches into the past, writing the wrongs of Oslo and reinforcing the rights.
Nor do I see much utility in second-guessing the reinforcement of Hamas at a time when the political landscape in the territories was so different from what it has become today. I don't pretend that anyone could have known when Arafat would die, or what Hamas would become, or how it would proceed in its power struggle. That's part of the point; no one was prepared for last year.
Hamas, in my view, only developed into an intractable problem once they had full control over Gaza. Obviously, they are a difficult group for Israel to work with. But it's not impossible, as the last ceasefire showed. And with the tempering force of a moderate Fatah minority some good might still have been squeezed from a Hamas victory. In that sense the siege was a serious mistake, and one way I would have liked to see the West weigh in with Israel would have been to ease the pressure on the Israeli government by volunteering someone else to deliver regular aid. As I talk about in the post above this one, the Knesset didn't have the capital to deal with Hamas in any other way. But somebody else could have been spending the money.
Would that have prevented a Hamas takeover? I don't know. If it didn't, I would have liked to see a more proactive stance from the international community. Hamas's takeover was coup, and it took a few weeks, as I recall. That should have been grounds for peacekeeping troops from the UN or NATO, perhaps with help from Egypt to avoid the appearance of a new Israeli presence.
Now that those opportunities have passed, our options are harder and more limited. As I'm sure you're aware, the clock on the two-state solution is ticking, and we are a lot closer to zero than we were at Oslo, or even Annapolis. Israel remains a big part of the problem. The "leaders" who describe the settlements as necessary to Israeli security couldn't have it more backwards if they were parodying themselves.
But until Israel can stop getting shot at, and take a deep breath, the moderate element in the Knesset is not going to get enough traction to do anything about settlements, or refugees. I'm not for a moment going to argue that a military intervention will diminish Hamas's standing, IN THE SHORT TERM. But if you read the post above, I'm hoping for something else.
The shooting needs to stop. That's the only way anything is going to change in Gaza and, by extension, the West Bank. Hamas will not stop shooting unless Israel makes them -- it's not in their interest. I support rejecting a ceasefire until a ground op completely cleans out Hamas's rocket supply, for those reasons, and the ones above.
Hi Max! Found your blog from Freedie's...
"The shooting needs to stop. That's the only way anything is going to change in Gaza and, by extension, the West Bank. Hamas will not stop shooting unless Israel makes them -- it's not in their interest."
All true. But if the rocket fire stops from Hamas, then what impetus will Israel have to move forward with dismantling the settlements in the West Bank? It's obviously criminal for Hamas to be firing rockets into schools, but I'm not sure I buy that the Israelis would become serious about dismantling the West Bank settlements if this were no longer a factor. The settlement population has grown from 130,000 in 1995 to 246,000 in 2005 to over 275,000 in 2008 in the West Bank. Do you think this trend would really reverse if Hamas were disarmed? If so, why?
Thanks!
I don't know how familiar you are with the demographics of settlers, but I can tell you right off the bat, me, that they're generally well to the right of the Israeli population, and especially of the government.
As ED pointed out on another thread, Israel is oftentimes a victim of democracy, just like the US. One manifestation of that is the settlements, which have continued to expand despite the majority bloc in the government publicly recognizing their folly. (A phenomenon that, up until the Gaza war, was getting more and more interesting in the mouth of Olmert.)
With a right-wing government apparently on its way to power here, I'm not going to double down on settlement dismantlement, and you're right to be skeptical. But I can absolutely promise you that, if this war ends with Hamas still firing rockets, there won't be a single settlement emptied, or a single new one rejected. The trend you cite is as much a reaction to the violence in Gaza over the last half decade as it is a cause.
In short, it's a nasty situation much like the one I'm talking about in the parent post -- a small opportunity in a galaxy of dead-ends.
Hi Max,
I'm well aware of the settler demographics. And it's true that intensely partisan group often hold the majority hostile in a constitutional democracy. But that's a feature of it, not a bug.
But what does this matter to the Hamas? I've often read that dismantling the settlements would tear apart the fabric of Israeli society. But if you're a Palestinian and the land you've been promised for your own state is being taken away on a weekly basis, do you really care about the "fabric of Israeli society"?
I believe this is what the Palestinians mean when they talk about "land grabs". You suggested that increasing the settlement population is a reaction to rocket fire----are you saying that if Hamas were disarmed, the gov't wouldn't have approved the newest settlements? Really?
I think the Hamas---and many Palestinians---believe that the rockets remain their only leverage against the expanding settlements. You're right---it's not much leverage, and firing rockets at schools is a fucking war crime. But every new settler that builds a house in the West Bank means that acre could very well be part of the what Israel keeps permanently in the West Bank when it comes to final negotiations, whenever they happen. For Israel to respond to minimally destructive rocket fire with permanent land grabs in the West Bank is unacceptable.
Being held hostage by a partisan intensity in a democracy has it's benefits, but also it's drawbacks. Israel is trying to erase the drawbacks, and it probably should. After all, what would any gov't do? But we shouldn't exactly be surprised when the Hamas doesn't acquiese.
And by the way, thanks for replying. It's always good to hear from truly knowledgeable people about this issue.
I think, like many people who get into a discussion with me about this, you've mistaken my strategic hopes with my personal moral feeling on the subject. I do very much understand the attraction that Palestinians feel to violence, and you'll find no stronger advocate of ending settlements than me. (As exhibit A I'll offer this op-ed: http://somepolitical.blogspot.com/2008/12/little-more-on-bethlehem.html that recently ran in the states.)
My very simple point here is that, *right or wrong*, the violence that is coming from Hamas is polarizing the Israeli electorate. That's not the cause of the settlement building, of course -- but it is the primary source of justification used by the Israeli right today.
As I said before, would stopping the violence magically take the wind out of the right's sails, and allow an immediate settlement freeze? Certainly not. But *nothing*, short of an American military deployment, could accomplish such a task. I'm looking for baby steps, so that in a few years (at the fastest) the Israeli political conversation will have changed, and settlements will no longer be seen as a security benefit.
Okay I think I may understand you a little better now. You seem to believe (and please correct me if I am wrong) that the Israeli political conversation will eventually move decisively against the settlers of it's own accord---but only if the pressure to retaliate against rocket fire from the Hamas has ended. I sincerely hope that you are right. We will have to see how the ground operation goes. A lot of people are comparing this to the July War, but this is not Lebanon and the IDF seems to have learned some valuable lessons. We we will see what happens.
And thanks for the link to your op-ed---it was very interesting. I'll admit that I never really considered a binational state an option. And it still seems like a pipe dream to me. But the other options are getting nowhere fast.
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