Flying Pink Unicorns

Thinking about Gaza.

This post is about what I think Israel's goals should be for this offensive against Gaza: What should Israel be trying to accomplish. The short answer is the removal of the Hamas government, the destruction of Hamas as an organization, and a very significant reduction in the amount of capability of people inside Gaza to hit Israel with rockets or in any other fashion.

As all of you already know, Israel is 3-days into a significant series of air strikes against Gaza, that have already apparently killed approximately 300 people and wrought some destruction.

As I write this, the New York Times lead story on-line is headlined, "Israeli troops mass along border; Arab anger rises." Well, Arab anger always rises when Israel defends itself. If rockets are launched against Israel, not so much. If Saddam launches Scuds against Israel without Israel having done anything to Iraq, that is cheered in the Arab world (and was in fact cheered at the time both by Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and, disgracefully, by well more than a few Israeli Arabs (who are citizens of Israel)).

With that sidelight out of the way, where should Israel go from here?

An article that my friend Andrew sent me,

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=b80c860d-dca8-4d79-9cc4-05d91b6d4721

got me to thinking: What should Israel's goals be as it prosecutes this significant offensive against Gaza?

My short answer is that Israel should continue its military occupation in Gaza until each of the following conditions are met: (1) the eviction of the Hamas regime in Gaza, and its replacement by Fatah (the Party founded by Yasser Arafat, currently headed by Mahmoud Abbas, that is in power in the West Bank), (2) that Fatah be required to act to stamp out Hamas and its imitators once and for all on pain of its being replaced by leaders of Israel's choosing, (3) the capture or killing of Hamas' leaders; (4) leaving behind any military and security infrastructure needed to ensure that the rocket threat poses by Hamas does not reemerge; and (5) the permanent occupation of a narrow strip along the Egyptian border, to prevent the smuggling of weapons, including but not limited to rockets, into Gaza. No civilian settlers for heaven's sake! If I could be convinced that this is simply unworkable, that the Israeli soldiers there would simply be easy prey for Hamas or other groups, and you can't just leave them sitting there for decades, I would be open to alternative security arrangements that would reasonably ensure that the flow of weaponry into Gaza turns into a mere trickle.

These are, make no mistake, ambitious goals. They will require Israeli blood, many Palestinian civilian deaths, entangle Israel in Gaza politics, reliance on an unreliable Fatah "ally," and will only reduce and not eliminate the threat. But it is the best series of goals that I believe is achievable for Israel at any reasonable cost. There are problems, including one serious problem, with the goals I have set forth, as I will discuss below,.

Is Israel going to go anywhere near this far? I doubt it, but there is room for debate. Any attempt to predict Israeli behavior has to begin with the Lebanon War of 2006. Then, you will recall, Israel engaged in a weeks' long series of air-strikes designed in part, as I remember one Israeli saying, to show that "the bossman has gone crazy." Well, designed in part to reestablish Israeli deterrence. Israel had more or less accepted small military actions against it for quite some time and had had enough. Anyway, at the time Prime Minister Olmert talked very tough, saying that the goals were to "destroy" Hezzbullah, or to destroy it as a military threat. Andrew and I were thrilled to hear about Israel seeming to act decisively to defend itself for the first time in many years, and we were thrilled. Alas, Israel then declared peace with precisely none of its objectives satisfied, with Hezzbullah having fired well more than 10,000 rockets into Israel and having emerged victorious in the eyes of everyone in the region.

This shadow, in some ways similar to how Americans look at Vietnam, looms over the current operation in Gaza. Once again, we have air strikes against a well armed ragtag military group that fires rockets into Israel. When I say well armed, they are, for a group of militants, as opposed to a modern army. Make no mistake, the Israelis have a small but very real modern military and could, if it wished, crush Hamas, and leave total devastation in its wake, and suffer relatively few casualties while doing so. This would require a level of death and destruction that Israel is simply unwilling to consider. I don't want to leave the impression that by saying "well armed" that means they are in any way shape or form comparable to Israel.

Some in Israel have talked about resuming deterrence. Let the Palestinians and others in the region fear Israel, and then they will stop attacking it. This is most unlikely to work. Whatever the flaws of the Palestinians may be they, and their leaders, are tough and determined. Despite facing down a modern military, with aircraft, precision guided bombs, tanks and satellites, they fire rockets into their massively superior opponent and talk openly of its destruction. Hardships are simply blamed on Israel, or the US. Hamas is particularly tough, courageous and determined. The idea that a massive show of force, capture of some of its leaders, destruction of buildings and infrastructure and killing of a few hundred civilians is going to change the behavior of those that run Hamas is ludicrous. Time and again, Palestinian leaders have shown their basic inability to be deterred by that level of force which Israel is willing to dish out. Would they be deterred in the future by the kind of much more significant operation that I outline? Israel's never tried it, so I don't know for sure, but my best guess is no, they would not. I am in no way relying on deterrence.

In the meantime, the Bush administration has talked about Hamas being at fault (fine) and calling on it to "renew the ceasefire." I don't want a ceasefire with Hamas, while it (a) fails to recognize Israel; (b) Remains committed to the destruction of Israel; and (c) arms towards doing harm to Israel, including but not limited to acquiring rockets with a longer range into Israel, and, of course, using those rockets. I might support allowing Hamas to stay in power if it:

1) Agrees to a coalition with Fatah and to turn over all military assets;
2) Recognizes Israel; and
3) Publicly and irrevocably commits to working towards a 2-state solution.

I do not believe that Hamas can possibly accept these terms, it is meant as a poison pill they can't possibly accept. In reality I do not support any sort of resumption of a truce with Hamas. They represent an intolerable threat to Israel, which could grow in time into a mortal threat. Israel's citizens having to live under the constant threat of rocket attack is simply unacceptable. Hamas could possibly ensure a few months of quiet (possibly) but the resumption of the threat of living under rocket attack would then resume at Hamas' leisure. This is intolerable.

What are the main problems with the set of goals I have outlined? The biggest problem by far is the assumption that Fatah can somehow be forced to stamp out any future threat posed by Palestinian militants. Since the beginning of the peace process of the 1990s, a constant source of tension between Israel and Fatah has been the attempts (or lack thereof) by Fatah to disarm Palestinian militants/prevent their emergence in the first place. Arafat at times actually did crack down on the militants (in part because they were a threat to his power, wealth and life), but mostly let them alone because (a) he wasn't always strong enough to crush them; and (b) they served his ends in a negotiation with Israel; they represented the leverage he had-- suicide bombers and other attacks on Israel.

What if Fatah "promises" to stamp out the remnants of Hamas, and not to let it reemerge. Then, time goes by, and, mysteriously, new militant groups form, new groups are lobbing rockets at Israel, and Fatah says, "gee, we're sorry. Where did they come from?" This is, to say the least, a likely series of events. I have not fully worked out how Israel would deal with this eventuality, in part because there just isn't a good answer. Or at least I haven't worked one out. Caroline Glick, of the Jerusalem Post, constantly reinforces the point that Fatah cannot be trusted. She has not set forth an answer of how to deal with this problem either. The Palestinians represent an enormously difficult series of security problems for Israel to deal with. But short of simply killing them all, which Israel has not and should not consider (we did not carpet bomb Fallujah during the worst of the Iraqi Sunni insurgency, even though that would have killed hundreds or thousands of militants and arguably saved many American and Iraqi lives), Israel has to make a series of choices vis-a-vis the Palestinians. And rocket attacks, or even the fear of them, is to me on the side of unacceptable. Israel should pay any price, bear any burden, inflict any harm necessary to avoid the risk of rocket attacks.