Tag Archives: Protective Edge

My Country at War

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My country has just gone through a war. This was not the kind of war where (on the Israeli side) there are very many casualties; let alone one in which it is a question of life and death. Nevertheless it was war. So let me try to tell my readers a little about the way an ordinary citizen experienced it.

Israelis have always been a nation of news junkies. As one would expect, during wartime this is even more the case. Many people checked the news several times an hour. Almost everybody did so several times a day. The media dealt with little else. Modern war is enormously wasteful in terms of ammunition and the present one is no exception. But compared to the number of images displayed, words uttered, and ink spilt, that of bullets, shells and missiles fired was as nothing.

Many of the images, words and ink were occasioned by the rockets. There is no defense against the short-range mortar shells and they have caused quite some casualties. That apart, though, the alarm system functioned very well. Depending on how far from the Gaza Strip one lives or works, the time one has to seek shelter varied from about thirty seconds to a couple of minutes. Israeli houses built after 1991 are obliged by law to provide a so-called mamad, a room made of reinforced concrete and provided with a heavy steel window. People, presumably the majority, who inhabit older structures had to be content with strairwells etc. Drivers caught on the road were told to “stop safely” on the shoulders (which quite some roads do not have). Though doing so was against the regulations, many used the opportunity to get out of their cars and watch the show in the sky. How typical.

As I have written before, the combination of effective civil defense and the by now famous Iron Dome system explains the small number of civilian casualties. In fact more people were killed and injured while rushing to shelter than by the rockets themselves. The impact varied with distance. Most heavily hit were the twenty or so kibbutzim along the border. They became ghost villages, deserted by practically all their inhabitants except for a handful of caretakers. Towns within a 25-mile range of the border, such as Ashkelon, were targeted sufficiently heavily to make normal life all but impossible and force the evacuation of children. Elsewhere the impact was sporadic, even negligible. Further to the north there was hardly any impact at all.

Each night the Army spokesperson announced the number of soldiers who had died that day. It has long been the Israeli method not to release names until the families are informed. Informing them is the task of so-called Hiob Patrols. Though their composition varies, normally they consist of an officer, a physician and a rabbi. They receive special training for the job. Seen from the outside the system seems as well-thought out and as humane as it can be made. What it feels like from the inside only those who participate in it or receive the news it brings know.

Each day there were funerals, a few of civilians, the majority of soldiers. Most dead soldiers were young, even very young. War has always been, and still remains, what the Germans call Kindermord. How does one describe the pain? The military funerals followed the normal rules, more or less. However, ceremonial has never been the strength of the Israeli army or, for that matter, the rather undisciplined character of the people in which it is rooted. During previous conflicts TV used to show the dead soldiers’ comrades crying like babies over the graves. This time they did not do so. Good.

In much of the country life was and remains far quieter than usual. There was less traffic. Normally driving from Jerusalem to Mevasseret Zion (the town where I live, some four miles away) can take half an hour and more. During the war one could cover the road in a few minutes. Supermarkets, restaurants, movie houses and hotels were half empty. Nor is it only Jewish facilities that suffered. A town like Abu Gosh, a mile away, which in ordinary days makes it living by catering to Jerusalemites on Saturdays when their own everything is closed, was also hard hit. Safety considerations forced the cancellation of many cultural events. Almost every day one heard of some foreign artist or group that decided to skip.

Crime seemed to go down. The number of patients visiting doctors definitely went down. War has a way of making people forget many minor and some major problems. By way of compensation, quite some cars suddenly sprouted flags. Normally they are limited to the days before Independence Day. One saw signs carrying slogans such as “Mevasseret Zion hugs its solders” and the like.

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Intolerance, even fanaticism, was and remains in the air. Some self-appointed vigilantes tried to shut up their less hawkish opponents. More than one person who dared say anything against the Israeli Operation, or in favor of the Palestinians, was disciplined and fired. Considering that it is the first duty of universities to protect freedom of speech, one of the ugliest incidents took place at Bar Ilan University near Tel Aviv. When a faculty member dared say that he was sorry not only for Israeli children but for the Palestinian ones as well, he was formally reprimanded by the dean. To be fair, a kindergarten mistress who wrote “death to the Arabs” on Facebook is also supposed to be tried for incitement.

Here and there words turned into violence as Jews attacked Arabs and Arabs, Jews. Thank goodness, though, the number and scope of such incidents has been limited. Furthermore the situation is better than in Gaza where there has never been any form of democracy and where Hamas simply executes whoever dares protest against it.

What will the outcome be? Here I can only repeat what I have been saying ever since the war broke out. The war will end with a triumph for Hamas. Not in a military sense, but in the sense that they will be able to push through some of their political demands. To this I would add, as I wrote last week, that such an outcome would not necessarily be bad either for Israel or for the Middle East. Eventually it might lead, if not to peace then at any rate to calm.

A final word. Since 1990 or so Israel’s feminist lobby has become one of the most virulent on earth. Probably this is not unconnected with the fact that, while the country still has its problems, the days when it fought for its existence against overwhelming odds are long gone. The Israeli army in peacetime is 25-30 percent female. Since there are few female reservists and few of them are ever called up, in wartime the figure goes down very sharply.

Nobody doubts that female soldiers do their jobs properly. Still the war caused attention to be focused almost entirely on the fighting formations, and rightly so. It is they who suffer casualties and deserve to be celebrated. As the fact that no female Israeli soldier so far has been killed shows, where there were bullets there were no women and where there were women there were no bullets. As a result the feminist “discourse,” consisting of endless complaints about everybody and everything, suddenly became muted.

Unfortunately it won’t last.

 

 

Stuck in Gaza

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The good news is that, here in Mevasseret Zion not far from Jerusalem, things have been less exciting than during the first week of Operation “Firm Rock.” The same applies to many other Israeli cities located relatively far away from Gaza. Possibly this is due to the fact that Hamas has a problem with its long-range rockets which, owing to their size, are harder to conceal and take longer to launch. The bad news is that elsewhere, and especially in the Israeli districts that surround the Gaza Strip, the rockets keep falling. Thus it would appear that the struggle, which has now lasted for two weeks, is far from over.

In this situation it is interesting to take a fresh look at what Clausewitz—I assume readers of this website will know who he was—has to say about wars of this kind. As I have written elsewhere, most of On War is couched in terms of the classic division of labor between the government that directs, the armed forces that fight, kill and die, and the people who pay and suffer. Still the maestro did include a short chapter—five pages out of over five hundred—dealing with what he calls “the People in Arms,” (Volksbewaffnung), AKA terrorism, AKA guerrilla, AKA insurgency, AKA asymmetric war. Drawing upon the wars in Russia, which he witnessed in person, and in Spain, which he did not, he lists the following as “the only conditions under which a general uprising can be effective:”

  1. The war must be fought in the interior of the country.
  2. It must not be decided by a single stroke.
  3. The theater of operations must be fairly large.
  4. The national character must be suited to that kind of war.
  5. The country must be rough and inaccessible, because of mountains, or forests, marshes, or the local methods of cultivation.

To which one might add:

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  1. A country that borders on another from which the terrorists/guerrillas/insurgents can be resupplied and which will afford them refuge when they need it.

To what extent does the war Hamas is waging against Israel meet these conditions, and what are its prospects of gaining a victory? To answer this question it is perhaps best to change the order in which Clausewitz proceeds. Let us start with condition No. 2 as the most obvious of all. Elsewhere in On War Clausewitz says, quite rightly, that war consists of the interaction between the belligerents. A war that is decided by a single stroke to which the opponent has no answer is, by this interpretation, not a war at all. So weak is Hamas that, starting on the first day of the war, it and the people of Gaza whom it claims to represent have been taking roughly a hundred casualties for every one the Israelis suffered. Nevertheless, of the latter ending the struggle by a single blow there can be no question.

For as long as guerrilla and its relatives have existed, one very important way of making sure the struggle cannot be decided by a single stroke is to rely on No. 6. Alas for Hamas, in this respect its situation is well-nigh hopeless. The sea- and land routes to and from Gaza are blocked by the Israeli navy and army respectively. The Egyptians, who police their own border with Gaza, do the rest. Only the fact that the Israelis allow 200 or so truckloads per day to cross keeps Hamas and the population of Gaza going. Israel has even deployed a field hospital where the sick and wounded of the other side can be treated. But for these and similar measures hunger and disease would have spread very quickly. The probable outcome would have been the disintegration of Hamas rule and the creation of chaotic conditions like those prevailing in large parts of Iraq.

All this enhances the importance of proposition No. 4 (the role played by national character.) As both the history of the Arab-Israeli wars and the two Gulf Wars have shown, Arabs are not very good at waging modern conventional war against similar opponents. The question why this is so deserves to be considered in depth but is beyond the scope of the present article. Arabs have, however, done much better in waging guerrilla struggles. Even without considering wars such as the one in Yemen (1962-70), during which they chased away the British, they have forced Israel to withdraw from Lebanon and the Americans, from Iraq.

Whatever else may be said about the current war in Gaza, so far Hamas troops—not the leaders, who hide in bunkers deep underground—have been fighting courageously in spite of the overwhelming odds they face. Here and there, as in their attempts to penetrate Israel either by sea or by way of tunnels that pass under the border, their courage has been well-nigh suicidal. In part because the Israelis, who have good cause to worry about international reaction, do their best not to inflict too many civilian casualties, the population of Gaza has also been holding up well. Judging by events so far, if a ceasefire is finally established it will not be because the population forced Hamas to accept it.

“The theater of operations must be fairly large,” reads proposition No. 3. Generally speaking, that is true. A large territory will make it hard for the counterinsurgent to focus on one point while affording the insurgents many opportunities to escape, disperse, and hide. But by no stretch of the imagination can the Gaza Strip, 32 miles long and just 6.8 wide, be considered “large.” In the entire Strip, there is probably not a single target the Israelis, had they wanted to and been prepared to take the necessary casualties, could not have reached in an hour or less. To say nothing of the ever-present fighter-bombers and drones that can reach those targets in minutes if not in seconds. That is why, in Operation Firm Rock, proposition No. 2—regarding the inaccessibility of the country in which the guerrillas must operate—is as important as it is. Though in this case it is urban terrain and its plentiful civilians, not “mountains, or forests, marshes, or the local methods of cultivation,” which obstruct the Israelis.

Considering these factors, which side is more likely to win? In the absence of a ceasefire, the outcome is likely to be a struggle of attrition from which the side with the last ounce of willpower will emerge triumphant.

Yet there remains one very important point Clausewitz does not mention. Henry Kissinger, with Vietnam in mind, once said that the counterinsurgent, as long as he does not win, loses. The insurgent, as long as he does not lose, wins. Even if—which, at the moment, seems unlikely—Israel succeeds in forcing the other side to accept a ceasefire based on a return to the status quo ante, Hamas leaders will be able to claim that taking on the worst its enemy can do, standing like a firm rock, and surviving represents a triumph which will enable them to look into the future with some confidence.

And in making this claim they will not be very wrong.

Under Fire

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My wife and I live on our own in a townhouse a few miles west of Jerusalem, within range of the rockets from Gaza. Several times over the last few days the alarm was sounded. We react by leaving the living room, which has glass doors facing the garden. Should a rocket explode nearby, then flying shards will cut us to ribbons. So we move into the stairwell which, made of reinforced concrete, offers good protection. We are lucky to have it, for my wife has just had her knee operated on and could not run if her life depended on it. I suppose something similar would apply to hundreds of thousands of others both in Israel and in Gaza. We wait until the sirens stop wailing—a hateful sound—and we have heard a few booms. Then we check, on the news, whether the booms originated in rockets being intercepted by Iron Dome or in such as have not been intercepted hitting the earth. A few telephone calls to or from our children, and everything returns to normal until the next time.

And so it goes. One gets up each morning, sees that the surroundings look much as usual, heaves a sigh of relief, and prepares for the coming day. Yet for several days now, much of Israel has been under fire. That is especially true of the southern part of the country. Over there ranges are short and incoming rockets smaller, harder to intercept, and much more numerous. There are several dozen wounded—most of them hurt not by incoming rockets but while in a hurry to find shelter. As of the evening of Tuesday, 19 July, following eight days of fighting, just one Israeli, a civilian, has been killed by Hamas fire.

Several factors explain the low number of casualties. First, the rockets coming from Gaza are enormously inaccurate. They hit targets, if they do, almost at random. Second, the Iron Dome anti-missile defense system works better than anyone had expected. The system has the inestimable advantage in that it can calculate the places where the rockets will land. Consequently it only goes into action against those—approximately one in five or six—that are clearly about to hit an inhabited area. The outcome is vast savings; in some cases, realizing that the incoming rockets are not going to hit anybody or anything, the authorities do not even bother to sound the alarm. Third, civil defense seems to be working well; people obey instructions and are, in any case, getting used to this kind of thing. Fourth, as always in war, one needs luck.

In turn, the small number of casualties and the limited amount of damage inflicted has enabled the government of Israel to keep the lid on its own actions in the face of extremist demands. Fewer than two hundred people in Gaza, about a hundred of them civilians, have been killed. Given how densely populated the Strip is, and that the Israelis claim to attack several hundred targets each day, that is a surprisingly low number. It suggests a degree of control and precision never before attained or maintained in any war in history. But while the Israelis have been extremely effective in avoiding collateral deaths, the impact of their strikes against Hamas’ short-range rockets in particular is limited. Many targets known to harbor military installations but located in or under hospitals and schools have not been attacked at all. Others were hit and destroyed, but only after IDF operatives called their inhabitants or used a small missile to warn them and order them to get out. Strangest of all, throughout this about 200 trucks keep crossing from Israel into Gaza every day. They carry food, fuel, and medicines without which the Strip could not survive for long.

But Israel’s lucky run will not last forever. Sooner or later, a Hamas rocket that for one reason or another has not been intercepted is bound to hit a real target in Israel and cause real damage. Imagine a school or kindergarten being hit, resulting in numerous deaths. In that case public pressure on the government and the Israel Defense Forces “to do something” will mount until it becomes intolerable.

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What can the IDF do? Not much, it would seem. It can give up some restraints and kill more—far more—people in Gaza in the hope of terrorizing Hamas into surrender. However, such a solution, if that is the proper term, will not necessarily yield results while certainly drawing the ire of much of the world. It can send in ground troops to tackle the kind of targets, such as tunnls, that cannot be reached from the air. However, doing so will almost certainly lead to just the kind of friendly casualties that the IDF, by striking from the air, has sought to avoid.

Whether a ground operation can kill or capture sufficient Hamas members to break the backbone of the organization is also doubtful. Even supposing it can do so, the outcome may well be the kind of political vacuum in which other, perhaps more extreme, organizations such as the Islamic Jihad will flourish. Either way, how long will such an operation last? And how are the forces ever going to withdraw, given the likelihood that, by doing so, they will only be preparing for the next round?

And so the most likely outcome is a struggle of attrition. It may last for weeks, perhaps more. Humanitarian efforts to help the population of Gaza, however well meant, may just prolong the agony. In such a struggle the stakes would hardly be symmetrical. On one hand there are the inhabitants of Gaza. Increasingly they have their lives turned upside down by the constant alarms, strikes, and people who are wounded or killed. On the other are those of Israel who, though their lives have also been affected, have so far remained remarkably calm and resilient under fire. Though some areas are badly affected, the Israeli economy has also been holding up well.

Perhaps because the number of Gazans killed and wounded is fairly small, international reaction, which is always hostile to Israel, has been relatively muted. One reason for this appears to be that no outsiders have what it takes to push either side towards a ceasefire. In a struggle of attrition it is the last ounce of willpower on both sides that will decide the issue. So far, it does not seem that the willpower in question has been exhausted on either side.