Israel's Regional War: The Cost of Israel's Aggressive Action
by
Henry Siegman
(Henry Siegman is a senior fellow on the Middle East at the Council on Foreign Relations, a visiting professor at the Sir Joseph Hotung Middle East Program of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and former head of the American Jewish Congress)
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IN LEBANON, as in Gaza, it is not Israel's right to protect its civilian population from terrorist aggression that is at issue. It is the way Israel goes about exercising that right.
Despite bitter lessons from the past, Israel's political and military leaders remain addicted to the notion that, whatever they have a right to do, they have a right to overdo, to the point where they lose what international support they had when they began their retaliatory measures.
Israel's response to the terrorist assault in Gaza and the outrageous and unprovoked Hezbollah assault across its northern border in Lebanon, far from providing protection to its citizens, may well further undermine their security by destabilising the wider region.
On the surface, the situations in Gaza and in Lebanon may seem similar, but there are important differences. No matter how one judges the rights and wrongs of the recent Hamas assaults and Israeli reprisals, in Gaza the fundamental spark is Israel's occupation, which has now lasted nearly 40 years.
Israel's leaders continue to suffer from the delusion they can defeat violent Palestinian resistance to that occupation without offering the Palestinians a credible, non-violent political path to statehood, promised in various international agreements.
Following the precedent set by Ariel Sharon with his unilateral disengagement from Gaza, his successor as Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, believes that if Israel dodges the bullet of a bilateral peace negotiation with the Palestinians — something it has done so far by claiming "there is no Palestinian partner for peace" — it will be able to create, unilaterally, a rump Palestinian state that will leave in Israeli hands large chunks of Palestinian territory and make a mockery of Palestinian national aspirations.
Despite the massive imbalance of forces, the Palestinians will never abide such an outcome. In 1988 and in 1993, as part of the Oslo agreement, they recognised Israel's legitimacy in 78 per cent of what used to be the Palestine mandate, leaving themselves with 22 per cent, less than half the territory assigned to them by the United Nations in 1947.
No Palestinian leader, now or in the future, will agree to further Israeli land grabs to accommodate settlements established in violation of international agreements and international law, whose illegality even the utterly one-sided Bush Administration has had to concede.
On this territorial issue, as on that of Israel's efforts to deny Palestinians the right to site the capital of their prospective state in East Jerusalem, there is no daylight between any of the Palestinian parties. President Mahmoud Abbas would be no less unyielding on these issues in a negotiation with Israel than would Hamas.
On the other side of the Israeli-Palestinian divide, if Hamas wishes to enable the international community, and particularly European countries, to end sanctions that have so brutally punished the Palestinians, it must at least be prepared to say that, even if it is now unwilling to pronounce on Israel's legitimacy — given Israel's continued violation of previous agreements and its ongoing theft of Palestinian land for its settlements — the elimination of the state of Israel is not Hamas' goal.
Its goal is a sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.
Hamas must understand that Palestinian violence to punish Israelis is self-defeating. The new Hamas regime will achieve nothing if it is not prepared to offer Israel a non-violent political path to security within its pre-1967 borders.
Hamas cannot have it both ways: it cannot demand recognition by the international community as the legitimate Government of the Palestinian Authority if it is not willing to enforce law and order. It must be willing to suppress the various militias and end their illegal activities. Otherwise, its proposals for a hudna (truce) with Israel remain meaningless.
Similarly, the Lebanese Government cannot allow the uninhibited operation of Hezbollah's militia and its freedom to violate international borders at will and still maintain its own legitimacy.
That said, Israel will quickly lose what international support it had for opposing Hezbollah's terrorism if it continues its assaults in Lebanon without regard to the consequences, not only for Lebanon and for the wider region, but for its own long-term security as well.
Indeed, the point of Hezbollah's aggression is the expectation that Israel would act in ways that will only deepen its isolation. Nothing is likely to achieve the goal of Israel's enemies more effectively than disproportionate measures that even its friends cannot support.
Hezbollah's naked aggression against Israel has nothing to do with the Palestinian cause. The two are linked only in the following sense: Hezbollah would not have attacked Israel if it could not have invoked Israel's assaults on Gaza's civilian population as its pretext.
As long as Israel's policies allow this conflict to fester, it remains vulnerable to the depredations of radical groups that will exploit the Palestinian tragedy for their own ends.
On this territorial issue, as on that of Israel's efforts to deny Palestinians the right to site the capital of their prospective state in East Jerusalem, there is no daylight between any of the Palestinian parties.
President Mahmoud Abbas would be no less unyielding on these issues in a negotiation with Israel than would Hamas.
On the other side of the Israeli-Palestinian divide, if Hamas wishes to enable the international community, and particularly European countries, to end sanctions that have so brutally punished the Palestinians, it must at least be prepared to say that, even if it is now unwilling to pronounce on Israel's legitimacy — given Israel's continued violation of previous agreements and its ongoing theft of Palestinian land for its settlements — the elimination of the state of Israel is not Hamas' goal.
Its goal is a sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.
Hamas must understand that Palestinian violence to punish Israelis is self-defeating. The new Hamas regime will achieve nothing if it is not prepared to offer Israel a non-violent political path to security within its pre-1967 borders.
Hamas cannot have it both ways: it cannot demand recognition by the international community as the legitimate Government of the Palestinian Authority if it is not willing to enforce law and order. It must be willing to suppress the various militias and end their illegal activities. Otherwise, its proposals for a hudna (truce) with Israel remain meaningless.
Similarly, the Lebanese Government cannot allow the uninhibited operation of Hezbollah's militia and its freedom to violate international borders at will and still maintain its own legitimacy.
That said, Israel will quickly lose what international support it had for opposing Hezbollah's terrorism if it continues its assaults in Lebanon without regard to the consequences, not only for Lebanon and for the wider region, but for its own long-term security as well.
Indeed, the point of Hezbollah's aggression is the expectation that Israel would act in ways that will only deepen its isolation.
Nothing is likely to achieve the goal of Israel's enemies more effectively than disproportionate measures that even its friends cannot support.
Hezbollah's naked aggression against Israel has nothing to do with the Palestinian cause. The two are linked only in the following sense: Hezbollah would not have attacked Israel if it could not have invoked Israel's assaults on Gaza's civilian population as its pretext.
As long as Israel's policies allow this conflict to fester, it remains vulnerable to the depredations of radical groups that will exploit the Palestinian tragedy for their own ends.
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