Monthly Archives: February 2024

Guest Article: His Majesty’s Birthday

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By

William S. Lind*

As regular readers know, every year I telephone my reporting senior, Kaiser Wilhelm II, on his birthday, January 27, to offer my best wishes.  Such readers also know that His Majesty likes to surprise me.  Well, he did.  When I got out of bed the morning of the 23rd, I found out why: a naval Zeppelin, L-70, was hovering about twenty feet above my chimney.  Luckily, there were no sparks.  

I knew that meant I was on my way to Berlin.  I grabbed my seabag and went outside, where the airship had lowered its observation car for me to board.  I was quickly on my way, enjoying every minute of the smooth and silent air travel only an airship, not an airplane, can offer.

We landed at the Potsdam Zeppelinhafen the morning of the 26th, where a Fahnenjunker Kleinschmidt was waiting for me with an extra horse.  “They’re at the toy fort,” he told me as we cantered off.  “They?” I inquired.  Grinning, the Herr Fahnenjunker said, “you are about to meet some old friends.”

The toy fort is on the grounds of the Neues Palais, His Majesty’s preferred residence.  “Toy” is something of a misnomer.  It was a place for young Hohenzollern princes to play, but it was extensive and realistic enough so experiments with new battlefield tactics and techniques were carried out there.  As I rode up it was clear something along those lines was being conducted.

Dismounting, I saluted His Majesty, offering my felicitations for the morrow, and lit up in delight as I surveyed the rest of the party.  Bismarck was there, to whom I bowed very deeply, along with Moltke and, from a later time than ours, Field Marshal von Manstein.  And two old friends indeed, General Max Hoffman [a key German commander in World War I] and Hermann Balck [famed World War II Panzer commander].  I hadn’t seen Balck since we had dinner in the 1970s, and Max I knew only in spirit, but I also knew that with them present we would rock and roll.

“So, does this stranger have the password?” His Majesty inquired, grinning.  “Gott strafe England,” I replied.  “That always works,” Max said.  “And with you here, so does ‘Wurst und Moselwein’, nicht wahr?” I threw back.  “Immer,” said His Majesty. “But we also have some serious business to transact.  The problem before us is, how Ukraine  can win its war with Russia.  Field Marshal von Manstein was about to present his analytics.”

I again saluted the Field Marshal, who began with the failure of the Ukrainian summer counter-offensive.  “In effect, the Ukrainian operation plan was Barbarossa writ small.  It had no Schwerpunkt.  The Ukrainians launched three simultaneous, non-mutually-supporting thrusts. They led with armor, which, as we learned the hard way, always costs heavily in destroyed tanks.  By the way, their tanks, including the German Leopards, proved no more survivable than their Russian equivalents.  They then tried to lead with infantry, which, with infiltration tactics, could have worked, but it did not.  I’m not sure why.”

“I suspect their heavy losses in infantry left them without the high-quality troops attack divisions require,” His Majesty observed.  “It is difficult to do infiltration tactics with Landsturm.  But the question is not why their summer offensive failed, but whether we can come up with an operational plan that will work.  Any Ideas?”

Max spoke up.  “They need to break through at one end of the Russian lines, north or south, then roll up between the Russian front and the Russian border.  That will either bag or reduce to a rabble the whole Russian force in the east.  Having done that, they should offer to negotiate.  Russia has to get something still, certainly Crimea, but Ukraine would keep the Don basin with its industry.”

“They can’t break through,” Balck observed.  “They have to do an end run.”

“How?” Moltke asked, as always a man of few words.

Now Manstein showed his stuff.  “Ukraine should mass its forces in the north, as if to break through there.  Then, it launches into Belarus with the whole force.  The Schwerpunkt should drive north, then east, end-running the Russian northern line and driving down between the Russian forces and the border, just as Herr General Hoffman suggests.  But that’s not all.  Two other thrusts, both small in size, should be detached from the main force.  One should drive at Minsk, broadcasting the message that its only target is Lukashenko and asking Belarussian forces to come over.  That will pose not just an operational but a strategic threat to Russia just as she needs her operational reserves inside Ukraine.  The second Nebenpunkt should be a special operation to sieve the missiles with nuclear warheads Russia has positioned in Belarus.  If Ukraine grabs those, Russia loses the ace up her sleeve, the threat to go nuclear.  Russia will face one operational and two strategic disasters, without sufficient forces to deal with more than one, and become paralyzed by the choice.”

We stood around somewhat stunned.  For a while, no one said anything.  Then Bismarck spoke.  “Brilliant operational art, Herr Feldmarschall”.  You deserve the oak leaves.  But what none of you idiots have considered is the strategic picture!”

The Kaiser rolled his eyes.  “Now I know why my grandfather said, ‘Sometimes it is a hard thing, being Kaiser under Bismarck.” But please, Otto, enlighten us.”

“Why is Germany allied with Ukraine when Russia is far more important to us?  Yes, we need the grain of Ukraine.  But Russia offers vastly more: grain, oil and gas, strategic position, a large if low quality army, a decent navy and air force, the list is endless,” Bismarck went on.  “I have no love for the “Laws of History,” but there does seem to be a general rule that when Germany and Russia are allied, both do well, and when they are opposed, both do badly.  Is there really any need to discuss what the outcomes of the World Wars would have been if Russia had joined the Central Powers in a new Dreikaiserbund or the Axis?  Max?  Moltke?  Anybody?

“There would have been no Second World War, or probably First, in that case,” the Kaiser said.  “Peace is what I wanted, and peace is what Germany and Europe would have had.  Anyway, it has grown late, and we face a big party tomorrow in the Grotto – both Nicky and my friend Franz Ferdinand are coming, as are you, my American friend – and I promised Max more sausages and Mosel wine than even he can eat and drink.  Between now and then, we all have things to ponder, especially what you, dear Otto, have told us.  We Germans always want to subordinate the strategic to the operational, then wonder why it all blows up in our face.  Hopefully, someday we will learn not to do that.  May that day come soon.”

 

* William S. Lind is the author, among many other works on military history and strategy, of the The New Maneuver Warfare Handbook (just published). This article has been published earlier in Traditional Right.

Chasing the Sun

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As those familiar with my work will know, I’ve always tried to avoid the trap of overspecialization. I’ve also tried to impress on my students that that there never has been, nor can there ever be, a good student of military history whose only interest is military history. Some took my advice, others did not. One of those who did, I am proud to say, is Yuval Harari.

Having risen to become publishing director of Hutchinson and Hodder & Stoughton, Cohen was never in danger of overspecialization. Instead he became the author of any number of books dealing with any number of topics; including, to mention but two, Israel; Is It Good for the Jews?  (2014) and How to Write Like Tolstoy (2021). Add the fact that he is a five-time U.K national saber champion and was repeatedly selected for the British Olympic Team, and one can barely suppress one’s awe in front of his achievement.

As the title suggests, Cohen spent years traveling. So much so that, when people tried to reach him by phone, his wife often had to say that he was, once again, chasing the sun. On his way he visited eighteen different countries. He witnessed eclipses, listened to explanation about the way tides work, and read ancient Greek and Latin works on astronomy. Above all, he listened—to astronomers, to physicists, to geographers, to anyone who seemed sufficiently well informed to be worth talking to. Of course he could have done even more; e.g by spending a few million dollars to go up in a spacecraft to see what the sun and its fellow stars look like from orbit. But enough is enough.

The way Cohen sees it, we humans have related to the sun in two different ways. One, which is the oldest (probably, by far) leads through religion and magic; unable to understand, people tended to use their imaginations and invent. The outcome was countless priests, temples, fables, myths, cults, hymns, re-enactments—possibly, the origins of the theater—and prayers. And sacrifices, including some human ones. On the receiving end of all this were sun gods, sun beings, sun spirits, and the like. Starting with the Egyptian Pharos, who claimed to be sons of the sun god Ra and many of whom were portrayed with his emblem, a disk, above their heads; and reaching all the way to the self-styled Sun King, France’s Louis XIV, who loved the idea of people and things revolving around him as few others did.

The other way to relate to the sun was by means of science. As far back as we can look, the earliest attempts to do so were made in ancient Mesopotamia, China and Egypt. All three were highly developed agricultural civilizations whose system of keeping themselves fed demanded close attention to the calendar. This caused all three to take a keen interest in astronomy as the basis for timing various agricultural activities such as planting, sowing, watering, harvesting and the like. At least equally important, astronomy was needed for astrological calculations to forecast the fate of people, cities and rulers. Either way, studying the sun as well as other heavenly phenomena was vital.

In all three of these civilizations, science, religion and magic long remained so closely related as to make any attempt to separate them almost impossible. Apparently the first to do away with religion and magic and adopt a purely scientific, meaning observation- and math based, approach were the ancient Greeks. Many “pre-Socratic” philosophers, but chiefly Democritus and Pythagoras, took part, coming up with impressive contributions. Among them was the idea, first put forward by Eratosthenes in the second century BCE, that the earth revolved around the sun rather than vice versa; the first attempt to calculate the distance between the earth and the sun as well as the latter’s size; the first attempt to determine the distance between the earth and the moon; and the first attempt to determine the radius of the earth as well as its circumference.

Ancient attempts to work out the nature, size and movements of the cosmos (as the Greek called it) and the various heavenly bodies culminated around 160 CE with the publication of Ptolemy’s Almagest. Originally written in Greek, later it was translated into Arabic which gave it the name by which it is known even today. It certainly contained some errors: including the idea that the earth is at the center of the cosmos, that it does not move, and that all other bodies, as well as the universe itself, move at constant speed and in perfect cycles around it. The trouble with the Almagest was not that it did not provide a mathematically-based model of the universe—it did—but that time exposed inaccuracies to correct which it was necessary to bring in changes that made it so complex as to be unmanageable. Until, in 1543, an obscure monk in Koenigsberg (today, Kaliningrad) proposed another model; one which, by putting the sun in the middle and making the earth move around it, got rid of many of the difficulties.

This is hardly the place to elaborate on the way Copernicus’ work made it from a mere mathematical theory into what we today see as a solid model of the way the solar system actually works. As it did so, increasingly it received support from the works of Tycho Brahe (who, though he himself stuck to the idea that the earth was in the center of the world, raised observation of the heavens to a completely new level of accuracy), Johan Kepler (who showed that the planets’ trajectories are not circular but elliptical), and Galileo Galilei (who, using his telescope, proved that the moon is not “perfect” but made of the same materials as the earth itself). Galileo himself was followed by Isaac Newton who, proposing a new mathematical model based solely on mass, force (gravity) and movement, completed the process by which astronomy became purely scientific.

As time went on Newton’s theories went from one triumph to the next, even to the point where they were used to predict the existence of previously unknown planets hundreds of millions of miles away. During the second half of the nineteenth century the incorporation into them, at the hands of Michael Faraday and James Maxwell, of magnetism and electricity led many physicists to the conclusion that man’s understanding of the cosmos was now complete and that only minor adjustments remained to be made. Never in history did predictions turn more wrong! First quantum theory, pronounced by Max Planck in 1900, showed that, contrary to Newton (but in line with Democritus and his “a-toms”) neither space nor energy were infinitely divisible. Also that, at the subatomic level, things did not behave the way Newton’s theories predicted. Next relativity, first introduced by Albert Einstein in 1905 and completed by him in 1915, completely overturned our ideas of the relationship between mass, time, energy and space, showing that, far from being independent and stable under any circumstances they were related and convertible into each other.

Whereas Planck’s theories were shown to work at the subatomic level, Einstein’s ideas referred to intergalactic space where distances are measured by lightyears. Notwithstanding that the two contradict each other, and notwithstanding too that very few people can be said to understand the true meaning, and hence the implications, of quantum theory in particular, taken together their work still underpins our present-day understanding of the universe. Complete with its hordes of subatomic particles, many of which are supposed to be both “real” and “unreal” at the same time; cesium clocks so accurate that they only miss “true” time by one second every 100 million years; black holes, gravity waves, and a great many other phenomena so strange that they can only be described, if at all, in mathematical language; and, as if to crown it all, nuclear weapons capable of putting an end to it all.

There are four other points that need to be made. First, Cohen is a physicist. As such he has a lot to say about physics but comparatively little about the sun’s impact on living creatures: in other words, biology. Yet it is photosynthesis alone which makes possible all life except for the kind recently discovered at the bottom of the deepest oceans; hence the rather short shrift Cohen give it constitutes a serious omission.

Second, until it reaches 1650 or so Cohen’s account gives about equal space to scientific astronomy on one hand and all kinds of other frames of reference the other. After that, however, such frames all but disappear from the text. That again is a serious omission. Just think of Japan’s sun-goddess, Amaterasu, and of Stalin having himself called “the Sun of Nations.” Today as ever, for every person who reads Einstein, let alone Planck, there must be thousands who believe the book of Judges (chapter 13) when it says that God made the sun stop in its orbit so as to assist the Israelites in their fight against the Canaanites. Countless others believe in astrology and consult astrologers; the fact that it is all nonsense makes no difference. A few chapters on these and similar topics would have completed the book and made it more balanced.

Third, as Cohen rightly points out many of the questions physicists ask today are the very same ones Democritus and Co. asked themselves two and a half millennia ago. Did the universe always exist, or did it have a beginning? If the latter, will it one day come to an end? What is it made of? How far does it stretch? Is there just one universe, or are there more? What is it made of (today’s scientists claim that over 90 percent of it consists dark of dark matter and dark energy, a mysterious something that neither our senses nor our instruments can register)? What is time? Does it “really” exist or is it—as some physicists believe—simply whatever our instruments record?

Finally, does the fact that many of the questions Democritus asked are still with us today suggest that, in trying to answer them, we have been moving around in circles and that it is all a waste of time?  Along with Cohen, I believe the answer to this question is negative. There is no doubt that we at present know far more about the universe than our elders did even a couple of decades ago; our success in reaching the moon as well as Mars provides sufficient proof of that. Nor can there be any question of progress coming to a halt any time soon. Each time a new discovery is made, causing a mystery to be solved, another and often greater one seems to present itself. The sense of wonder, which drives the questions, still permeates us. As long as it keeps doing so, human we remain.

The Transformation of War

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I am an old guy. Perhaps that is why a friend recently asked me what I see as my most important single message. In response I immediately pointed to The Transformation of War (1991), pp. 173-79.

I quote.

Danger is the raison d’etre of war, opposition its indispensable prerequisite; conversely unopposed killing does not count as fighting but as murder or, in case it takes place under legal auspices, as execution. The absence of opposition makes military strategy impossible and for an army to fight under such conditions would be both unnecessary and foolish. All this is to say that, be describing uncertainty as a characteristic of war, Clausewitz and his modern followers have put reality upside down. Uncertainty is not just the medium in which war moves and which helps govern the opponent’s moves; above all, it is a condition for the existence of armed conflict.

Where the outcome of a struggle is a foregone conclusion the fighting will tend to cease, as much because one side gives up as because the other gets bored. Throughout history, individuals and armies who felt that their situation was hopeless asked for quarter. The victors, so long as they remained in possession of their senses and were not carried away by such emotions as rage and the lust for revenge, usually accepted. Whatever unpleasantness followed later—and sometimes what did follow later was even more unpleasant than the war itself–was not considered part of the fighting but, to use the Roman phrase, retaliation.  Such retaliation may be more or less necessary, more or less justifiable, more or less in accord with the prevailing war convention. Since the outcome is not in doubt, however, it does not involve the tension that constitutes the essence of fighting. Nor are those who engage in it or profit form it normally regarded as deserving special honors: on the contrary…

Here we are concerned with a situation where the relationship between strength and weakness is skewed; in other words, where one belligerent is much stronger than the other. Under such circumstances, the conduct of war can become problematic even as a matter of definition. Imagine a grown man who purposefully kills a small child, even such a one as came at him knife in hand; such a man is almost certain to stand trial and convicted, if not of murder than of some lesser crime. In the same way, legally speaking, the very existence of belligerence, war and fighting already implies that the opponents, even violence that is organized, purposeful, politically-motivated, and on a fairly large scale. However, usually the name such violence is given is not war but disturbance, uprising, or crime. They are accompanied by their opposite numbers, namely, repression, counterinsurgency, and police work…

A war waged by the weak against the strong is dangerous by definition. Therefore, as long as the differential in force is not such as to render the situation altogether hopeless, it presents few difficulties beyond the tactical question, how to inflict the maximum amount of damage without exposing oneself in open fighting. By contrast, a war waged by the strong against the weak sis problematic for that very reason. Given time, the fighting itself will cause the two sides to become more like each other, even to the point where opposites converge and change places. Weakness turns into strength, strength into weakness. The principal reason behind this phenomenon is that war presents perhaps the most imitative activity known to man. The whole secret of victory consists of trying to understand the enemy in order to outwit him. A mutual learning process ensues. Even as the struggle proceeds both sides adapt their tactical methods, the means that they employ and—most important of all—their morale to fit the opponent. Doing so, sooner or later the point will come where they are no longer distinguishable.

A small, weak force confronting a large, strong one will need very high fighting spirit to make up for its deficiencies in other fields. Still, since survival itself counts as no mean feat, that fighting spirit will feed on every victory, however minor. Conversely, a strong force fighting a weak one for any length of time is almost certain to suffer from a drop in morale, the reason being that nothing is more futile than a string of victories forever repeated. Conscious of the problem, such armies often sought to compensate the troops by providing them with creature comforts; one is reminded of the iced beer that was helicoptered to American units operating in the Vietnamese jungle and, a more absurd example still, the mobile banks that accompanied the Israelis into Lebanon. However, over the long run no amount of pampering can make up for the fact that fighting the weak demeans those who engage in it and therefore undermines its own purpose. He who loses out to the weak loses; he who triumphs over the weak also loses. In such an enterprise there can be neither profit nor honor. Provided only the exercise is repeated often enough, as surely as night follows day the point will come when enterprise collapses.

Another very important reason why, over time, the strong and the weak will come to resemble each other even to the point of changing places is rooted in the different ethical circumstances under which they operate. Necessity known no bounds; hence he who is weak can afford to go to the greatest lengths, resort to the most underhand means, and commit every kind of atrocity without compromising his political support and, much more important still, his own moral principles. Conversely, almost anything that the strong does or does not do is, in one sense, unnecessary and therefore cruel. For him, the only road to salvation is to win quickly in order to escape the worst consequences of his own cruelty; swift, ruthless brutality may well prove more merciful than prolonged restrained. A terrible end is better than endless terror and is certainly more effective…[Thus] the question of right and wrong itself turns out to depend in large part on the balance of forces… a good war, like a good game, almost by definition is one fought against forces that are at least as strong as, or preferably stronger than, oneself.

Troops who do not believe their cause to be good will end up by refusing to fight. Since fighting the weak is sordid by definition, over time the effect of such a struggle is to put the strong into an intolerable position. Constantly provoked, they are damned if they do and damned if they do not. Should they fail to respond to persistent provocation, then their morale will probably break down, passive waiting being the most difficult game of all to play. Should they hit back, then the opponent’s very weakness means that they will descend into cruelty and, since most people are not cut out to be sadists for very long, end up hating themselves. Self-hatred will easily lead to disintegration, mutiny and surrender. People will burn their daft cards, flee the country, go to prison, even “frag” their own officers or commit suicide, anything to avoid the indignity that fighting the weak implies. Nor is the fate of those who do fight much better; returning from the “battlefield,” they will find themselves treated as outcasts rather than as heroes. The results are inevitable. Often, as in Vietnam, to evacuate the field will be the only alternative to complete defeat.

Since the very act of fighting the weak invites excess, in fact is excess, it obliges the strong to impose controls in the form of laws, regulations, and rules of engagement. For example, Westmoreland’s own headquarters drew up rules of engagement regarding tactical air strikes, artillery strikes, and ground fire that were issued to the troops upon their arrival in the country and updated every six months. Operating in complex terrain, Israeli troops combating the intifada (first Palestinian Uprising] have been subjected to even more complicated regulations. Arms may not be used except by explicit order under certain circumstances and against certain kinds of targets. Standing orders determine who may be hit, at what distance, and by what kind of bullets; theoretically, to react to a Molotov cocktail thrown at one it is first necessary to open the book and consult the relevant paragraph. The net effect of such regulations is to demoralize the troops who are prevented from operating freely and using their initiative. They are contrary to sound command practice if they are observed and subversive of discipline if they are not. Hence the truth of Clausewitz’s dictum, plainly observable in every low-intensity [today we would say, asymmetric] conflict fought since World War II, that regular forces combating a Volkskrieg are like robots to men.

A sword, plunged into salt water, will rust. How long it will take to do so depends on circumstances. A professional force, isolated from the rest of society, carefully trained and habituated to fighting as its lifeblood, will probably stand up better than one that is made up of conscripts, particularly if the conscripts are changed every twelve months. Discipline, itself an attribute of professionalism, counts for a lot. Control over the sources of information, both internal and external, may also be useful up to a point. By carefully managing the news and exercising selective censorship it is possible to prevent the worst atrocities—to repeat, almost anything committed by the strong against the weak counts as an atrocity—from reaching the public at home. The time when that public will turn against the war and those responsible for it can be postponed, though not indefinitely. In the long run such controls will prove counterproductive as troops, civilians and neutrals cease to believe what they are told. At that point, either they look for alternative information or start inventing it.

Perhaps the most important quality that a strong force engaged a weaker one needs is self-control; and indeed the ability to withstand provocation without losing one’s head, without overreacting and thereby playing into the enemy’s hands, is itself the best possible measure of self-control.  There must be a voluntary weakening, even disarming, of one’s own forces in order to meet the opponent on approximately equal terms, much as the sporting fisherman uses rod and hook rather than relying on dynamite. A good case in point is provided by the British who have been fighting and taking casualties in Northern Ireland for the last twenty years. Now the war against the Irish Republican Army is very hard on the British troops and has not been without occasional excesses. Still, strict discipline and careful training—the characteristics of professionalism par excellence—have enabled the Royal Army to hold out quite well. Never at any point has it engaged in indiscriminate violence or meted out collective punishments, nor has it brought in heavy weapons. As a result, it has not alienated the bulk of the population. Since they are operating in a country that in one way or another has been experiencing trouble for the last eight centuries, the British may not be able to win, but at any rate they need not lose.

Where iron self-control is lacking, a strong force made to confront the weak for any length of time will violate its own regulations and commit crimes, some inadvertent and others not. Forced to lie in order to conceal its crimes, it will find the system of military justice undermined, the process of command distorted, and a credibility gap opening up at its feet. In such a process there are neither heroes nor villains, but only victims; whom the gods want to destroy, they first strike blind. So difficult to counteract are the processes just described that those caught in them may well never recover. In the end, the only way to revive a country’s ability to wage war may be to tear down the existing armed forces and set up new ones in their stead, which in turn will probably require a political revolution of some kind.

An army that has suffered defeat at the hands of the strong may nourish its wounds and wait for another opportunity. This is what the Prussians did after 1806, the French after 1871, and the Germans after 1918. However, once a force has been vanquished by the weak it will grow timid and wary of repeating its experience; and it will forever look for reasons not to fight again. Confronted by a real enemy—one who is as strong as, or stronger than, itself—a force accustomed to “fighting” the weak is almost certain to break and run, as the Argentinian Army did in the Falklands. Thus it is probably no exaggeration to say that, until the [1990-1] Gulf Crisis finally presented them with an opportunity that was too good to miss, the U.S forces till had not put Vietnam behind them. Meanwhile whether the armed forces of the Soviet State—following their failure in Afghanistan—will ever be able to fight another war outside their own borders is also doubtful. For the moment, it looks as if they are going to have their hands full trying to prevent their own society from disintegrating.

We have been dealing with “squishy” factors such as good and evil because, far from being divorced form warfare, ethics constitute its central core. On the whole, the relationship between strength and weakness and the moral dilemmas to which it gives rise probably represents the best available explanation why, over the last few decades, modern armies on both sides of the ex-Iron Curtain have been so singularly ineffective combating low-intensity conflict. After all colonial rebellions definition were the province of the downtrodden and the weak. Often the insurgents were scarcely considered human, being called by such names as gook (Vietnam), kafir (Rhodesia), or Arabush (Israel). Conversely, low-intensity conflict may well be regarded as the coming revenge of these people. Refusing to play the game according to the rules that “civilized” countries have established for their own convenience, they have developed their own form of war and began exporting it. Since the rules exist mainly in the mind, once broken they will not easily be restored. Though hardly a day passes anywhere in the world without some act of terrorism taking place, it appears that the process has only just begun, and the prospects for combating or even containing it are bleak.  

Gaza: Time to Prepare for the Next Round

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When Louis Alexandre Berthier, then at the beginning of his career as Napoleon’s chief of staff, entered Gaza with a French army on 24-5 February 1799, he noted that it was a nice—well, everything is relative—city. One with a good climate, sufficient water, plenty of good agricultural land, and many flourishing gardens. Coming as the French troops did from the Sinai Desert where they had almost died of thirst, what a relief! No source I have consulted could tell me how many people lived in what, since 1948, has been known as the Strip. It cannot, however, have been more than 10-20,000.

Fast forward to 2024. Today the Strip’s population is said to stand at 2,300,000. Not bad for a territory that, at the time Israel occupied it in 1967, only numbered about 400,000. And not bad for a territory that, if the Palestinian Authority may be believed, is even now subjected to “genocide” at the wicked Israelis’ hands.

Now let’s turn to Hamas. The idea of helping the inhabitants of the West Bank set up a party to counter the Palestinian Liberation Organization was first proposed to Israel’s then minister of defense General Ariel Sharon, around 1980.  The way he and his advisers saw it, Hamas, with its heavy emphasis on Islam (“submission to the will of God”), would be the ideal instrument to divert Palestinian energies away from fighting Israel towards practicing Islam. How wrong can some people be?  Rather than content themselves with prayer, fasting, charity, and the obligatory journey to Mecca, from early on Hamas’ leaders adopted a radical line, vowing never to recognize the “Zionist Entity” and never to establish peaceful relations peace with it. This remains the organization’s official stance right down to the present day.

By 2006-7 Hamas, in spite of more or less coordinated efforts by Israel and the Palestinian authority, had become the leading political entity in Gaza. The outcome was a coup meant to establish its rule over the Strip, killing many—no one knows how many—Palestinian Authority personnel and sending the rest running in every direction. Since then hardly a week has passed without terrorists—Hamas itself calls them shahids, martyrs—from Gaza mounting some kind of operation, large or small, against Israel. Particularly vulnerable were the Israeli towns and kibbutzim close to the border which soon became the targets of intermittent salvoes of rockets. The rationale, Hamas claimed, was to make Israel pay a price for continuing its occupation; never mind that, by 2023, that occupation had ended a decade and a half ago. Its only remnant was strict border controls maintained by the Israelis to ensure that no weapons or other military equipment would enter the Strip for use against their own country.

As if to confirm Berthier’s estimate, Gaza is not necessarily a bad place to live and prosper even now. The Strip has a population similar to that of Singapore. What figures we have show that its population density, high as it is, is considerably lower. Labor is as cheap as it was, say, in China before it started opening to capitalism back in 1979-80. Located on the sea and forming the link between Asia and Africa on one hand and the EU as one of the largest consumer markets on earth on the other, with some assistance it could develop into a pearl of the Middle East. Fresh desalinated water, though no longer as plentiful (relative to the population) as it used to be, could be provided by Israel which, in this respect, is a world leader. But no: as Hamas’ leaders have repeatedly said, having set themselves the objective of doing away with Israel, recognizing the latter, let alone signing a peace deal with it, is something they are simply do not going to do.

All wars, even including the so-called Hundred Years War, have to end. To some extent, this has already happened. Whether because Hamas is running out of rockets or for some other reason, the number of those it launches on Israel has been falling. Judging by the published casualty figures—not, admittedly, the most reliable in the world—the fighting inside Gaza has also grown less intense.

Prime Minister Netanyahu on his part has announced that operation “Iron Swords” has two objectives. One is to obtain the return of every one of the Israeli captives Hamas is holing. The other, to “finish off” Hamas to the point where it can no longer launch attacks on Israel. Straight from the horse’s mouth! Provided Israel makes the necessary concessions—meaning a ceasefire and a prisoner exchange at the rate of perhaps 100 to 1—the second objective is probably attainable; the first almost certainly is not. Of the two belligerents, Israel and Hamas, the former is indisputably the stronger by far. Which paradoxically is why, almost regardless of the terms of an eventual deal, it will signify a victory for Hamas.

Time to prepare for the next round.