29 Comments

1. Gordon:

If the Israelis agree to ‘monitors’ to police the border they will have wasted all their effort. A bunch of Nigerians in blue helmets will not do a thing.

Jan 7, 2009 - 4:01 pm 2. Robohobo:

Any person in a blue helmet will not do a thing.

How does a UN school get outfitted as a rocket manufacturing facility and booby trapped without the complicity of the same people? Ans: It doesn’t. Hamas and the UN are complicit in the deaths at that school.

The final upshot is that Israel lost again. Anything less than total victory by the IDF is perceived as victory for Hamas and by proxy, Iran. (And I am using Ralph Peters definition of victory – when the guy you are fighting asks for you to stop, then you have won.) What that means is that victory over Hamas is impossible, they will not quit outside of the grave. So victory must be redefined per necessity as death for them – annihilation.

Jan 7, 2009 - 4:21 pm 3. programmer:

It is easy to say what Israel should do,…for us, anyway. But Die Endlösung (for those who don’t speak German – Final Solution) is familiar to the Jews and reeks of evil. When you are through butchering the enemy and quiet descends on the battlefield, and the red haze of rage and battle lust fades away, how do you reconcile your self image of the white knight you thought you were with the blood spattered, exhausted beast you have become. You look around and all you can see is dead and dying men, women, and children. Who was the enemy and who was “collateral damage”? What is left of your young friends, the future of Israel, their bodies intermixed with the piles of the “others”.

So, perhaps Israel will keep trying, maybe settling for battered, rusty armor, but still knights, still human, risking their very existence to preserve their soul. Hell, none of this makes sense. Between surrender, and certain death, and Die Endlösung, there has to be other solutions,…doesn’t there?

Jan 7, 2009 - 4:22 pm 4. newtland:

Other solutions? Short of a real loud noise coming from the East, maybe a strike at the current instigator (aka, Iran) would cause the Orcs of Islam (aka, Hamas) to wither and die and leave Israel alone for awhile.

Someone’s going to have to do it. And soon. Or Israel is going away.

Jan 7, 2009 - 4:52 pm 5. wretchard:

I think there’s really only one way forward for Israel. That is to create the strategic conditions for victory. In an earlier post that Israel must really win the internal security battle within the Palestinian nation. All the real “partners for peace” have either been beaten down or driven out by terrorists. Until the internal security battle is won, no civic society will ever emerge in Gaza. And the basic reason that Israel can’t win the internal security battle is that it has been denied the time and opportunity to partner with Arabs of constructive disposition by the political consensus in the Arab world and in Europe.

Those political forces won’t let Israel win. And cynically, they will achieve this by preventing the emergence of a real 2 state solution. As long as they can keep Gaza festering, they can use them as a propaganda tool to deligitimize Israel and ultimately destroy it. The real goal of the “Peace Process” is to keep the war going.

The problem of Israeli survival is bound up with the struggle in the West. If Israel dies even those with no love for it should understand that outcome as sign that really malevolent forces both in Europe and America have acquired a dangerous, and perhaps a fatal ascendancy.

Jan 7, 2009 - 5:08 pm 6. Utopia Parkway:

I’m not so sure Israel will accept the French cease-fire proposal and it’s hard to imagine Hamas doing so either. Also, Israel seems prepared to continue its assault. Without some kind of “resistance” achievement Hamas is very unlikely to quit fighting.

The foreign monitors are supposed to include American Military engineers to be stationed in Egypt and help find tunnels. For their part Hamas has said they would shoot at any international observers in Gaza.

This operation will not bring complete victory but one should remember that since operation defensive shield in the West Bank Fatah has given up on the armed struggle. Iran is probably the difference between Hamas and Fatah but the WB has been pretty quiet since then.

I’ve seen a couple opinion pieces in the past few days bringing up again the Jordan option or the Jordan/Egypt option. I can imagine the WB and Jordan being joined in a confederation. It’s harder to imagine Egypt agreeing to take back Gaza.

Other, more drastic solutions, seem very unlikely because of Israel’s nature and the nature of the intl community.

Jan 7, 2009 - 5:42 pm 7. programmer:

Wretchard explains:

Until the internal security battle is won, no civic society will ever emerge in Gaza. And the basic reason that Israel can’t win the internal security battle is that it has been denied the time and opportunity to partner with Arabs of constructive disposition by the political consensus in the Arab world and in Europe.

programmer recognizes a pattern:

Endless_loop: Goto Loop_Endless.
Loop_Endless: Goto Endless_loop.

I suppose this is the place where I should make some sort of pithy statement that shows my worldly understanding of geo-politics and global strategy, but I’m just a programmer, I’m going to go get a cup of tea.

Jan 7, 2009 - 5:55 pm 8. RWE:

I just love that the term they are using, “permanent ceasefire.” It means so much. It is never permanent and rarely actually involves a real cessation of gunfire. This is from the same people in Northern Virginia who, when one kids’ soccer team gets too far ahead in points, they make them stop playing until the other team can catch up.

The concept known as “fairness” is much beloved in this age and has served us very poorly. Kids learn that when things get tough someone will step in and make it “fair.” The future President even thinks this should apply to economics, and no doubt God knows what else – including the Internet.

Jan 7, 2009 - 6:41 pm 9. Alex:

The problem, Wretchard, is that if there is a ceasefire now, Hamas and the Islamic/liberal left will claim victory, and they will be correct. With little more than propaganda and political pressure, they will have forced a first-class army to withdraw from the battlefield leaving them in control of all they had before.

Up to this point, they have lost nothing of importance. Ordanance can be easily replaced from their allies in Iran (they will not have to pay for it, even) and the UN will gladly rebuild all the buildings the IAF destroyed, again for free. Personnel losses are insignificant and easily replaced. What, after all, does it matter if a few gunmen are no longer with us when you have a population of over 1.5 million to replace them with?

No, if Israel wants to survive she must restore her deterrent strength. If she wants to lift the threat of rocket attack from over a million of her citizens (1 in 7 of her total population, there is one and only one way to do – destroy the Palestinian ability and above all, the Palestinian WILLINGNESS to make war. And so far, the only proven way to do that is by Russia-in-Grozny style tactics.

Bottom line: Israel for her own survival must learn to be more ruthless than her enemies. Or, she will not survive. S

Jan 7, 2009 - 7:19 pm 10. NahnCee:

I simply do not understand why Israel would accept any sort of a ceasefire, other than the fact that seems to be the only thing Olmert is really good at.

What, exactly, would happen if Israel said “no way, jose” and kept right on killing Hamas terrorists, blowing up UN schools for rockets and bombing smuggling tunnels?

What would France do? What would Egypt do? Nothing.

What would Iran do? What *could* Iran do, any more than it’s already doing? Ditto Saudi Arabia and Syria.

What would AMerica do? Bush and Rice might tut a tut, and do nothing. Obama will vote “present” and do nothing.

If Israel agrees to a ceasefire now, I give up on them. They’re more than welcome to immigrate to the United States and become Americans, but they don’t deserve the separate designation “Israeli” any more if they allow Olmert to do this … again.

Jan 7, 2009 - 7:20 pm 11. wretchard:

Alex,

The point I so poorly tried to make in #5 is that a West which creates the “propaganda and political pressure” restraints that will fatally bind Israel must inevitably find the same happening to itself. We can take no comfort in physical strength or technological superiority. It’s not ruthlessness we lack. It’s sanity.

Jan 7, 2009 - 7:25 pm 12. ADE:

W
<i.And the basic reason that Israel can’t win the internal security battle is that it has been denied the time and opportunity to partner with Arabs of constructive disposition by the political consensus in the Arab world and in Europe.

My opinion is that Israel went into this war with their eyes wide open, and that a cessation of rocket fire and border monitoring will be acceptable to them, as long as it is enforced BY SOMEBODY ELSE. The enforcement may be patchy, but that is a price probably worth paying.

The SOMEBODY ELSE will be the UN, Europe, the Arab world, and these SOMEBODIES know it. That is why Gordon Brown and Sarkozy et all called for an “immediate ceasefire”, because they don’t want to have to provide the policing infrastructure going forward, and they are trying it on now. Thanksfully, Israel saw through that little ruse and is essentially saying “put your money where your mouth is”.

When others are paying to allw Israelis to go about their daily business without fear , Israel will have won, and at little cost.

And isn’t foreign peacekeepers keeping two sides apart the Middle Eastern way?

ADE

Jan 7, 2009 - 7:40 pm 13. anon:

Post # 12 from ADE:

Is correct. Israel WON the 2006 Hezbollah because even though Hezbollah rearmed, it
is too cowardly to make even a SYMBOLIC
terror attack against Northern Israel.

That is a true example of DETERRENCE.

As ADE posits, if the rockets stop and
Sderot et. al. can lead a normal life,
Israel will similarly have won this round.

Jan 7, 2009 - 7:47 pm 14. Brock:

Israel does have an easy “ceasefire” solution. Stop shooting for one day, and then provide than each missile sent from Gaza will be returned twenty-fold (but no more) without question or great care for who’s standing where the Gazan missile was fired from. And no more of this “precision warfare” business. We all know that Israel can keep a ceasefire, so the success of the ceasefire will be 100% with Hamas.

Jan 7, 2009 - 7:58 pm 15. Alexis:

For future reference, video cameras ought to be standard gear for Israeli troops fighting in urban areas. Why? Combat cameras may be able to show that mortars are being fired from a school that doubles as an air raid shelter.

It is one thing to assert. It is another to show. When Hamas resorts to dirty tricks, it is important to catch them red-handed.

Jan 7, 2009 - 8:05 pm 16. Alex:

Wretchard, I am afraid your post #11 hit the nail on the head. The West to a large extent does seem to lack sanity, or even an instinct for survival. This may change now that the Democrats are in charge, if that is, all their oppostion and efforts to undermine the Bush administrations various counter-terror efforts were merely political posturing, words to soothe the “useful idiots” who vote for them.

If however, the Democrats do mean what they say, then there will be a drastic, perhaps fatal, weakening of American and Western resolve – until nuclear Islamic terrorism forces them to choose between surrender and total war. Unfortunately, I belive that given such a choice, they will choose submission.

Jan 7, 2009 - 8:21 pm 17. Robert:

Alex said:

If however, the Democrats do mean what they say, then there will be a drastic, perhaps fatal, weakening of American and Western resolve – until nuclear Islamic terrorism forces them to choose between surrender and total war. Unfortunately, I belive that given such a choice, they will choose submission.

They will choose submission and they will have civil war.

Jan 7, 2009 - 9:03 pm 18. ag:

Re.: “They will choose submission and they will have civil war.” No, they will choose submission and (unfortunately) WE will have civil war.

Jan 7, 2009 - 11:06 pm 19. Jonathan Levy:

Anon 13 has it right.
Hizbollah has been quiet in the north. In 2006, it started the second Lebanon war to support Hamas in Gaza. The situation today for Hamas is much worse, but Hizbollah remains quiet. This is the only fruit of the 2006 war.

It is also the only achievement within reach in this war. Whenever we withdraw, everyone knows that Hamas will claim victory, and will fire a few more rockets to prove it. Hizbollah also fired more than a hundred rockets on the last day in 2006. It doesn’t change the fact that they are now being deterred.

The success of this war will be measured as follows: A month after it ends, is Hamas still dribbling rockets into Israel or not? If Israel arrests or kills a Hamas agent in the west bank, will they fire a salvo? Other issues are secondary (so-called inspections on the Egyptian border, opening of the Kerem-Shalom crossing). The rest (rhetoric, rockets fired on the last day, etc) doesn’t matter.

As for those who want to topple Hamas’ control of Gaza, I think this is beyond our reach. Hamas is too strong, and has the support of the people, who will not submit to Israeli rule. Fatah is too weak and disorganized, and will be despised for coming back to Gaza riding on Israeli tanks.

Jan 8, 2009 - 12:22 am 20. DougS:

Robert Kaplan is describing Cast Lead as a blow against Iran and its empire of influence. Seen in that light, what Israel done and is doing makes more sense to me. Its a probing attack, to see how Iran (the ultimate threat and target) will react. Iran has done nothing except mumble in protest, and with an economy that requires oil to be twice as expensive as it is now, their ability to resupply Hamas may be less than their ability to resupply Hezbollah in ‘06.

Olmert’s government may therefore have determined to their satisfaction that Iran is weak, and that it’s time to figure out what to do next. If they completely eliminate Hamas, who will step in to manage the mess that Gaza is and will be for the forseeable future? It’s doubtful whether Fatah can do much more than exact revenge on whatever Hamas gunsels are left. Israel sure doesn’t want clean-up duties, and neither does Egypt.

And I wonder if the ‘what to do next’ will be a strike against the Iranian nuke plants, Iran apparently being weak, Hamas silenced at least for the near term, and Hezbollah apparently weak as well, as anon[13] says?

Jan 8, 2009 - 12:51 am 21. Fletcher Christian:

In late news (approx. 7AM GMT this morning) TV news reports that Hezbollah has started firing rockets again.

Sooner or later, Israel is going to have to clean up both cesspools – and evict the rats in the process. Sooner or later it will (and it won’t be pretty) or there won’t be an Israel, and the savages will have won.

Jan 8, 2009 - 1:14 am 22. ledger:

“…the basic reason that Israel can’t win the internal security battle is that it has been denied the time and opportunity to partner with Arabs of constructive disposition by the political consensus in the Arab world and in Europe. Those political forces won’t let Israel win. And cynically, they will achieve this by preventing the emergence of a real 2 state solution. As long as they can keep Gaza festering, they can use them as a propaganda tool to deligitimize Israel and ultimately destroy it. The real goal of the “Peace Process” is to keep the war going.” –Wretchard

That is a fair assessment. Basically, it is a con-game being run on Israel.

The con-game is to divert attention from the gross misdeeds of certain Arab nations and entangle Israel and at every opportunity. Israel is a small usefully diversion in a huge Arab ghetto.

Hamas is controlled by Iran and other powerful players. They have every type of taqiyya to attract attention has been push on us. Just as a child proudly displays his injuries (and it has been quite lucrative for Hamas).

Israel and the West must understand they have been played as fool. This must end. Further, facilitators of this confidence game must stopped and the money they have stolen must be returned (looking directly at Iran and Syria).

In Wretchard superseding post about the huge monetary short fall in the US budget one can blame a good portion of it on payments to Hamas controlled perpetrators, ”friendly Arab” nations and the UN who only need a few $100 billion more to put a stop to the “unrest.” The money will go into pockets of con-artists and warlords.

Jan 8, 2009 - 2:03 am 23. Lifeofthemind:

First principle that Israel should insist on is that they owe Gaza nothing, nada, zip.
Spain did not have to open the border with Gibraltar. The Arabs do not have to reopen the TAP pipeline to Haifa. Israel does not have to provide jobs or trade to the Philistines. If the inhabitants of Gaza can use their location to build an economy then they could have a thriving lawful trade with Egypt, Cyprus, Syria and Europe. The prosperity of Israel was not extracted from the Arabs it was built by Israeli labor.

Even if an argument could have been made that the Jewish migration to the region and the establishment of the State of Israel were unjustified or unwise, arguments that I do not believe in myself, the murderous and deceitful misconduct of the enemies of Israel over the last 60 years have invalidated any claims they ever had. The Arabs are in the moral position of the Germans whose tears for the lost communities that had thrived in Eastern Europe for a thousand years fall on deaf ears. If a historian uncovered startling evidence that in 1939 the Polish government was planning to abuse the civil rights of the ethnic Germans in the Polish Corridor it would give Germany no claim on the last city of Danzig. Their claims were washed away in blood, so to with the people of Arafat.

Jan 8, 2009 - 2:15 am 24. sf:

While I understand the “keep shooting until they give up” sentiments, I think this course is most unlikely to produce a lasting peace.

Reason is that Israel can’t realistically kill *all* male residents of Gaza (and of course does not want to), so at some point, when the Israeli troops eventually withdraw, what are the chances that no young man who has lost a parent or sibling will get it into his head to lob another homemade rocket? You all know the probability is 1.0.

In that event, all the current carnage has accomplished what, exactly? Okay, it’s shown the Gazans that there’s a huge cost to lobbing rockets at Israel. This is certainly something Hamas and company needed to learn. But is there not a more effective, less costly way to make that point?

One of the comments above proposed that in the future, for every rocket fired at Israel, the Israelis should return twenty. But that is overkill. I suspect that all Israel needs to do is return one-for-one, provided it announces this policy publicly. Moreover, Israel can afford to broadcast a warning to all Gaza residents of exactly when and where (within a one-mile square) their counterfire will land. After all, the purpose of shooting back isn’t to kill people, it’s to *deter them*.

Obviously killing someone is the ultimate deterrence to *them*, but unless there’s only one violent actor on the other side, does anyone believe killing one Gazan will deter the *others*? If you believe that, then by what mechanism? Fear of death? Haven’t we heard somewhere that a huge fraction of Muslims are convinced that dying for the cause is the ultimate positive outcome?

So if the current invasion is virtually certain to change *nothing* in the long term, what’s my suggestion instead? As mentioned above, go to a shell-for-shell response. I know this sounds like capitulation, but it’s clearly not that. Instead it would directly link cause-and-effect for Gazans. You don’t shoot, we won’t shoot, and vice-versa.

If bringing in the tanks and killing a thousand or so would make Hamas stop firing rockets at Israeli towns, one could plausibly argue that invading would be worthwhile. But it won’t stop the rockets. Worse yet, the death of even a few innocents can’t help but swell the ranks of young men eager to fight back at any cost.

Let me say that I don’t blame Israel for saying, in effect, enough is enough. I’m simply trying to show that sometimes the reflexive response doesn’t do what you might expect, and that effective solutions are sometimes counterintuitive.

What’s that old saying about doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome?

Jan 8, 2009 - 3:01 am 25. Lifeofthemind:

@sf,
You expended 457 words and said almost nothing that was true. The comment is of small use as an example of left wing boilerplate. My biggest surprise is that you refrained from saying “violence never solved anything” and “you can not hug a child with nuclear arms.” The policy of excruciatingly measured and proportionate response, which was not as currently interpreted by reporters and rapporteurs intended by the Geneva Conventions as a phrase meant to permit the embedding of combatants in civilian structures, are part of the “Peace Process” that is the antithesis of peace. Continuing with that policy would meet the clinical definition of insanity.

Jan 8, 2009 - 4:54 am 26. Jay:

Wretchard is correct. The “peace industry” is part of the global economy elite dream. The US is broke and we let the left and the rabid pro Arabs stage near violent protests where they scream “kill the Jews” while most Jews vote for politicians who support the “kill the Jews” policy.

Jan 8, 2009 - 8:46 am 27. barry:

Thus when the Israeli’s finally worn down and shot up after one too many ceasefires are invaded by all the forces arrayed against them and call out, “ceasefire, ceasefire” then the reply from the Euros and the UN will be death to Israel, and please die quietly.

Jan 8, 2009 - 9:15 am 28. jonathan:

for sf;

I hear you, but I would like to offer what I think is a more accurate view…

1) Propaganda from extremists would have you believe that a large fraction of every day muslims are eager to die for the cause. The events of the last ten years though have proven that this is false. Only a very *small* number of believers are willing to be a martyr (suicide bomber or fighter). However a very *large* number of believers are happy to support the willing-to-be-martyrs in exchange for avoiding death themselves. The palestinian tribes seem to have a higher number of willing martyrs than anyone else but it is still a relatively small number. So the use of deterrence is possible. Yes, some new recruits will result from accidents (collateral damage) but not as many as are eliminated by direct action (kinetic ops)…especially since the Israelis have become very good at avoiding accidental kills.

2) You seem not to understand the military use of the term “deterrence”. Deterrence is the use of a threat to convince a party to modify their future behavior. For something to be a deterrent it must cause the counterparty to choose to modify their own behavior. Your example (killing a person deters them) is not correct since the person killed has not chosen to modify their future behavior. Deterrence is a precise variation of the broader term “coercion”.

3) Deterrence is not aimed at the committed. The fighters/martyrs generally have to either be ordered to stop (by their own authorities) or killed (by counterterrorist forces; pick your flavor).

4) Deterrence is aimed at the uncommitted: the supporting population (who may be believers) who do not wish to die. The largest deterrence is threat of death but threat of privation can also have a large effect.

5) Deterrence relies on a willingness to actually deliver the threatened force…i.e. there has to be a real threat.

Analysis:
Threat of privation in Gaza would probably be ineffective given that they seem to be willing to put up with quite a bit due to their own efforts let alone external pressures.
Your proposal to warn people in advance of returning fire is not an example of deterrence but of waste…there would be no real threat (due to the warning) and thus no reason for people to modify behavior.
How much retaliatory fire to return 1:1, 1:20, 1:whatever would have to be determined by the Israelis based on observation. Returning one rocket would likely have little impact on behavior since it would represent little real threat (no worse than the odds of being struck by lightning maybe). The right number would likely be something where the perceived threat of counterfire was higher than the perceived threat from the local gangs. Unfortunately in Gaza that would probably take an extreme amount due to the following paragraph…
What makes (IMHO) the West Bank/Gaza problem intractable is that the terror groups are not significantly supported by the population. They are supported emotionally and by direct action of course but the real sources of money, medical care, food, weapons, etc are all outside of the territories. That makes it very difficult for the population to effectively withdraw support. The terror groups get their key supplies from elsewhere so they could continue to coerce/kill/etc internally for an extended period thereby breaking the will of the population and retaining control. It also means that the fighting groups do not actually need local support as much as they need local neutrality. As a palestinian you are basically screwed.
What outside groups maintain this hellhole for the palestinian people? Mainly the EU, with some help from the surrounding Arab nations and Iran.

I doubt the situation can be resolved without classic counterinsurgency tactics. That means that basic society must be supported directly (security, food, medical, etc) by someone so that the population is *able* to effectively withdraw support. Security is the most important (whether they would like to or not the population currently is not *able* to withdraw support from the terror groups). At the same time kinetic action against the terror groups would have to continue and the action (kinetic or other) would have to be carried against their external supporters to coerce them into cutting off that support.

Israel knows this but is unwilling to be that “someone” so they instead try to fight a war of attrition with the actual fighters themselves. This is ultimately at best a stalemate but it appears the Israelis feel the stalemate is less expensive than a full-on counterinsurgency would be.

We (America) learned this in Vietnam negatively (where we failed to either support the population or carry effective action against the supporters), in Iraq negatively (where we started to duplicate the mistakes of Vietnam), and now in Iraq positively (once we switched to securing the population and carried effective action to Iran and Syria…some kinetic some diplomatic).

This would be a good time to solve the problem. The EU is in financial crisis…worse than in America…so they could probably be persuaded to cut support funds to a trickle. Israel could finish their assault with an occupation that provides security to the population while continuing kinetic action on the terror groups. America could carry financial and diplomatic action to the terror group supporters (and probably also kinetic in the case of Iran for a two-fer as it would also help Iraq). The sand in the gears with this scenario is that Israel’s history is so long in Gaza that America would probably have to take over security duties from Israel fairly rapidly after a complete occupation. Even better would be to try this in five years using Iraqi forces with American oversight to run security long enough to exterminate the terror groups. Iraqis would be more easily able to establish a rapport with the people.

Longer than I intended…my $2 instead of $0.02. Sorry.

Jan 8, 2009 - 10:04 am 29. RWE:

Here is an idea:

If “someone else” is supposed to enforce a cease fire in Gaza then it should be made in their best interests to do so, rather than them making an empty feel-good gesture.

So the “someone else” should have bombs embedded in their capital city, and every time a rocket from Gaza hits Israel, the Israelis can push a button and set off one of the bombs in the Someone Else city.

As I observed some time back, our military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan have no shortage of Audie Murpheys, Alvin Yorks, Dick Bongs, and Butch O’Hares, but the same is not true of the political leadership. And as Wretchard observed in response, that is because the political leadership does not suffer the consequences of their actions but the military does.

And put a few bombs in U.N. HQ, too.

Jan 8, 2009 - 10:54 am

Sorry, comments for this entry are closed at this time.