Socialist Outlook : SO/10 - Summer 2006

Israel cannot win this war

Roland Rance

Roland Rance argues that Israel’s war against Hezbollah in Lebanon has strategic aims far beyond that country. As the US invasion of Iraq was both about oil and broader geo-political issues, so this war is both about water, the break-up of Lebanon and the destabilisation of the region. However, it is a war that Israel cannot win.

Israel has attempted to justify its attack on Lebanon, like its earlier murderous assault in 1982, as a response to crossborder provocations by irregular forces based in southern Lebanon. But even journalists in the mainstream media no longer accept this argument, and recognise that now, as in 1982, these incidents merely provided the pretext for a long-planned operation with far-reaching aims.

Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University, told the San Francisco Chronicle that, ‘Of all of Israel’s wars since 1948, this was the one for which Israel was most prepared’, and that the planning had begun in May 2000, immediately after Hezbollah drove the Israeli army out of South Lebanon following its twenty-two year occupation. For several months, Israel has been conducting military exercises simulating the attack, and conducting a propaganda campaign designed to delegitimise Hezbollah.

There are several reasons for this war. Israel certainly wants to punish Hezbollah for the crime of defending Lebanon, and driving out the Israeli army. Beyond this, it aims to prevent Hezbollah from ever posing a credible military threat to Israel, and to weaken and humiliate Hezbollah’s sponsors, Syria and Iran.

The break-up of Lebanon?

Israel’s ambitions stretch far beyond its borders. For all its talk of establishing a strong and stable government in Beirut, what Israel actually seeks is the cantonisation of Lebanon, and beyond that of the entire Arab world. Shortly before the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, the World Zionist Organisation published a revealing article in its theoretical journal, Kivunim. Entitled ‘A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties’, it was written by a former Israel Foreign Office analyst, Oded Yinon., who noted,

Lebanon’s total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precedent for the entire Arab world including Egypt, Syria, Iraq and the Arabian peninsula and is already following that track. The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel’s primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short term target. Syria will fall apart, in accordance with its ethnic and religious structure, into several states such as in present day Lebanon, so that there will be a Shi’ite Alawi state along its coast, a Sunni state in the Aleppo area, another Sunni state in Damascus hostile to its northern neighbour, and the Druze who will set up a state, maybe even in our Golan, and certainly in the Hauran and in northern Jordan. This state of affairs will be the guarantee for peace and security in the area in the long run, and that aim is already within our reach today.

Some years later, the Israeli neo-conservative think tank the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies made a series of recommendations, clearly inspired by Yinon’s earlier work, to incoming Israeli PM, Benyamin Netanyahu. This document, ‘A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm’, also called for widespread Israeli intervention in the Arab world,

Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq — an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right — as a means of foiling Syria’s regional ambitions. . . Since Iraq’s future could affect the strategic balance in the Middle East profoundly, it would be understandable that Israel has an interest in supporting the Hashemites in their efforts to redefine Iraq.

Three of the authors of this pamphlet – Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser – later went on to hold senior positions in the Bush administration, and have provided much of the theoretical and ideological background to the so-called ‘War on Terror’.

These close links between Israeli and US neo-cons do not show, as some conspiracy theorists claim, that the ‘Israel lobby’ actually runs US foreign and defence policy, against the interests of the US. Rather, they show the extent to which the Israeli and US political establishments share a global outlook, and the way in which Israel presents itself as a mercenary in the interests of US imperialism.

Water

In addition to the overall desire to dismantle the existing Arab states, and thus make it easier for imperialism to dominate the people and exploit their resources, Israel has a particular interest in the resources of southern Lebanon, particularly the water. Israel already overexploits its own water, and that of the occupied West Bank and Golan Heights, and has long had its eyes on the rivers of Lebanon. Even before the start of the British mandate in Palestine, the Zionist delegation to the 1919 Paris Peace Conference insisted that any Jewish state in Palestine would need full control of both the river Jordan, and the Litani river in Lebanon, and their sources. However, French pressure to extend its own mandate in Lebanon led to the imposition of a border many miles south of the Zionist dream. The Litani, which feeds into the Mediterranean, was excluded from the British mandate, as were most of the Jordan headwaters.

But Israel has never relinquished its aspirations, and has viewed exploitation by Lebanon, Syria and Jordan of their own water resources as a cause for war. Ariel Sharon notes in his autobiography that,

People generally regard June 5 1967 as the day the Six Day war began. That is the official date. But, in reality, it started two-and-a-half years earlier, on the day Israel decided to act against the diversion of the Jordan. While the border disputes between Syria and ourselves were of great significance, the matter of water diversion was a stark issue of life and death.

In a situation where Palestinian families have no regular water supplies, and 80 percent of West Bank water is pumped to Israel to permit the continuation of an unsustainable cotton industry and massively wasteful water sprinklers, the search for new and guaranteed water supplies is essential to Israel’s lifestyle.

Following Israel’s evacuation of southern Lebanon, there were several attempts to reach an agreement over the sharing of Lebanon’s water; but these came to nothing, Last year, Israel’s leading daily Ha’Aretz reported that Sharon told the cabinet that,

Israel cannot agree to allow Lebanon to divert essential water sources . . . If the Lebanese proceed with plans to pump water from the Wazzani Springs (a source of the Hatzbani River that flows across the border into Israel), this would be the type of thing that Israel could not abide.

The Lebanese government nevertheless continued to develop plans to use its water, and opened a pumping station several months ago. Many analysts argue that, from this point, a war was inevitable regardless of Hezbollah actions or US intentions. And the Israeli intelligence website Debka now notes that, ‘the most important gain from the crisis is Israel’s recovery of control over its main sources of water, the Wazani springs’.

Israel held at bay by Hezbollah

But, even though this war was planned for years, and a pretext was actively sought for several months, it is not proceeding according to Israel’s plans. Despite Israel’s much-vaunted military prowess, it has been held at bay by Hezbollah for five weeks now, and there is no sign of progress. Having started by adamantly opposing any international force in the region, Israel is now begging for foreign armies to come to its aid in smashing Hezbollah. Having seen Israel’s failure, however, most states are reluctant to assist.

Israel now claims to have killed 400 of an alleged 1200 Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah disputes these figures; but it is a remarkable admission by Israel, which apparently accepts that a few hundred armed irregulars have successfully resisted the world’s fourth most powerful army, and inflicted major casualties. Every day, Israel claims to have weakened Hezbollah’s ability to fire rockets into Israel – and every day, Hezbollah responds with an even greater barrage. So far, about forty Israeli civilians have been killed in such attacks. This is only a fraction of the far greater suffering that Israel has caused in Lebanon, but still unprecedentedly high for Israel. A large proportion of the casualties are Palestinian citizens of Israel. This reflects both geographic distribution – Palestinians are still a majority in parts of northern Israel – and poverty – Palestinian communities and homes tend not to have shelters, and are less strongly built than the homes of Israeli Jews.

Hezbollah has already smashed the myth of Israeli military invulnerability, while Israel itself has managed to destroy its important propaganda argument that a military defeat would mean the end of the Jewish state, and a second holocaust. Meanwhile, Israel has achieved the remarkable feat of uniting all the communities and factions in Lebanon in opposition to the attack, and of further strengthening Hezbollah’s reputation. This is a war that Israel cannot win, and in which its proclaimed aim changes from day to day.

This lack of a clear military victory is causing political ructions within the Israeli establishment. The military commander of the northern front has been replaced. It has been suggested that, as a tank officer, he was less suited to this war than his infantry replacement; but he was sacked a few days after complaining that his hands were being tied by the civilian politicians. Many in Israel’s military establishment, accustomed to running the country, are complaining that, for the first time in decades, neither the prime minister nor the defence minister is a retired general; in response, Olmert and Peretz are striving to prove that they can be as aggressive as any general.

Israeli military analysts are reportedly pushing for the war to be expanded, to include an attack on Iran. According to the rightwing Israel Insider website,

Iran’s military capabilities are no match for Israel’s. Bottom line, all Iran could do is to launch missiles at and hit Israel’s cities, and try and carry out terror attacks. If there is one thing history has shown, it is that such methods do not win wars. Israel would undoubtedly suffer both civilian casualties and economic damage, but these would not be that much more than what we are already experiencing. . . The end result would be some additional economic damage, and probably around 500 civilian casualties. It may sound cold blooded, but Israel can afford such casualties.

Such an attack would be likely to lead to a global war, with incalculable results, but this apparently does not deter Israeli strategists. As far as they are concerned, the failure so far is not the result of military incompetence, but of political weakness and even betrayal.

The failure of this war has thoroughly discredited the current political leadership, and Israel Insider goes on to quote military sources as reporting that,

Israel finds itself getting bogged down by a manifestly inferior enemy, due to the limitations placed on the IDF by the political leadership...Some senior officers have been mentioning the C-word in private conversations. They have been saying that a coup d’etat might be the only way to prevent an outcome in Lebanon that could embolden the Arab world.

A military seizure of power in Israel would not be a traditional coup, but rather the imposition of a military leader as a ‘civilian’ PM. This would not be totally without precedent in Israel; Ha’Aretz reported in 2004 that, on the eve of the 1967 war, Sharon proposed that the army lock up the cabinet and start fighting without their approval; his friend, Chief of Staff Rabin, apparently was willing to go along with this, and the subsequent military pressure on the government forced the appointment of Dayan as Defence Minister days before the war. For the rest of his life, Prime Minister Eshkol referred to this as an officers’ coup.

Where is Peace Now?

Despite the war crimes being committed by Israel in Lebanon, and despite (or perhaps even because of) the huge international condemnation, the Israeli ‘peace-camp’ has been very slow to oppose the war. Although radical activists, from the Communist Party leftwards, have been on the streets protesting from the start, they have not been joined by the tens and hundreds of thousands which Peace Now can mobilise. Indeed, many selfproclaimed ‘peaceniks’ have supported the war. Author Amos Oz told the Los Angeles Times, ‘The Israeli peace movement should support Israel’s attempt at self-defense, pure and simple’; his colleague AB Yehoshua said to Ha’Aretz, ‘At last we’ve got a just war, so we shouldn’t gnaw at it too much till it becomes unjust’. Together with other Israeli liberals, these authors are now calling for a ceasefire on the grounds that, ‘the feasible and reasonable goals of the military action have been already achieved’. There is little chance of building a mass-movement against the war on this basis.

Gaza Strip

While the focus of world attention has been on Lebanon, Israel has meanwhile intensified its attack on Palestinians in the occupied territories. The whole of the Gaza Strip has been under siege since the war started, and the UN estimates that, in July alone, 175 Palestinians were killed in Gaza and 620 injured - a huge toll, even by Israel’s bloody standards.

Meanwhile, the British government has distinguished itself by its whole-hearted support of Israel’s war aims (whatever they are). Blair’s opposition to a ceasefire until Israel agrees has contributed directly to the deaths of hundreds of Lebanese civilians. And the government has permitted the use of British airports by US planes carrying military supplies to Israel. These include the uranium-tipped ‘bunker busters’ – tactical nuclear weapons intended to be used in built-up areas, which would cause massive loss of life.

Israel’s military and political leadership is guilty of war crimes in Lebanon. So too are Blair and his cabinet, who have supported and assisted these atrocities.

UN Resolution

At the time of writing the UN has finally adopted a ceasefire resolution, although this appears to give most of what Israel wants. It calls on Hezbollah to stop all attacks, but on Israel to stop all ‘offensive’ action. Since Israel insists that all of its actions have been defensive, this is a meaningless demand. It calls for the release of Israeli soldiers, but not the kidnapped and abducted Lebanese in Israel. It does not call for immediate Israeli withdrawal, but permits them to remain until ‘the end of hostilities’. This seems to mean that if Hezbollah attacks Israeli forces, they are permitted to remain; and since Hezbollah will, of course, continue to attack for as long as Israel remains, the whole resolution appears worthless

Roland Rance has been a socialist activist in Israeli, Palestinian and British politics for many years.

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