If current diplomacy fails, pent up rage on both sides, a cycle of tit-for tat-retaliation, Hamas’ hopes for greater Arab assistance, and a yearning to emerge from this latest round of heavy fighting on better footing than either side did from the last face-off in 2008-2009 could sustain Israeli-Hamas violence for quite a while. Without [...]]]>
If current diplomacy fails, pent up rage on both sides, a cycle of tit-for tat-retaliation, Hamas’ hopes for greater Arab assistance, and a yearning to emerge from this latest round of heavy fighting on better footing than either side did from the last face-off in 2008-2009 could sustain Israeli-Hamas violence for quite a while. Without a change for the better very soon, Israel almost certainly will initiate a ground assault into portions of Gaza in order to inflict damage severe enough to compel Hamas to accept a ceasefire.
Israel’s Operation Cast Lead during Dec. 2008 – Jan. 2009 forced Hamas to stand down, greatly reducing Hamas’ rocket launches against Israel for the better part of 3 years after large portions of Gaza were severely damaged and 1,400 Palestinian were killed in the course of an extremely lopsided battering (13 Israelis were killed). Even in street fighting that so often favors the weaker side, many Hamas fighters seemed less than thoroughly braced for that sort of bruising conflict. This time, however, in addition to the use of longer range rockets, Hamas fighters reportedly have undergone better training for a face-off with Israeli ground forces in Gaza on their own turf. They also apparently have secured supplies of improved surface-to-air missiles for use against low-flying helicopters and aircraft as well as better anti-tank missiles. Also, Hamas’ hopes for more meaningful regional support have risen considerably, particularly with a new Muslim Brotherhood-led government in Egypt right next door.
As for the Israelis, the jarring arrival of Hamas rockets in the Tel Aviv area and just south of Jerusalem warn of burgeoning Hamas capabilities that make securing little more than another prolonged lull less appealing than it was back in 2009. The Israeli leadership hopes to force a more enduring ceasefire upon Hamas. This ambitious agenda might lead the Israelis to take an even harsher action than in the last round of fighting. In fact, Sunday’s wave of Hamas rocket attacks against Tel Aviv, Ashdod, Beersheba, and Ashkelon is just the sort of development that could drive the Netanyahu government to set in motion Israeli ground attacks.
Although Hamas believes its chances of receiving more robust outside Arab support have improved, the tactical balance of raw military power between Israel and Hamas once again most likely will dominate the bulk of this confrontation, as has been the case in the past. Despite its longer-range rockets and some improvements in the likely performance of its armed militants against Israeli ground forces, Israel’s military superiority across the board remains staggering.
Overhead Israeli drones pass real time intelligence to the Israeli military on Hamas activity and movements, and Israeli combat aircraft swoop down to pounce quickly using various types of bombs on most all launching areas of Hamas rockets. Meanwhile, Israeli heavy artillery and armored units have been massing to add far more firepower if needed against desired targets or to facilitate Israeli ground incursions. Moreover, the vast majority of Hamas’ crudely guided rockets do relatively little damage, while practically every Israeli bomb, artillery shell, or tank round inflicts heavy structural — and typically also human — losses on the densely populated Gaza Strip. Finally, Israel is completely free to resupply its forces in the south with more munitions, weaponry of all types, and fresh reinforcements of trained combat personnel. By contrast, Hamas can receive — at most — only relatively small dribs and drabs of military resupply since Gaza is surrounded on three sides by heavily reinforced Israel army and naval forces, and Hamas-controlled border crossings and tunnels along Gaza’s smaller Egyptian frontier will remain under intensified Israeli observation and aerial interdiction.
The Israeli leadership may delay ground incursions to allow last-minute diplomacy to play out before engaging in more costly military operations. This way, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) would be better prepared once ground action is ordered. And although the IDF would take heavier losses than it is experiencing now by pushing into Gaza, the plight of Hamas fighters and civilians in the path of Israeli forces would be far worse. Fighting on one’s own ground provides some limited tactical advantage, but against such a skilled, far more heavily armed opponent with complete air supremacy, it also means the resultant property destruction and collateral casualties occur within your own community. During Operation Cast Lead almost four years ago, approximately 100 Palestinians died in Gaza for every Israeli struck down by Hamas. A similarly lopsided balance of casualties could occur once again.
All talk of “proportional response” regarding Israeli intentions aside, with the huge arsenal at Israel’s disposal and Gaza’s congestion, a vastly disproportionate casualty count favoring Israel is inevitable. And it remains very much in Israel’s unspoken interest to inflict disproportionate casualties for punitive purposes. In all past Israeli military endeavors meant to suppress rocket fire into Israel (whether from Gaza or Lebanon) severe casualties were inflicted on the perpetrators as well as nearby infrastructure and populations viewed as supporting those Israel sought to silence. And should an Israeli ground incursion commence, such casualties among Gazans would spike precipitously as intense firepower would be directed onto areas just ahead of advancing Israeli forces to suppress the ability of Hamas to do the same to advancing Israeli infantry and armored vehicles.
- Wayne White is a Scholar with Washington’s Middle East Institute. He was formerly the Deputy Director of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research’s Office of Analysis for the Near East and South Asia (INR/NESA) and senior regional analyst.
]]>Renowned international relations theorist John Mearsheimer writes in the London Review of Books:
So what is going on here? At the most basic level, Israel’s actions in Gaza are inextricably bound up with its efforts to create a Greater Israel that stretches from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean [...]]]>
Renowned international relations theorist John Mearsheimer writes in the London Review of Books:
]]>So what is going on here? At the most basic level, Israel’s actions in Gaza are inextricably bound up with its efforts to create a Greater Israel that stretches from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Despite the endless palaver about a two-state solution, the Palestinians are not going to get their own state, not least because the Netanyahu government is firmly opposed to it. The prime minister and his political allies are deeply committed to making the Occupied Territories a permanent part of Israel. To pull this off, the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza will be forced to live in impoverished enclaves similar to the Bantustans in white-ruled South Africa. Israeli Jews understand this quite well: a recent survey found that 58 per cent of them believe Israel already practises apartheid against the Palestinians.
Creating a Greater Israel will produce even bigger problems, however. In addition to doing enormous damage to Israel’s reputation around the world, the quest for a Greater Israel will not break the will of the Palestinians. They remain adamantly opposed not only to the Occupation, but also to the idea of living in an apartheid state. They will continue to resist Israel’s efforts to deny them self-determination. What is happening in Gaza is one dimension of that resistance. Another is Mahmoud Abbas’s plan to ask the UN General Assembly on 29 November to recognise Palestine as a non-member state. This move worries Israel’s leaders, because it could eventually allow the Palestinians to file charges against Israel before the International Criminal Court. Thus, the dream of a Greater Israel forces Tel Aviv to find ways to keep the Palestinians at bay.
“It is unfortunate that the entire Democratic Party has embraced President Obama’s shameful refusal to acknowledge that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital,” declared Mitt Romney on September 4.
The deletion of a single sentence about Jerusalem in the Democratic platform, which reportedly had been vetted by officials from the American Israel Public [...]]]>
“It is unfortunate that the entire Democratic Party has embraced President Obama’s shameful refusal to acknowledge that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital,” declared Mitt Romney on September 4.
The deletion of a single sentence about Jerusalem in the Democratic platform, which reportedly had been vetted by officials from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), generated hysterical headlines that went viral and ricocheted throughout cyberspace, arousing panic among Democrats and glee among Republicans.
Ironically, affirming Jerusalem’s status as the capital of Israel and the importance of relocating the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem has been a largely Democratic strategy for nearly four decades, particularly when there has been an incumbent Republican president in the White House. Republicans latch on to it whenever a Democratic president is running for re-election.
Now for some historical perspective.
The Democratic party’s 1976 platform was the first to stipulate:
We recognize and support the established status of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, with free access to all its holy places provided to all faiths. As a symbol of this stand, the U.S. Embassy should be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
This stance was reiterated in the 1980 and 1984 platforms. In 1983, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan called for relocating of the US Embassy to Jerusalem, in a bill co-sponsored by fifty senators. When State Department officials in the Reagan administration objected that moving the Embassy would strain diplomatic ties with Arab countries, Moynihan did not press for a vote. No mention of Jerusalem whatsoever was made in the Democratic platform in 1988, in the wake of Secretary of State George Shultz’s sharp criticism of Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis for suggesting that, if elected President, he would consider transferring the Embassy to Jerusalem. “It’s shocking that anybody would make such a proposal,” the Reagan administration’s chief spokesman on foreign policy told NBC’s Today show. Since Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights “are regarded as occupied territory” and are “subject to negotiations” according to Shultz, who deemed any notion of moving the Embassy a “mistake.”
But Jerusalem was back in the 1992 Democratic platform, a seeming non sequitur tacked on to the Middle East Peace plank, minus the call for moving the US Embassy:
The United States must act effectively as an honest broker in the peace process. It must not, as has been the case with this Administration, encourage one side to believe that it will deliver unilateral concessions from the other. Jerusalem is the capital of the state of Israel and should remain an undivided city accessible to people of all faiths.
Republicans were the latecomers to the Jerusalem capital-ism game. The GOP’s 1976 platform made no mention of Jerusalem. The 1980, 1984 and 1988 Republican platforms all declared that “Jerusalem should remain an undivided city with continued free and unimpeded access to all holy places by people of all faiths.” The same assertion appeared in the 1992 platform, followed by the coy sentence, “No genuine peace would deny Jews the right to live anywhere in the special city of Jerusalem.”
With a popular Democratic president in the White House, it was the Republicans’ turn to play the Jerusalem capital card. On October 24, 1995, the Jerusalem Embassy Relocation Implementation Act, introduced by Republican Sen. Bob Dole (who just happened to be running for president), passed the Senate (S. 1323) in a 93-5 and the House (H.R. 1595) 374-37. President Clinton signed the bill two weeks later. The overwhelming bi-partisan support for the measure did not prevent Republicans from taking full credit, gloating in the 1996 GOP platform:
We applaud the Republican Congress for enacting legislation to recognize Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel. A Republican administration will ensure that the U.S. Embassy is moved to Jerusalem by May 1999.
Clinton won the 1996 election. The US Embassy stayed in Tel Aviv. Then the 2000 Republican platform became even more strident:
The United States has a moral and legal obligation to maintain its Embassy and Ambassador in Jerusalem. Immediately upon taking office, the next Republican president will begin the process of moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Israel’s capital, Jerusalem.”
Nevertheless the Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush, who had publicly pledged to thousands of attendees at AIPAC’s 2000 Annual Policy Conference that on his first day in office he would move the US Embassy to Jerusalem, did not do so after winning the election. Not on his first day, not on his last day, and at no point in between. The Republican platform in 2004 stayed low key, noting, “Republicans continue to support moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Israel’s capital, Jerusalem.”
Democrats stuck with their tried-and-true 1992 formulation in 1996, in 2000, in 2004, and in 2008, reiterating the city’s status as Israel’s capital and the right of people of all faiths to access it. Ironically, Republicans framed their mega-affirmation of Jerusalem being Israel’s capital in 2008 with an endorsement of the creation of a Palestinian state, which went largely unnoticed by the media:
“We support the vision of two democratic states living in peace and security: Israel, with Jerusalem as its capital, and Palestine…We support Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel and moving the American embassy to that undivided capital of Israel.”
Two democratic states living side by side! Uri Friedman points out that such language “provoked a raft of amendments arguing that, in endorsing the two-state solution, the Republicans were dictating the terms of a peace agreement to the Israeli government.”
Israelis have for the most part been amused by, even cynical about, the overblown rhetoric about Jerusalem in US elections. As Douglas Bloomfield explained four years ago, when GOP presidential candidate John McCain told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that if elected president he would move the US Embassy “right away,” not only wasn’t it going to happen — regardless of who was elected — but Israelis wouldn’t care either way:
Moving the embassy has never been a high priority for any Israeli leader in meetings with American presidents. They see it as a political football in an American game they prefer staying out of. All recent prime ministers have understood that an agreement on Jerusalem is critical to any peace settlement with the Palestinians – and that symbolic action like American politicians trying to force the embassy move can only make an agreement more elusive. But the game continues even though seasoned political observers understand it’s a sham. This year is no exception. Any politician who tells you he’s going to move the embassy before the Israelis and Palestinians come to an agreement on the city’s final status and borders thinks you’re wearing a name tag that says “chump.”
No prominent Democrat seems to know why the reference to Jerusalem was deleted in 2012 (it was reinserted on September 5). What is certain, however, is the fact that for the past 35 years the role of Jerusalem in both party platforms has had no practical effect in Israel, except perhaps to distract from — and thus implicitly condone — the unilateral Israeli tripling in size of the area within the municipal boundaries of “united Jerusalem” between 1967 and today. Politicizing the holy city has been one way that both American parties have tried to score points against the opposition, a distraction from more complex and urgent issues in US domestic and foreign policy. This year is no exception.
Meanwhile, Republicans seem to have soured on their “Embassy Sweets” commitment to moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem. That the 2012 GOP platform has dropped the call for the Embassy’s relocation has gone almost totally unnoticed by the ever-distractible media, except, oddly, by the Wall Street Journal.
Apparently Romney didn’t get the memo.
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