Politicians start wars optimistic about their prospects of gaining from combat, Geoffrey Blainey notes in his masterly study, "The Causes of War;" otherwise, they would avoid fighting.
Why, then, did Hamas just provoke a war with Israel? Out of nowhere, on June 11 it began launching rockets, shattering a calm in place since November 2012. The mystery of this outburst prompted David Horovitz, editor of the Times of Israel, to find that the current fighting has "no remotely credible reason" even to be taking place. And why did the Israeli leadership respond minimally, trying to avoid combat? This although both sides know that Israel's forces vastly out-match Hamas' in every domain intelligence gathering, command and control, technology, firepower, domination of air space.
What explains this role reversal? Are Islamists so fanatical that they don't mind losing? Are Zionists too worried about loss of life to fight?
Actually, Hamas leaders are quite rational. Periodically (2006, 2008, 2012), they decide to make war on Israel knowing full well that they will lose on the military battlefield but optimistic about winning in the political arena. Israeli leaders, conversely, assume they will win militarily but fear political defeat bad press, United Nations resolutions, and so on.
The focus on politics represents a historic shift; the first 25 years of Israel's existence saw repeated challenges to its existence (especially in 1948-49, 1967, and 1973) and no one knew how those wars would turn out. I remember the first day of the 1967 Six-Day War, when the Egyptians proclaimed splendid triumphs while complete Israeli press silence suggested catastrophe. It came as a shock to learn that Israel had scored the greatest victory in the annals of warfare. The point is, outcomes were unpredictably decided on the battlefield.
No longer: The battlefield outcome of Arab-Israeli wars in last 40 years have been predictable; everyone knows Israeli forces will prevail. It's more like cops and robbers than warfare. Ironically, this lopsidedness turns attention from winning and losing to morality and politics. Israel's enemies provoke it to kill civilians, whose deaths bring them multiple benefits.
The four conflicts since 2006 have restored Hamas' tarnished reputation for "resistance," built solidarity on the home front, stirred dissent among both Arabs and Jews in Israel, galvanized Palestinians and other Muslims to become suicide bombers, embarrassed non-Islamist Arab leaders, secured new United Nations resolutions bashing Israel, inspired Europeans to impose harsher sanctions on Israel, opened the international Left's spigot of vitriol against the Jewish state, and won additional aid from the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The holy grail of political warfare is to win the sympathy of the global Left by presenting oneself as underdog and victim. (From a historic point of view, it bears pointing out, this is very strange: Traditionally, combatants tried to scare the enemy by presenting themselves as fearsome and unstoppable.)
The tactics of this new warfare include presenting a convincingly emotional narrative, citing endorsements of famous personalities, appealing to the conscience, and drawing simple but powerful political cartoons (Israeli supporters tend to excel at this, both in the past and now). Palestinians get even more creative, developing the twin fraudulent techniques of "fauxtography" for still pictures and "Pallywood" for videos. Israelis used to be complacent about the need for what they call hasbara, or getting the message out, but recent years find them more focused on this.
Hilltops, cities, and strategic roadways matter supremely in the Syria and Iraqi civil wars, but morality, proportionality, and justice dominate Arab-Israeli wars. As I wrote during the 2006 Israel-Hamas confrontation, "Solidarity, morale, loyalty, and understanding are the new steel, rubber, oil, and ammunition." Or in 2012: "Opeds have replaced bullets, social media have replaced tanks." More broadly, this is part of the profound change in modern warfare when Western and non-Western forces fight, as in the U.S.-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In Clausewitzian terms, public opinion is the new center of gravity.
All this said, how fares Hamas? Not well. Its battlefield losses since July 8 appear higher than expected and worldwide condemnations of Israel have yet to pour in. Even the Arabic media are relatively quiet. If this pattern holds, Hamas might conclude that raining rockets on Israeli homes is not such a good idea. Indeed, to dissuade it from initiating another assault in a few years, it needs to lose both the military and the political wars, and lose them very badly.
July 11, 2014 update: While the usual coven of Palestinian extremists, Islamists, Leftists, and all-around antisemites are bashing Israel, as expected, the Jewish state is also getting support from unexpected sources.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon: "Today we face the risk of an all out escalation in Israel and Gaza with the threat of a ground offensive still palpable and preventable only if Hamas stops rocket firing."
By a nearly 3-to-1 margin (42 to 15 percent) , Rasmussen reports, a national survey of 1,000 likely American voters (conducted on July 7-8, just as hostilities began) blames Palestinians more for the conflict in Gaza than they blame Israel, with a very substantial 43 percent undecided.
The Lebanese Internal Security Forces detained two persons for having fired rockets into Israel.
Egyptian security forces seized 20 rockets on their to being smuggled into Gaza.
Mahmoud Abbas, chairman of the Palestinian Authority, attended a Ha'aretz peace conference the day the current fighting began and has infuriated Hamas by his willingness to continue to work with the Government of Israel.
Jordan's foreign minister, Nasser Judeh, demanded that Israel "stop its escalation immediately," but he balanced this with calls for "the restoration of complete calm and avoidance of targeting civilians" and for "the return to direct negotiations."
July 11, 2014 addendum: Great minds think alike and Caroline Glick has an article just out, "Hamas's (and Iran's) fail-safe strategy," that asks the same question I do above:
What is Hamas doing? Hamas isn't going to defeat Israel. It isn't going to gain any territory. Israel isn't going to withdraw from Ashkelon or Sderot under a hail of rockets. So if Hamas can't win, why is it fighting?
Her answer is somewhat along the same lines as mine: She contrasts the generally favorable conditions Hamas enjoyed when it took over Gaza in 2007 ("All was good") with the many problems it faces today, mentioning the governments of Egypt and Syria, the Palestinian Authority, ISIS, and even the Arab Bank. Given these difficult circumstances,
it was just a matter of time before Hamas opened a full-on assault against Israel. Jew-hatred is endemic in the Muslim world. Going to war against Israel is a tried and true method of garnering sympathy and support from the Muslim world. At a minimum it earns you the forbearance, if not the support of the US and Europe. And you get all of these things whether you win or lose.
In other words, Glick and I agree on the political goals; but she places more emphasis than me on Hamas' problems. I prefer to see war with Israel as a standing option that Hamas chooses to take up for its own internal reasons whether circumstances are good (as in 2008 and 2012) or bad (as in 2014). |
