After a year of complete destruction of Gaza, with its army using overwhelming force to suppress Hamas fighters, Israel is exhausted and increasingly isolated.
Excessive violence against a Palestinian civilian population, held captive in its own enclave, has weakened support for Israel, despite strong support from the United States. The Israeli economy is in tatters, with the port of Eilat having filed for bankruptcy. Its agriculture is stagnating and its tourism industry is non-existent.
Instead of negotiating a ceasefire in the face of the attack on Gaza – the root cause of the violence and barrages of rockets and missiles against Israel and international shipping transiting the Red Sea – Israel embarked on a new military offensive, this time in southern Lebanon against Hezbollah.
A war too far
The potential quagmire of war with Hezbollah will deplete the Israeli economy and military. The chimera of the “buffer zone” will only drag Israel into a conflict that it cannot win in the long term. The idea that Hezbollah can somehow be eliminated is naive, but this idea was implemented by Israel, with the suffering of the Lebanese people and the destruction of large parts of Lebanon being the result. direct.
As in 2006, all Hezbollah has to do is survive for the group to claim victory – and as long as Gaza continues and Israeli troops are in Lebanon, Hezbollah’s rockets and missiles will continue to fall on Israel.
Israel has embraced the concept of a multi-front war, with its armed forces trained for such an eventuality. But the nature of this conflict is different.
Mistakes learned from past victories
Israel’s view of its history is steeped in wars of “the few against the many” and a tale of how a small country fought off multiple aggressors in brief, bitter wars that left its enemies defeated and Israel victorious. Victories, however, can be dangerous – especially when hubris rears its ugly head in a militarized society, where the army runs like a spine through Israeli cultural and political life.
The vast majority of Israeli citizens have served in the armed forces, while most of the country’s leaders have served in special forces or as generals. American psychologist Abraham Maslow once wrote: “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you see every problem like a nail. » The misapplication of military force to fundamentally political problems has brought Israel, step by step, to its current situation.
The country has shifted dramatically to the far right – particularly among its youth, who are increasingly intolerant of Palestinians and are also of military age. A weak political system that relies on coalition governments, usually held hostage by small extremist political parties, is accompanied by a leader whose political survival depends on the emergency conditions of war to remain in power. The resulting groupthink will be a calamity for Israel and its neighbors.
Israel’s enemies know better than to engage its powerful, well-equipped and well-trained army in conventional warfare, and they are increasingly resorting to asymmetric tactics to thwart Israel’s advantage. The raids, the rockets, the ambushes, the tunnel complexes, the slow, gradual war on the Israeli economy – all of it is slowly wearing down Israel, with its allies increasingly disenchanted by the large-scale suffering the country has unleashed in the name of the defense.
Yet Israel continues to use conventional weapons against its adversaries, with the lure of decisive victories and interesting solutions still looming on the horizon.
Growing isolation
With no sign of a solution to the war on Gaza in sight, the “normalization” of relations between Israel and the region’s Arab states has been put on hold, perhaps indefinitely. The United States saw its considerable efforts to bring Israel into the regional diplomatic fold quickly dissipate.
Arab states are increasingly denouncing the immorality of the war against Gaza and the dangers to regional stability. This danger was amplified by the Israeli ground offensive in southern Lebanon.
Warning after clear warning, leader after regional leader, another war, especially if the first has not been resolved, is beyond reckless, leading to increasing economic disruption and a weakening of the international order.
By providing full support to Israel, regardless of its excesses, the United States is degrading the power and global presence of the United Nations. Increasingly seen as irrelevant, UN resolutions are ignored and voices within the UN General Assembly are ignored.
This diminished the body’s relevance and consensus, gradually paving the way for the League of Nations, where increasingly intolerant and polarizing views helped lead to World War II, the greatest calamity yet humanity has ever inflicted on itself.
The eternal war
Where will this end? How will this end? Will it ever end? It is highly unlikely that Israel’s enemies can be decisively defeated, but prospects for peace are slim. The eternal war will drag on, offering sadness instead.
An extremist ideology has developed in Israel that has no problem with ethnic cleansing, with ideologues in Israel believing that their time has come, that the historic opportunity to get rid of the Palestinians once and for all is now.
Populations are now brutalized and displaced, economies shattered, airstrikes, missile strikes, bombs, militias, an Israeli army and population completely insensitive to the suffering they cause in the name of defense – and amidst of all this, traumatized Palestinians see what little they left destroyed.
And Israel? It’s not one iota safer.