Fwd: [What Does Israel Want? Ilan Pappe, The Electronic Intifada, ]
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Opinion/Editorial What Does Israel Want? Ilan Pappe, The Electronic Intifada, 14 July 2006
Imagine a group of high ranking generals who simulated for years
Third World War scenarios in which they can move huge armies around,
employ the most sophisticated weapons in their disposal and enjoy the
immunity of a computerized headquarters from which they can direct
their war games. Now imagine that they are informed that in fact
there is no Third World War and their expertise is needed to calm
down some of the nearby slums or deal with soaring crime in deprived
townships and impoverished neighborhoods. And then imagine - in the
final episode in my chimerical crisis - what happens when they find
out how irrelevant have their plans been and how useless are their
weapons in the struggle against the street violence produced by
social inequality, poverty and years of discrimination in their
society. They can either admit failure or decide none the less to use
the massive and destructive arsenal at their disposal. We are
witnessing today the havoc wreaked by Israeli generals who opted for
latter course of action.
I have been teaching in the Israeli universities for 25 years.
Several of my students were high ranking officers in the army. I
could see their growing frustration since the outbreak of the first
Intifada in 1987. They detested this kind of confrontation, called
euphemistically by the gurus of the American discipline of
International Relations: ‘low intensity conflict’. It was too low to
their taste. They were faced with stones, molotov bottles and
primitive arms which required a very limited use of the huge arsenal
the army has amassed throughout the years and did not test at all
their ability to perform in a battlefield or a war zone. Even when
the army used tanks and F-16s, it was a far cry from the war games
the officers played in the Israeli Matkal – headquarters – and for
which they bought, with American tax payer money – the most
sophisticated and updated weaponry existing in the market.
The first Intifada was crushed, but the Palestinians continued to
seek ways of ending the occupation. They rose again in 2000, inspired
this time by a more religious group of national leaders and
activists. But it was still a ‘low intensity conflict’; no more than
that. But this is not what the army expected, it was yearning for a
‘real’ war. As Raviv Druker and Offer Shelah, two Israeli journalists
with close ties to the IDF, show in a recent book, Boomerang (p. 50),
major military exercises before the second Intifada were based on a
scenario that envisaged a full-scale war. It was predicted that in
the case of another Palestinian uprising, there would be three days
of ‘riots’ in the occupied territories that would turn into a head-on
confrontation with neighboring Arab states, especially Syria. Such a
confrontation, it was argued, was needed to maintain Israel’s power
of deterrence and reinforce the generals confidence in their army’s
ability to conduct a conventional war.
The frustration was unbearable as the three days in the exercise
turned into six years. And yet, the Israeli army’s main vision for
the battlefield is today still that of ‘shock and awe’ rather than
chasing snipers, suicide bombers and political activists. The ‘low
intensity’ war questions the invincibility of the army and erodes its
capability to engage in a ‘real’ war. More important than anything
else, it does not allow Israel to impose unilaterally its vision over
the land of Palestine – a de-Arabized land mostly in Jewish hands.
Most of the Arab regimes have been complacent and weak enough to
allow the Israelis to pursue their policies, apart from Syria and
Hizballah in Lebanon. They have to be neutralized if Israeli
unileteralism is to succeed.
After the outbreak of the second Intifada in October 2000, some of
the frustration was allowed to evaporate with the use of 1,000 kilo
bombs on a Gaza house or during operation Defense Shield in 2002 when
the army bulldozered the refugee camp in Jenin. But this too was a
far cry from what the strongest army in the Middle East could do. And
despite the demonization of the mode of resistance chosen by the
Palestinians in the second Intifada – the suicide bomb – you needed
only two or three F-16 and a small number of tanks to punish
collectively the Palestinians by totally destroying their human,
economic and social infrastructure.
I know these generals as well as one could know them. In the last
week, they have had a field day. No more random use of one-kilo
bombs, battleships, choppers and heavy artillery. The weak and
insignificant new minister of defense, Amir Perez, accepted without
hesitation the army demand for crushing the Gaza strip and grinding
Lebanon to dust. But it may not be enough. It can still deteriorate
into a full scale war with the hapless army of Syria and my ex-
students may even push by provocative actions towards such an
eventuality. And, if you believe what you read in the local press
here, it may even escalate into a long distance war with Iran, backed
by a supreme American umbrella.
Even the most partial reports in the Israeli press of what was
proposed by the army to Ehud Olmert’s government as possible
operations in the coming days, indicate clearly what enthuses the
Israeli generals these days. Nothing less that a total destruction of
Lebanon, Syria and Tehran.
The politicians at the top are more tamed, to a point. They have only
partially satisfied the army’s hunger for a ‘high intensity
conflict’. But their politics of the day are already donned by
military propaganda and rational. This why Zipi Livni, Israeli
foreign minister, an otherwise intelligent person, could say
genuinely on Israeli TV tonight (13 July 2006) that the best way to
retrieve the two captured soldiers ‘is to destroy totally the
international airport of Beirut’. Abductors or armies that have two
POWs of course immediately go and buy commercial tickets on the next
flight from an international airport for the captors and the two
soldiers. ‘But they can sneak them with a car’, insisted the
interviewers. ‘Oh indeed’ said the Israeli Foreign Minister, ‘This is
why we will also destroy all the roads in Lebanon leading outside the
country’. This is good news for the army, to destroy airports, set
fire to petrol tanks, blow up bridges, damage roads and inflict
collateral damage on a civilian population. At least the airforce can
show its ‘real’ might and compensate for the frustrating years of the
‘low intensity conflict’ that had sent Israel’s best and fiercest to
run after boys and girls in the alleys of Nablus or Hebron. In Gaza
the airforce has already dropped five such bombs, where in the last
six years it dropped only one.
This may be not enough, though, for the army generals. They already
say clearly on TV that ‘we here in Israel should not forget Damascus
and Teheran’. Past experiences tell us what they mean by this appeal
against our collective amnesia.
The captive soldiers in Gaza and Lebanon have already been deleted
from the public agenda here. This is about destroying the Hizballah
and Hamas once and for all, not about bringing home the soldiers. In
a similar way in the summer of 1982, the Israeli public have totally
forgotten the victim that provided the government of Menachem Begin
with the excuse of invading Lebanon. He was Shlomo Aragov, Israel’s
ambassador to London on whose life an attempt was made by a splinter
Palestinian group. The attack on him served Ariel Sharon with the
pretext of invading Lebanon and staying there for 18 years.
Alternative routes for the conflict are not even raised in Israel,
not even by the Zionist left. No one mentions commonsensical ideas
such as an exchange of prisoners or a commencement of a dialogue with
the Hamas and other Palestinian groups at least over a long ceasefire
to prepare the ground for more meaningful political negotiations in
the future. This alternative way forward is already backed by all the
Arab countries, but alas only by them. In Washington, Donald Ramsfeld
may have lost some of his deputies in the Defense Department, but he
is still the Secretary. For him, the total destruction of the Hamas
and Hizballah – whatever the price and if it is without loss of
American life – will ‘vindicate’ the raison d’ętre for the Third
World Theory he propagated early on in 2001. The current crisis for
him is a righteous battle against a small axis of evil – away from
the quagmire of Iraq and a precursor for the so far unattained goals
in the ‘war against terror’ – Syria and Iran. If indeed to a certain
extent the Empire was serving the proxy in Iraq, the full fledged
support President Bush gave to the recent Israeli aggression in Gaza
and Lebanon, shows that may be pay off time has come: now the proxy
should salvage the entangled Empire.
Hizballah wants back the piece of southern Lebanon Israel still
retains. It also wishes to play a major role in Lebanese politics and
shows ideological solidarity with both Iran and the Palestinian
struggle in general, and the Islamist one, in particular. The three
goals do not always complement each other and resulted in a very
limited war effort against Israel in the last six years. The total
resurrection of tourism on the Israeli side of the border with
Lebanon testifies that, unlike the Israeli generals, for its own
reasons the Hizballah is very happy with a very low intensity
conflict. If and when a comprehensive solution for the Palestine
question will be achieved even that impulse would die out. Crossing
100 yards into Israel proper is such an action. Retaliating to such a
low key operation with a total war and destruction indicates clearly
that what matters is the grand design not the pretext.
There is nothing new in this. In 1948, the Palestinians opted for a
very low intensity conflict when the UN imposed on them a deal which
wrested from their hand half of their homeland and gave it to a
community of newcomers and settlers, most of whom arrived after 1945.
The Zionist leaders waited for long time for that opportunity and
launched an ethnic cleansing operation that expelled half of the
land’s native population, destroyed half of its villages and dragged
the Arab world into unnecessary conflict with the West, whose powers
were already on the way out with the demise of colonialism. The two
designs are interconnected: the wider Israel’s military might
expands, the easier it is to complete the unfinished business of the
1948: the total de-Arabization of Palestine.
It is not too late to stop the Israeli designs from creating a new
and terrible reality on the ground. But the window of opportunity is
very narrow and the world needs to take action before it is too late.