Back to Ben Gurion? Israel at the gates of Gaza

I. Modest goals, extreme means
David Ben Gurion, Israel’s founding father, was the ultimate practitioner of the realist modest goals-extreme measures combination. Against fierce domestic opposition, he supported the 1947 UN proposals to partition Palestine into a Jewish and Palestinian states. During Israel’s 1948-49 War of Independence, he overruled his generals and prevented the occupation of areas heavily populated by Palestinians. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, Ben Gurion ordered retaliatory strikes against neighboring countries in response to terrorist attacks, but never for the purpose of occupying more territory. Indeed, in the immediate aftermath of the 1967 Six Day War, he advise his successors in power to disgorge the heavily populated territories Israel had occupied in that war. The same Ben Gurion who advised and practiced territorial and political moderation, however, also ordered the expulsion of tens of thousands of Palestinians from those areas which he deemed necessary for the security of the future state of Israel to make sure that the demographic balance between Jews and Arabs in the young state would be favorable (from Israel’s point of view) and that strategic areas would not be populated by Arab villages. He launched Israel’s nuclear weapons program, launched Israel’s defense industry, and only a few years after the Holocaust, announced that there was a “new Germany” and signed a large reparation agreement with that country in order to bolster Israel’s financial position.

Ben Gurion’s approach had the additional benefits of enjoying a consensus at home and considerable support around the world.

II. Ambitious goals, extreme means
Ben Gurion’s successors, from both Labor and Likud, did not follow in his footsteps. The euphoria of the lightning victory in the 1967 evoked expansionist tendencies in the Israeli society, leading to the building of dozens of settlements in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and the settling of about 300,000 Jewish settlers in the heretofore Palestinian areas. The best agricultural land was taken from Palestinian villagers and given to the new settlers; an infrastructure of roads on which only setters were allowed to drive was built to allow settlers to move quickly from place to place, while Palestinian citizens had to contend with hours of waiting and humiliation at hundreds of security check-points. Moreover, the Israeli military used excessive, and deadly, force against Palestinian demonstrators: Children throwing rocks at soldiers were met with live bullets, which killed and maimed many.

The consummate practitioner of this ambitious goals-extreme measures approach was Arik Sharon (the pre-2005 Sharon, we should add), who was the architect — in the various cabinet positions he held from the 1970s to 2001, when he became prime minister — of the Israeli settlement campaign. The culmination of this approach was the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, which Sharon orchestrated in his role as defense minister. The goal of the campaign was to solidify the Christian rule over Lebanon; the expulsion of as many as 250,000 Palestinian refugees from Lebanon and their transfer to Jordan; and the turning of Jordan into a Palestinian state by increasing its Palestinian population and toppling King Hussein. Sharon called it the Middle East’s “new order.”

Both the 40-year settlement campaign and the 18-year Lebanon incursion (Israel occupied half of Lebanon from June to September 1982, but then withdrew to what was called a “security strip” in southern Lebanon) have failed. They cost Israel billions of dollars, thousands of lives, and a distortion of national economic and social priorities — all the time making Israel more vulnerable, weakening its military, and causing the emergence of even more implacable enemies such as Hezbollah and Hamas.

III. Ambitious goals, moderate means
Sharon’s successor, Ehud Olmert, chose a third ends-means combination yet. When, in July 2006, Hezbollah killed three Israel soldiers in an incursion across the Lebanon border, Olmert launched a campaign to destroy Hezbollah and its rising power in Lebanon. Hezbollah was seen not only as a threat to the delicate political balance in Lebanon, but as a pro-Iranian militia ready to attack Israel on orders from its Tehran masters. In addition, with the generous help of Iran and Syria, Hezbollah had accumulated more than 10,000 rockets and missiles, and Israel’s leaders wanted to deal a blow to this growing arsenal. Whether or not Olmert’s goal of destroying Hezbollah was achievable is debatable. What is not debatable is that the air power-only approach he adopted was inappropriate to the task. The minimal, hesitant, and not always coherent attempt to use token ground forces failed. Many experts rightly pointed to the fact that for thirty years — since the 1973 war — the vaunted IDF was reduced to the role of an occupying police force in the Palestinian territories. Soldiers that used to train for stopping large Egyptian and Syrian formations, and commando units that used to practice daring operations deep behind enemy lines, were now chasing rock-throwing Palestinian teenagers in orchards and the alleys of Palestinian villages and towns.

Hezbollah did not win in any meaningful sense of war, but the fact that Israel could not destroy it was presented as a victory of sorts, with a resulting damage to Israel’s deterrence posture.

IV. Modest goals, moderate means
The fourth approach has not worked, either. It was tried twice — in Israel’s May 2000 unilateral withdrawal form the security strip in south Lebanon, and the Sharon-ordered unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in August 2005 (some critics of the 1993 Oslo Agreement would contend that the 9-year agreement — the agreement expired on 29 March 2002 when Israel, in the wake of a series of suicide bombings inside Israel, re-occupied the largest six cities in the West Bank — is also an example of the failure of this approach). In both the Lebanon and Gaza cases, Israel did not only withdraw from territory it had previously occupied: it also allowed the new rulers of these two territories (Hezbollah in south Lebanon, and, since June 2007, Hamas in Gaza) to arm themselves to the teeth with Iranian-supplied rockets and missiles. The belief in (some) Israeli circles was that a balance of deterrence could be fashioned with these two organizations. This also led Israel to very light, pin-prick responses to rocket and missile attacks by Hezbollah between 2000 and 2006, and by Hamas and other Palestinian militants from Gaza between June 2007 and November 2008. The light-touch Israeli retaliatory approach to Hezbollah and Hamas provocations also applied when these two organizations kidnapped IDF soldiers and held them for ransom.

The idea was that Israel should not, by a large military action, disrupt what was believed to be new, tacit rules emerging to govern the relationship between Israel and the two organizations. We now know that both Hezbollah and Hamas took the initial Israeli withdrawal from South Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, and the subsequent Israeli restrained responses to missile attacks and the kidnapping of IDF soldiers, as a sign of weakness and lack of resolve on the part of Israel. That perception of weakness and hesitation led Hezbollah to its July 2006 attacks, and led Hamas in November 2008 to end its cease-fire with Israel.

At the gates of Gaza
This short historical discussion leads us to the current Israeli operations in Gaza. We should be careful not call it an all-out war, because it is not. As Haaretz’s military analyst Amir Oren writes, the operation — code-named Operation Cast Lead — is a brigade-size raid, with an accompanying air and naval component. By “raid” we mean a military incursion similar in size to the Israeli operations in Karameh in Jordan in 1968 and Litani in Lebanon in 1978.

This is an operational scope which Israel adopted in the past few years in four major operations: operation Defensive Shield in the West Bank in March-April 2002 (five divisions); the evacuation of the Gaza Strip in August 2005 (four divisions — two military and two police); the campaign in Lebanon in July-August 2006 (four divisions); and the current operation in Gaza (four divisions).

The operation has been brilliant from the operational point of view: Hamas was caught completely off guard, with careful Israeli (and Egyptian) deception measures lulling it into complacency. Israel’s accurate intelligence has led, so far, to the destruction of more than 1,000 Hamas targets [note: as of 13 Janaury, Israel says it has destroyed upward of 1,300 Hamas targets] — command and control centers, communication hubs, weapon workshops and labs, storage and warehouses facilities, training bases, and more. Israel is also systematically destroying the tunnels which connected Gaza to Egypt and through which Hamas brought in thousands of missiles and rockets from Iran (more than 100 tunnels of the 300 Hamas has built have so far been destroyed [note: as of 13 Janaury, Israel has destroyed 268 tunnels]. Israel is also systematically killing Hamas military leaders by bombing their homes, and is destroying the Gaza infrastructure — roads, bridges, port facilities. The Israeli military is also destroying the symbols of Hamas rule — buildings housing cabinet ministries, government agencies, and more. All the while, the Israeli Air Force is destroying rocket launchers and killing the launching crews which operate them.

We should note that Israel does not hesitate to use extreme measures in pursuing its policy. Hamas, in order to make it more difficult for Israel, has built most of its bunkers, weapon caches, and command-and-control centers in underground structures below residential buildings, schools, and hospitals. In the case of residential buildings, the Israeli Air Force calls civilian residents of the buildings, and distributes leaflets from the air, giving these residents fifteen minutes to vacate their apartments before the air force destroys the buildings. In the case of Hamas leaders, the Israeli military is not so fussy: Nizar Rayan, for example, was killed at home by an Israeli missile — but there was no warning: The missile which hit the house killed not only Rayan, but also his four wives and 10 of his 12 children. Another example: Since Hamas hides weapon and fighters in Mosques, Israel is also bombing these religious buildings, so far destroying four of them.

The balance of the war so far (Tuesday, [6 January]): Israel suffered eight dead (four civilians and four soldiers — three of the soldiers died in friendly fire), 101 wounded (30 civilians and 71 soldiers — of the wounded soldiers, 7 are in serious condition), and 30 buildings hit by rockets. The Palestinians have suffered 555 dead, 2,700 wounded, and immeasurable destruction of buildings and infrastructure facilities. [note: the figures cited above have increased as the war continued; as of 13 January, Israel has suffered 12 dead (four civilians and eight soldiers — three of the soldiers died in friendly fire), 142 wounded (34 civilians and 108 soldiers — of the wounded soldiers, 8 are in serious condition), and 38 buildings hit by rockets. The Palestinians have suffered 920 dead, and nearly 4,000 wounded; the Palestinian have so far fired 712 rockets and mortar shells into Israel].

Israel’s main goals right now are to disrupt the launching of missiles of rockets and kill as many Hamas militants as possible — both fighters and leaders. Israeli soldiers have also been instructed to capture Hamas members as prisoners in order to use them as bargaining chips after the conflict ends. The quick encirclement move of Gaza City has also placed serious pressure on Hamas leaders — especially Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s leader in Gaza; Ahmed Jabri, the operational brain behind many of Hamas operations; and Mahmud al-Zahar, co-founder of Hamas. The three, together with Haled Mashal, Hamas leader who lives in Damascus, are likely Israeli targets — as were other Hamas leaders (Shehadeh, Yassin, Rantisi) who were killed after Hamas engaged in what Israel regarded as a strategic escalation of the conflict.

Extreme, or ruthless, as these measures may appear, they are used in the service of modest, realist goals. Israel’s declared goal is not the destruction of Hamas or its removal from power. Rather, Israel has three specific and attainable goals: An end to rocket launches on Israel; and end to weapon smuggling into Gaza; and the return of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier in Hamas captivity since June 2006. Israel said time and again that the replacement of Hamas as the ruler of Gaza is something the Palestinian themselves will have to do.

Ehud Barak, Israel’s defense minister and the undisputed author of the current campaign, is thus returning Israel to the Ben Gurion approach: Modest, realistic goals pursued ruthlessly. The Israeli campaign in Gaza may yet not succeed in all its aspects, especially if the UN or other self-appointed outsiders intervene to save Hamas from its own mistakes. We should also emphasize that Israel must be more forthcoming and generous in its stance toward a future Israeli-Palestinian settlement, as this would be a perfect complement to the harsh blows Israeli is now inflicting on those elements in the Palestinian society opposed to any settlement with Israel. We note that the Israeli coordination with Egypt with regard to the Gaza campaign is also a good sign of enlightened regional approach to thorny issues. If history is a guide, then the Barak approach, replicating Ben Gurion’s unsentimental realism, has served Israel and its interests better than the alternatives. We should watch with interest to see whether it does so this time. 

Ben Frankel is editor of HS Daily Wire