Failure in Lebanon
by Peter Ryan
In it's recent assault on Lebanon, Israel destroyed much and achieved little. If the United States and Israel learn no lessons from this experience, we are both destined to repeat our mistakes.
The "end of hostilities" in the fight between Israel and Hezbollah have left both sides scrambling to claim "victory" in the aftermath, leading comedian Jon Stewart of the Daily Show to joke that the conflict has apparently been a "win-win" proposition.
Though much of Hezbollah's long range missile capacity was taken out by air strikes, the conflict earned them a sizable popularity boost among Lebanese, who saw them as their only defense against Israel's campaign, the victims of which were overwhelmingly civilians rather than Hezbollah fighters. And, despite Israel's assault (and to the surprise of many), Hezbollah managed to continue to strike Israeli targets throughout the month-long campaign. Israel's military actions failed, even momentarily, to protect Israeli civilians from attack. According to Aluf Benn, writing for Salon.com, "Israelis were astonished by Hezbollah's seemingly intact ability to hit northern Israel with a daily barrage of 100-200 rockets, holding about a million people in shelters, regardless of what the Israel Defense Force was doing to the Lebanese."
When Hezbollah successfully captured several Israeli soldiers-an act which they had publicly announced as one of their objectives-they had already scored a strategic objective in identifying one of Israel's potential weaknesses. This, of course, put Olmert's government in a very awkward position in which there were no "good" options. Israel could have done nothing, it could have bartered for the soldiers' release by offering to release some Hezbollah prisoners in exchange, they could have responded with a limited and symbolic strike against a few targets or they could have, as they did, launch a full-scale campaign. Their attack against Lebanon, of course, was not primarily about freeing the captured soldiers-there was never much hope for that-it was, instead, about decimating Hezbollah. And, by that measure, the assault unquestionably failed.
In the midst of all of this, the U.S. decided not to call for a ceasefire. Instead it called for a "sustainable ceasefire," which was basically a nice way of saying "as soon as the enemy (Hezbollah) is decimated, the fighting should stop." This Orwellian language is on par with other clever slogans like "peace through victory" or the title of one of Israel's other military campaign in Lebanon, which had been code-named "peace in the Galilee." Anytime one of our leaders launches a war and calls it peace, we should obviously be skeptical. The fact is: the U.S. wanted this war as much as Israel did. There were even some reports that the office of Vice President Dick Cheney has hopes of pushing Israel to attack Syria, creating a region-wide conflict.
In light of the failure of Israel's campaign to achieve any lasting objectives, both Israel and the U.S. will hopefully learn some valuable lessons from this experience. If we don't, we are doomed to forever repeat the same mistakes. Below is a summary of the lessons I hope that the U.S. and Israel might take to heart:
Lesson #1 Civilian Victims Will Blame their Attackers First and Foremost
This should have been obvious, right? Apparently, we needed a basic refresher course on human psychology. "If you kill a member of someone's family or blow up their home, they will be mad at you" would be a good rule-of-thumb. It's not just one of those quirky things that happens in Arab countries-it's pretty much true anywhere.
The U.S. and Israel seemed to place their hopes in the absurd idea that, when Israel bombed the homes and businesses of the Lebanese, the people of Lebanon would not blame them but would instead blame Hezbollah. Clearly this was not the case (which is not to say there aren't a number of Lebanese angered by Hezbollah's actions). Israel dropped leaflets on Lebanon's cities blaming Hezbollah for the violence (as well as Syria and Iran). In reality, most Lebanese blamed Israel and America for very obvious, and very understandable, reasons. The bombs were American-made and Israel, not Hezbollah, was the entity using them to kill Lebanese civilians. The most central component of any strategy to "win hearts and minds" should be to avoid civilian casualties at any cost. An ongoing air campaign is a very, very poor way to do that (see below).
It should have been obvious to Israel and the U.S. from the beginning that a large number of civilians casualties would have, in the court of Lebanese public opinion, caused their own popularity to go down and Hezbollah's popularity to go up.
Lesson #2 Terror from the Air is Neither Moral nor Pragmatic
We hear a lot about "precision bombing" these days from governments like the United States and Israel. But precision bombing, particularly when used against terrorists or insurgents who hide among civilian populations, is a myth. Assaults from the air maximize civilians casualties when compared with most ground campaigns, as the recent assault on Lebanon so vividly demonstrated. 1,002 Lebanese civilians were killed, 30 percent of them children under 12. 3,580 civilians were wounded. Hezbollah, on the other hand, has announced the death of only 58 fighters. This may or may not be an accurate estimate (others claim the number is as high as 500) but the vast majority of casualties were clearly civilian. Killing 1,000 civilians in order to kill 60 fighters, for those of you who can't do the math on your own, is not a very good trade-off. And it reeks of state-sponsored terrorism.
There is reason to believe that Israel's commanders, fearing a protracted ground offensive, overestimated what an air assault might achieve militarily. According to a report from Anthony H. Cordsman, from the Center for Strategic and International Studies: "A number of Israeli experts criticized the chief of staff of the IDF, the head of intelligence, and head of the air force for being too narrowly air-oriented and for presenting unrealistic estimates of what air power can accomplish."
Lesson #3: The Occupation is Hurting Israel's Ability to Fight Other Threats
For a couple of decades now, the primary purpose and focus of Israel's military has been implementation of the occupation in the Palestinian Territories. Just the U.S. occupation of Iraq has proved to be a distraction against the fight against terrorism in other areas, in particular the pursuit of Osama Bin Laden, Israel's occupation of the Palestinian Territories and its continued expansion of illegal settlements, have distracted its attention away from other, larger, existential threats. Worse, it has eroded Israel's moral authority and given cause and justification to its enemies.
The Israeli author David Grossman, a peace advocate whose son was recently killed while serving with the IDF in Lebanon, makes this clear in his article "Mistaken Path" from ynetnews.com. "For nearly 40 years," Mr. Grossman explains, "Israel's development as a nation, a society and as a country has been displaced to a barren, mistaken path that has led Israel to a dead end. A large part of Israel's internal discourse has been conducted around the question of occupation, or at least with some link to it. Other meaningful debates, and dealing seriously with Israel's real problems and with the truly threatening dangers that lie ahead have been pushed aside."
He continues: "I am concerned: What will we do the day we really have to fight, when we face a greater, more complex threat than anything we have previously known, but the army is unprepared because it has spent decades policing the occupation?
"The IDF has been occupied all these years with clashing with Palestinian civilians and settlers alike. All these years, all our blood has gone towards the occupation and its complications, the occupation and its hallucinations. The occupation became the largest national, economic and identity project Israel has ever known.
"This latest clash makes an agreement with the Palestinians even more urgent: The occupation must end, not because it will be "Ëœgood for the Palestinians', but rather because only thus will Israel be able to return quickly to a military and diplomatic agenda such a fragile country needs."
Lesson #4: The Threat is Real
This is one lesson that I'm confident that the U.S. and Israel will take to heart. The threat is real and it isn't going away overnight. But it also won't be squashed militarily. Real solutions must be found to tangible grievances, the illegal Israeli settlement project must end, negotiations with the Palestinian Authority must begin immediately while Abbas is still in power, enemies (like Syria) should be engaged and turned to "friends," moderates in the Arab world must be supported and militias and insurgents everywhere (Lebanon, Syria, Iraq) must disarm. No easy feat, but clearly diplomatic tools have the best shot at achieving many of these ends.
According to Sidney Blumenthal, writing for Salon.com, "Rather than seek the disarmament of Hezbollah, Israel sought to eliminate it permanently. If the aim had been to disarm it, in line with United Nations Resolution 1559, Israel might have initiated a diplomatic round, drawing in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, to help with the Lebanese government. But, encouraged by the Bush administration, Israel treated Lebanese sovereignty as a fiction." Diplomacy, in fact, is still the only option in disarming Hezbollah. But, because of Israel's campaign, diplomatic efforts will be much, much more difficult-if not impossible-in the forseeable future.
Occupation, state-sponsored terrorism, regime change through military force-none of these are realistic solutions in the Middle East. They are often worse, in fact, than doing nothing at all.
Appendix: Articles/Reports Cited
Preliminary "Lessons" of the Israeli-Hezbollah War
by Anthony H. Cordesman
Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy
Center for Strategic and International Studies
http://www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/060817_isr_hez_lessons.pdf
Israel's debacle, courtesy of Bush
by Sideny Blumenthal
Israel's debacle, courtesy of Bush
http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2006/08/17/bush/
The Coming Earthquake
by Aluf Benn
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/08/14/benn_olmert/index.html
Mistaken Path
By David Grossman
www.ynetnews.com
http://middleeastwindow.com/node/1756