Tonight as we enter Tisha B’Av and read Lamentations on Judaism’s
saddest day of the year, a day when we remember numerous tragedies, the
Palestinian factions are in Cairo and about to declare a ceasefire that may finally
wind this conflict down. The Israeli army has already unilaterally pulled out
of most of Gaza and declared its limited goal of destroying the tunnels and
damaging Hamas’s terror infrastructure to be a complete success. Over thirty attack tunnels leading into
Israel and towards Israeli settlements were sealed and hundreds of bomb-making factories
throughout the Gaza strip were destroyed. So why do many Israelis feel that we
have just made a strategic error of historical proportions? Will this Tisha B’Av,
like many before, also be remembered as one that led to our undoing? How did we get here and what will the next
few weeks hold out for us?
America, the Arsonist of the Middle East
I borrowed this headline from Lee Smith (See Here)
who, rightly argued that, under this administration, the United States has
completely destabilized the entire region. As Victor Davis Hanson points out, “by
taking the path of least short term trouble,” we have only ensured “long-term
hardship” (See Here). Indeed, you
can see this throughout the region as, in case after case, the Obama White
House has taken the “easy” road only to bring us now to the brink of disaster.
For example, Obama had an opportunity to provide moral leadership and support
for the Green Movement in Iran when protestors poured out onto the streets in
2009. The protestors were met with violence by the regime and silence in
Washington from an administration that preferred to maintain a “working
relationship” with the Imams over regime change. All that has done is buy time
for Iran to destabilize the region as they work feverishly to build a nuclear bomb.
Where was this administration when Syria fell into a brutal civil war and
death spiral that has pitted all segments of its society against one another? The US, which, until recently, was talking up
Assad (See Here)
was nowhere to be found while Iran, Russia and Hizballah have filled this void
and propped up the Baathists. Compared to ISIS, which have taken residence in
the vacuum caused by the premature departure of US troops from Iraq and the
collapse of Syria’s rebels into internecine warfare, even the Butcher of
Damascus is beginning to look attractive. As it has become clear that the US would just
watch the region burn from the sidelines, countries such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia
have stepped into the fray with devastating consequences.
Similarly, In Libya, the administration led from behind and then just walked
away as the country disintegrated into chaos. Last week the US embassy was evacuated
and now tens of thousands of poor migrant workers from India and the
Phillipines, who were attracted to the country by its oil wealth, are
desperately trying to find a way out (not that the media would care to cover it).
Next door, in Egypt, successive revolutions have swept away the ancien régime
of Mubarak, swept in the Muslim Brotherhood, and resulted in a counterrevolution
that brought the Army back to power. Both
blinded by ideology and lacking in principle, the Obama administration single-handedly
managed the unrivalled feat of alienating all the parties in Egypt. Mubarak and
the Nasserites will always remember how quickly the administration jettisoned
them, the Muslim Brotherhood will remember that the US reconciled itself with
Sisi, and Sisi will recall that at every step along the way, as his country was
unraveling, the Obama administration stood in his way and against the will of
the people in Egypt. Of course, the Liberals – a miniscule group that was
propped up by the Bush Administration – will remember that Washington supported
the repressive Brotherhood as they continue to fall off of balconies and into
irrelevance (See Here).
As for Israel, we have also had the misfortune of being on the receiving
end of America’s attentions. Though the
past four years have decisively laid to rest any reason to believe in the “linkage”
canard – i.e. that most of the regions problems can be traced back to the
Arab-Israeli conflict, the US State Department decided to double down and try
to force the parties into a peace process that neither side was ready to
accept. John Kerry, that tireless self-promoter and perennial presidential
hopeful, visited Israel and the PNA dozens of times and left in the end with
nothing to show for it. Worse, Kerry took the only stable and quiet corner of
the entire Middle East, created false expectations, and walked away pointing
fingers as the region began to simmer and burn. Meanwhile, as he fiddled and
tried to garner himself a Nobel Peace Prize, Russia invaded and occupied Crimea,
India-US relations reached a new low, and China stepped up its expansion and
territorial claims in the South China Sea.
What is wrong with This Picture?
As I mentioned in a previous post, as conflict between Israel and Hamas
finally boiled over, Kerry arrived uninvited and managed once again to walk
away with absolutely nothing to show for it. Unwelcome in the region, Kerry
decamped to Paris where he met with the Foreign Ministers of Britain, Italy,
and France and invited Turkey and Qatar to attend a summit to hash out a
ceasefire between the sides. Not only was this attempt at an end run an insult
to the parties in the region – after all, the Obama administration failed to
invite Israel, Egypt or the Palestinian Authority to this confab – but it
empowered the most retrograde forces in the region against those of Washington’s
ostensible allies (i.e. Israel, Egypt, PNA and Saudi Arabia). As a furious
Palestinian Authority representative told A Sharq Al Awsat, “Whoever wants Qatar and Turkey to
represent them can emigrate and go live there. Our only legitimate
representative is the PLO.” (See Here)
To the extent that Qatar has been funding
Hamas, under the fascist leadership of Erdogan, Turkey has been vocal in its support
of Hamas. Essentially a “Friends of Hamas” meeting, this served only to
embolden the terrorist organization. It led Hamas to believe that, if it held
out a little bit longer, all of its demands would be met. As such, this initiative
prolonged the fighting in Gaza and with it the misery of Gaza’s population, the
unwitting pawns in Hamas’s media war.
So what now? In the interim, the US and the UN requested and received a
commitment on the part of Israel that it would stand down for 72 hours in a
humanitarian ceasefire for the benefit of the Palestinians living in Gaza.
Unfortunately, less than an hour and a half into ceasefire, either Hamas or
Islamic Jihad attacked an Israeli unit that was neutralizing an attack tunnel.
A suicide bomber emerged from a tunnel opening and managed to kill three
soldiers while his friends tried to collect body parts for future deals with Israel.
Once again, the Palestinians demonstrated that they preferred dead Jews over suffering
Palestinians and could not be trusted to honor any agreement that might be
reached.
When I heard the news of the ceasefire collapsing and the fears that a
soldier had been kidnapped, I have to admit that I immediately assumed that
this would only lead to a widening of the war. Like many, I thought that this
would strengthen the hand of those who have been calling for regime change in
Gaza. After all, even though the Western press has been full-throated in its
support of Hamas and directly complicit in the media war and deligitimization
campaign that is being waged against Israel, our actual neighbors have been
quietly encouraging Israel to use this opportunity to finish off Hamas once and
for all. Notice that, while there have
been large and vocal protests in the West, neither in Cairo nor in Amman has
there been a large show of support for Hamas.
This is because, at the end of the day, the past couple of years has
demonstrated that the real bugbear of the region is not Israel, but rather
political Islam. Indeed, last week alone, ISIS killed more people than Israel
has managed to kill in one month of fighting. Many of those who were killed
were rounded up and shot point blank, while many others were beheaded and had
their heads impaled on sticks. No one even knows how many people have died in
Libya, Somalia, or Nigeria due to Muslim radicals during the same time.
Yet, rather than escalate, the “uncompromising” and “rightist” Likud
party headed by Netanyahu played the grown up and announced that it would no
longer seek to reach an agreement with Hamas and would instead unilaterally
wind down its operations now that it had accomplished the stated goals of the
operation. Hamas, which is desperate for a victory and being strangled by the
Egyptian Army along its southern border, responded by lobbing over 100 missiles
into Israel today. At the same time, it
has reduced its list of ten demands down to only four. These include a demand
that they have complete and unfettered access to their borders for goods and
people, that the international community build them an airport and modern port,
and that fishermen can fish out to the 12 kilometer maritime boundary (instead
of the three kilometers they are allowed now.) While most of these demands are
non-starters, the one that Israel will probably accede to is increasing the
number of supplies that enters the Strip and allowing more people permission to
travel through Israel.
So why, you ask, the long face? For starters, 30 tunnels for 64 of
Israel’s best and bravest seems to me to be a steep price to pay. In addition,
this war has decimated entire sectors of the Israeli economy such as the
tourism industry, which was having a banner year until all of this
started. Now there are people cancelling
visits in November because they don’t feel comfortable traveling to a war zone.
Similarly, Hamas’s strict control over the media in the Gaza Strip and the
complicity of the Western press, which accepts these restrictions for access
and crows for the Palestinians in the pages of their papers, have succeeded in
giving Israel a black eye. Even worse, the moral equivalency and constant
incitement has fueled a resurgent anti-Semitism and placed hundreds of
thousands of Jews around the world in harm’s way.
Meanwhile, within Israel, relations between Israeli Arabs and Jews have
hit a low point as tensions rise and each side is more suspicious of the
other. Israeli Arabs cannot help but identify
with the suffering of their compatriots in Gaza while Israeli Jews feel
betrayed that their Arab neighbors have not spoken up in defense of the army in
what most here feel is a “War of Necessity.” At the same time, the far-right
has been shamelessly inciting to violence, while what is left of the Left has
once again missed an opportunity to serve as a bridge, opting instead for the
smug satisfaction of moral posturing.
Though the army has repeatedly gone on record to say that it has war
plans that would ensure the occupation of Gaza within ten days to two weeks, it
has been equally reluctant to do so. Both the army and the government feel that
it would involve a great number of casualties on both sides and would likely
involve a long period of occupation that would cost Israel dearly in financial
costs and in terms of world public opinion.
Personally, I think that there is another way. As the hardcore Hamas and
Islamic Jihad operatives make up, at most 10,000 people, if Israel were to go
in and either kill or round these people up, it would make a world of
difference. After that, the Strip could
either be given over to the Palestinian Authority or the United Nations. While
some pundits predict that this would only lead to Somalization, I fail to see
how it would be worse than what is there now.
By leaving like this, I fear that Israel is sending exactly the wrong
message to all the retrograde forces in the region. Since we have already
earned the opprobrium of the “high-minded” Westerners and have the tacit
support of our neighbors to root out this evil, to fail to do so at this time
seems like a truly wasted opportunity. That it is happening on Tisha B’Av, the
date on which both temples were destroyed, does not portend well for the
future. It seems that winter is coming.
