We Have Confirmed the Existence of A Godawful Mess. Now How Do We Fix It?
The Fighting In Gaza is Going to End Eventually. How Do We Keep It From Happening Again? And has Israel Learned the Lessons of History?
If history teaches us anything it’s that wars end. They don’t always end the way that a given individual would want them to, end they do. Eventually either one sides gives up or both sides get worn out and reach some type of an agreement to end the hostilities and move on without killing each other. It’s an often painful process with the inevitable holdouts who refuse to acknowledge the newly won peace. There are often casualties after the official hostilities have ended. Just ask Abraham Lincoln.
Israel cannot seek a lasting peace with Hamas. I covered the reasons for that here. Long story short: Hamas has vowed never to accept Israel’s existence. Israel is home to a people that have already endured one Holocaust and have no intention of allowing another one to happen. As long as the only acceptable outcome for Hamas is the erasure of the Israeli state and the non-Muslim people that inhabit it there can be no agreement that would secure Israel’s security. Israel isn’t going to surrender to an enemy that they have defeated so soundly. There is no two-state solution possible while Arabs won’t acknowledge Israel’s right to exist. Accepting one at this point would be suicide for Israel.
But here’s the thing. If Israel can’t accept a two state solution and they can’t trust Hamas to run things in an area where they’ve been in control since 2007 because Israel is inviting another attack at that point. I get that some Americans won’t accept this. Naivete is common in a country where the only terrorist attack that hit hard enough to hurt originated in a land across the sea. Things are different in Israel. Attacks there come from within a hour’s drive.
Here’s the thing: The fighting will end. Israeli forces have stopped their advances for now (and I think that’s a tactical error on their part) but, sooner or later, they’re going to advance into Rafah regardless of what anyone thinks. They’re fighting this war to win. That makes sense. Not only have they lost people, their economy is suffering at a point in time when they need more money to support a war effort. It’s time to end this.
But we’re dealing with a couple of different issues here:
The first is obvious to anyone who has studied US Involvement in the Vietnam Conflict (I actually took that class as an undergrad): Wars of attrition don’t work against enemies that have third world birthrates, the ability to soak casualties that those birthrates provide, and a willingness to use those advantages. (The pertinent information begins on page fifteen of this document.) At the end of the day Israel, no matter how much help it gets, is not going to be able to kill enough of its enemies to make them quit fighting because of the losses. It’s harsh but it’s true.
And let’s not forget that a war can be won on the battlefield and lost at the peace talks. Germany still occupied French territory at the end of World War I and was advancing when it ended. They ended up losing the will to fight after the rise of the Weimar Republic, sued for peace and had everything taken from them. That’s no exaggeration. They lost territory, money and the right to build a military strong enough to defend their country in the future.
Israel isn’t going to do that. They can’t. They’re also smarter than that. But here’s the problem: What does the peace look like? How do Israel, Gaze, the Middle East and the rest of the world move on after this ends? What does that look like?
The New York Times does a good job defining the problem.
Former Israeli security officials are split on how to address the growing anarchy in northern Gaza, but many agree that until the government has a detailed, workable plan for how the enclave will be governed and made secure, it will be impossible to chart a path toward a more stable future. And they said Mr. Netanyahu should have long since developed such a plan.
“It’s a huge mistake” not to have a governing plan now, said Gen. Gadi Shamni, a retired commander of the Gaza division of the Israeli Defense Forces. “It might take months or even years to create a successful alternative, but we need to start moving things in that direction.”
“We will continue doing these back-and-forth operations much longer than necessary,” he said. “Every time the I.D.F. leaves an area, Hamas will return.”
When the guy who used to run things in that area says there’s a problem, there’s a problem.
This is weird territory for me, because I don’t generally support the existence of police states. Government, in my opinion, is the most dangerous thing ever invented by the human race. Every war, every true genocide, every forced migration, came from the use of government power. One of the reasons that I believe so strongly in the American Experiment is that we have a Constitution that recognizes that government needs to be handed a list of narrowly defined powers which it can exercise and that government should be bound and gagged in a locked in a cage any time it tries to exceed those mandates. Government is, at best, a necessary evil. When it exceeds its limits its no longer necessary. It’s just evil.
The problem is that defense against threats from without is a power that government has to have. Gaza militants are very clearly an existential threat to the existence of Israel and the lives of its citizens. The Israeli government has a responsibility to stay in Gaza and monitor the situation for as long as they need to to keep their people safe. They can’t afford to pull back again, like they did in 2005. I’ve wondered more than once how much of this mess is Israel’s fault because they abandoned their responsibility to the Israeli people then.
The conclusion, then, is that there needs to be some kind of military/paramilitary presence in Gaza after the war ends. I don’t want to see it limit the rights of Gazans any more than they have to. I don’t want to see random searches. I don’t want to see ideological limits placed on the people. I mean, it’s legal to hate on just about anyone in the United States right? Even people who hate Critical Social Theory and its sub-branch Critical Race Theory don’t think that its proponents should be jailed for their obvious hatred of white people. So, I guess, if Gazans want to teach their children to hate Jews, they have as much right to do teach hate as the public schools in the States have to teach our kids to hate white people.
What needs to happen is a serious attempt to prevent attacks on the Israeli land and people, not just in terms of another October 7, but rocket attacks or any of the other smaller, but still deadly attacks. What needs to happen is an immediate response every time an attack is made; an attempt to track it to its source and immediately bring the perpetrators to justice, in a courtroom if possible or with gunfire if not.
Who that armed presence is provided by is open for debate. It will most likely be Israel, but if an Arabic country is willing to put its own citizens on the line to defend the lives of Israelis then that works, too. If Israel is willing to accept oversight and inspection of its enforcement efforts by Arabic officials that’s alright, provided again that there are Arabic countries willing to provide that oversight. Something needs to be done though. And by all that’s holy, Israel needs to stop with the hostage exchanges.
I mean that seriously. Paying the Danegeld just means receiving more demands from the Dane. Continuing to trade innocent Israelis for the people that are killing them gives Hamas all the incentive it needs to keep kidnapping Israelis. Do I expect this to be a universally popular policy among Israelis? No, especially not among those families whose loved ones get kidnapped. The fact remains that a no-exchanges policy is necessary if Israel wants to protect their citizens long term. On one hand, a no-exchanges policy is a necessary evil. On the other hand, a no exchanges policy is a necessary evil. It’s going to suck. The political consequences will most likely be severe. It still has to happen.
One would hope that there are things going on behind the scenes to make all of this possible. I’ve seen no indications that it has but, with back channel diplomacy, I wouldn’t. A large part of the problem is that Israel didn’t want this war. On October 6 The Israelis didn’t know it was coming. Now that they’ve had this dropped in their lap they need to get things figured out. There is no hope for a lasting peace if nothing happens here.