Boy oh boy, this is going from bad to worse today.
Now, I'm no expert on Middle East policy, so I'm not going to wade too deeply into this morass, but I have studied a bit of history in my day, and if there's any thing that we---and the Israelis---should have learned by now, it's that Shock & Awe Warfare® just doesn't work. The Soviets tried it in Afghanistan, we tried it in Vietnam, and we tried it again in Iraq. Heck, the Israelis tried it only two years ago, against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, and what happened? Each time, the reaction from the nebulous enemy camp was the exact opposite of what was intended---namely, the citizens under attack, besieged and panicked, tended not to cave to external pressures but were more inclined instead to rally 'round the flag of whatever governing authority seemed to be their most likely protector, whether it was the flag of the Vietcong or of the mujaheddin, and the militants were only strengthened in the long run; if not on the battlefield, then in the P.R. war that followed. Already today, we're seeing Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Taliban in Afghanistan using the Israeli incursion as a propaganda tool to inflame public sentiment, and there are already indications that support for Hamas has mushroomed in Gaza over the past three months as a result of the Israeli blockade, followed by bombings and now, invasion. Spencer Ackerman puts it forthrightly:
Israel may not want to hear this now, but it's playing on Hamas' strategic terms. Stepping back is the truer "success" at this point.
So why do it again? Certainly Israel is perfectly justified in the use of some kind of military force to secure its borders against rocket attacks from Gaza, but why do it in such a heavy-handed fashion that's only bound to enable the militants in the long run? Of course, there are elections coming up soon, so perhaps the Kadima coalition wants to preemptively defuse an election issue from Netanyahu's Likudniks, who look to be the likely winners: An attempt by Livni to "outhawk the hawks," in other words. But I also wonder if there aren't other factors at play. An Israeli re-occupation of Gaza would be a valuable position to leverage in any future peace negotiations should the incoming Obama administration prove to be somewhat less accommodating of Israel's regional policy initiatives than its predecessor. I realize it's more than a bit cynical to impugn such crass motives to policies that put the lives of thousands of people, including your own, in danger. But on the other hand, I think it's a bit naive to assume that political considerations---not to mention other external influences such as class resentments, religious or ethnic prejudice, and even plain old personal grudges---would play no role whatsoever in the making of decisions like this by any government. If you've read Nicholson Baker's Human Smoke, you'll get what I mean, at least conceptually.
Put another way: to exist in a state of war is not to exist rationally. So it should come as no surprise to discover that the people who decide to take their nations to war do so for the most irrational of reasons, even if they have managed to convince themselves---and, in our case, their media courtesans---that they have arrived at their conclusion using the most logical and rational lines of thought available to them.
Personally, I couldn't say for sure, but my guess is, if Obama was planning on launching a full-on Israel-Palestine peace offensive anytime soon, he can likely forget about it---at least for his first term. The sad truth is, there are still too many people on both sides of the Israel-Palestine issue who haven't grown weary of fighting each other, at least not yet. Both sides need to make major unilateral concessions in order for any genuine peace process to proceed---the Israelis over the settlements and free passage from the West Bank, the Palestinians over the right of return, and both camps over the status of Jerusalem---and until both sides are willing to get genuinely serious about resolving these issues, its hard to think of a reason for any American administration to wade into this mess right now. There are simply no deals to be brokered when both parties won't listen, much less talk, to each other.
One thing that an Obama administration can do, at least for the short term, is to try to restore America's image abroad as a more impartial arbiter of international events, unlike the Unitary Knucklehead---who's still playing to the neocons to the bitter end---by being somewhat more even-handed in its criticism of the combatants, their tactics and their motives. In this ugly swirling cauldron of ancient regional, political and religious antagonisms, there's frankly plenty of blame to go around.
---Vitelius
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