How often do observers marvel at the technical efficiency and success of Israeli operations, yet are left dumbfounded as to what the long game is and what has been achieved? Last week’s operation to detonate thousands of pagers and other electronic devices in Lebanon was remarkable, if terrifying and bloody.
No doubt Mossad bosses will be delighted. In the short term, Hezbollah will have been compromised, its communications exposed and infiltrated. Its capabilities will now be reduced. The armed group is vulnerable, its confidence shaken.
Israel can also argue it has shown that it has reestablished deterrence. This buys Israel valuable time, but will it use this constructively?
Israelis too often buy into their own government’s propaganda too easily. Israeli spokespeople can claim the pager attacks were all highly targeted, but the reality is that Lebanese of all stripes see it as a mass-casualty attack; one that was far from surgical and that terrified an entire population, with people now scared of their own devices and what happens next. Israelis may believe the official narrative that the decimation of Gaza is fully justified, but those on the receiving end know the truth. Many Gazans will have been imbued with a hatred that will extend over generations. Hamas and Hezbollah will not have a recruitment challenge going forward.
Where does this all lead? Will there be peace and security? Will tens of thousands of Israelis and Lebanese be able to return to their homes?
Overall, Israel has not managed to be accepted in the region after more than 75 years. It blames its adversaries, but at what point does this look like an excuse to hide behind?
A reminder Hezbollah was forged in the hell of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, some 42 years ago. Until the Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000, for many Lebanese, Hezbollah had a legitimate role in resisting that occupation.
Similarly, Hamas was created in the early days of the First Intifada, which broke out in Gaza in December 1987. It too could claim a resistance role.
In both cases, Israel is not just facing the same adversaries, but ones that are considerably more potent, richer and better-organized than in those earlier years. One has to wonder at what point intelligent, far-sighted Israelis question their country’s one-track, force first-and-last approach.
One sees the same pattern with Iran. Operationally, the July assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on the occasion of the inauguration of the Iranian president was both audacious and brilliantly executed. As with the operations in Lebanon, not one Israeli agent has been fingered or photographed.
But what has Israel truly achieved, except reminding the world that it has significant capabilities that perhaps Iran and Hezbollah have underestimated in recent years? The assassination of the key negotiator in the Gaza ceasefire talks has to be seen as escalatory.It is also about an unquestioning belief that there are military solutions, despite evidence to the contrary. Hamas and Hezbollah have demonstrated time and time again that assassinated leaders can be replaced. Often, their replacements are even more hard-line. Most agree Yahya Sinwar is more uncompromising than his predecessor.
Has the Israeli strategy worked to prevent Iran going nuclear? Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has only one gear here too — escalation. In 2010, Israel deployed the Stuxnet malicious code to sabotage elements of Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility. It certainly set Iran’s nuclear program back, as did the killing of a host of nuclear scientists.
Yet, today, Iran is a threshold nuclear state. Israeli aggression against Iran has empowered the extreme hard-liners to push further down the nuclear path. Was that truly in Israel’s or the region’s interest?
The settler movement, in contrast, does have a strategy. Much of what happens is not random but is focused on specific communities the settlers want to forcibly evict and resources they want to control. The movement knows which settlements and land thefts will make a Palestinian state less likely. In Jerusalem, the inner circle of settlements around the Old City is designed to isolate Palestinians — Muslims and Christians — from the key holy and historic sites, to shove them to the periphery of the city and ideally outside it.
Reliance on force is also an accusation that can be made against Hamas and Hezbollah. Which of their military actions has truly brought freedom and rights for Palestinians? How many inches of Palestine have been liberated through rocket fire?
However, Israel, with all its capabilities, diplomatic alliances and economic muscle, has far more options. It has academic institutions, think tanks and research groups — a full-blown intellectual apparatus to consider these long-term options.
But what future Israeli leaders want is hard to determine. Setting fire to the region also creates the risk of getting burned yourself. It is time for Israeli leaders to have a long, hard think about engaging their neighbors in a peaceful, non-expansionist fashion. It would be a welcome change from an Israel that consistently basks in tactical successes but strategic failures.
Chris Doyle is director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding in London.
X: @Doylech.
Source: Arab News
