As the ceasefire ends, a question from history lingers: will Israel win the battle but lose the war against Hamas? | Israel-Hamas war | The Guardian
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Jason Burke in Jerusalem
One lesson from the 1982 Lebanon war is that Israel's enemy only needs to survive against superior firepower to gain an advantage
The scene is one familiar from many conflicts. Soldiers line up to get food from an outdoor canteen, weapons slung haphazardly over their shoulders, boots muddy, shirts undone. An armoured personnel carrier clanks by, the roar of its engine temporarily drowning out the boom of artillery. Officers shout orders. Tired men jump down from dusty vehicles and swear.
Even during the recent ceasefire, the rear areas of the massive Israeli military offensive in Gaza were busy. So too was Hamas, which used the seven-day pause in hostilities to reorganise its battered forces and reconstitute some of its degraded capabilities.
At 6.45am on Friday, 15 minutes before the truce was due to expire, Hamas fired a barrage of rockets into southern Israel. All day, the apps that most Israelis have on their phones that warn of incoming missiles buzzed and beeped. In the late afternoon, drivers on the northern outskirts of Tel Aviv pulled over, left their cars and lay down in the dirt of the roadside - the recommended routine when incoming rockets are signalled.
What the Israeli military had been preparing rapidly became clear. At 7.04am exactly, the first airstrikes hit targets in Khan Younis in the southern part of Gaza. An hour or so later, a doctor in the European hospital in the city described his fears for the coming hours.
"First, they'll go to emergency and then they'll come to me," said Paul Ley, an orthopaedic surgeon with the International Committees of the Red Cross, who has been operating on civilian casualties of Israeli airstrikes for weeks. The howl of ambulance sirens could be heard in the distance as he talked to the Observer.
When contacted again in early evening, Ley had performed eight amputations, including the double amputation of legs from a two-year-old child, whose entire family had been wiped out earlier in the day, except for one badly injured brother.
"I've not left the [operating] theatre all day, so I don't know how many casualties have come in so far," Ley said. "But they keep coming."
That hostilities started again came as little surprise to anyone in the region. The seven-day ceasefire brokered by Qatar, Egypt and the US had been forced on the reluctant Israeli government because domestic public pressure meant that the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, could not refuse an opportunity to bring home at least some of the 240 hostages snatched by Hamas when the militant organisation broke through the perimeter fence around Gaza close to two months ago and killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in their homes or at a music festival.
The fact that Israeli official government releases speak of the "redemption" of the hostages was revealing. Beyond that of 84 Israeli women and children taken into terrifying, traumatising and sometimes brutal captivity, it is also a partial redemption of the country's leaders, whose catastrophic failures allowed the attack in the first place.
But the ceasefire had run its course. Hamas was the bigger beneficiary, winning the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails and receiving a huge boost in popularity in return.
This worried many. Speaking to the Observer, Kobi Michael of the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv said he was concerned that Israel was prioritising the security of individual citizens over "collective and national security".
Others put it more bluntly. Approximately 15,000 people have been killed in Gaza during the Israeli offensive, including about 6,000 children and 4,000 women, according to Hamas-run authorities. Hundreds more have reportedly been killed since the ceasefire broke down. "The Arabs only understand force and anything else is seen as a weakness," one former intelligence officer said.
For the moment, Israeli society remains squarely behind the war. It is also convinced that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) will win. But this confidence may be misplaced, according to some commentators.
Last month, Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East programme at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, published a commentary entitled "Israel could lose." It received little attention, perhaps because the formidable reputation of Israel's military and the disparity of forces now deployed in the conflict made its argument too counterintuitive.
"Hamas is thinking about this as losing the battle but winning the war. Their concept is not that they can beat Israel on the battlefield. They know that Israel will act militarily and decisively in the coming months but Hamas sees what it is doing as a generational effort that is much larger," Alterman said.
The core of his argument is that Hamas follows the logic of martial arts such as judo and seeks to turn the strength of its enemy into a vulnerability.
"Hamas hopes that Israel can hit so hard that it weakens Israel. Israel's capabilities are practically infinite but Hamas sees … an advantage from Israeli overreach … [which] builds sympathy for Hamas and antipathy towards Israel."
The Israeli military is now beginning to fight its way into southern Gaza - trying to root out an insurgency in the middle of a densely populated urban environment amid an acute humanitarian crisis.
Many commentators have pointed to a parallel with the Yom Kippur war of 1973, which saw a similar intelligence failure.
In a word, the Israel-Palestine war is about 'terrorism': from the archive, 30 June 1982Read more
A better parallel may be the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, which was also sparked by a terrorist attack, though of such differing scale and lethality that it does not bear comparison. In 1982, the attempted assassination of Israeli ambassador Shlomo Argov in London served as pretext for a long-considered, though wildly unrealistic, plan. In 2023, the Hamas attack revealed a lack of strategic thinking, not an excess.
But in 1982 the IDF and the Israeli government also ended up laying siege to an urban area as they sought to root out what they called terrorists. The target was the Fakhani neighbourhood of Beirut, where the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was based. A key aim was to kill Yasser Arafat, its leader.
Then, too, the toll of civilian casualties was horrific, prompting international outrage. Then too, Israel's enemies deliberately hid among the population, with bunkers under blocks of flats and anti-aircraft weapons next to schools. The city's buildings were the defenders' "best barricades", one PLO leader later said.
The 1982 siege of Beirut ended when US president Ronald Reagan called Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and warned that the "holocaust" in the Lebanese capital risked damaging relations between their countries.
"I think I know what a Holocaust is," drily replied Begin, whose family had been wiped out by the Nazis, but who complied nonetheless. Thousands of PLO fighters then left on ships for other Arab countries and Israel claimed victory.
Now, the 1982 war is seen as a catastrophe. Not only did it mark a turning point in the view of Israel in international opinion - from a plucky Middle Eastern David to a bullying, heavily armed Goliath - but it divided Israeli society and committed the country to decades of a draining occupation.
The expulsion of the PLO also aided the rise in Lebanon of Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Islamist militant group and political movement. This enemy is now considered by Israel to be far more formidable than Hamas.
In Gaza, violence is now an extension of negotiations, and the negotiations part of the violence. Many observers predict successive rounds of fighting and ceasefires as hostages are gradually traded for Palestinian prisoners and other concessions, such as increased humanitarian aid.
The cost to Israel will rise, however, especially for the soldiers held by Hamas and allied armed factions. Ezaat al-Rashq, a Hamas leader, told Qatar's Al Araby TV last week that the organisation would "negotiate over [Israeli] military prisoners but at the right time and the price will be much higher". Hamas leaders have also said they would trade all Israeli hostages for all Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Eyal Hulata, a former national security adviser in Israel, said no one should expect Israel to "go for something like that" and that Hamas were "overplaying their hand".
But if this fits with Israeli military planners' vision of a grinding campaign to obliterate Hamas as a political force and military threat, and force the group to free the hostages, it does not quite match the political reality.
As in 1982, decisions in Washington may end or at least mitigate the violence. US president Joe Biden and the Democratic party, facing a tough election campaign, have many reasons for wanting this deeply divisive conflict to end.
Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, has already signalled that Americans will tolerate only weeks, not months, of Israeli military action. Hawkish Israeli officials say this would leave their job in Gaza "half done" but others see little chance of a swift resolution.
Last month, Emi Palmor, a former senior Israeli official involved in the 2011 deal with Hamas to free captured IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, suggested to the Observer that bringing back all the hostages may take years.
This timescale may suit Hamas. Netanyahu has defined victory as the elimination of the enemy, a goal only rarely achieved by any military even against another conventional force.
But the old strategic adage is clear: the insurgents, militants, guerrillas, terrorists, or whatever word you choose, need only to survive to win.
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In reality, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon was a disaster. For those of you too young to remember this war was bloody for both sides but especially for the Lebanese. The US ( President Reagan) requested that Israel stop bombing Lebanon. It also became a disaster for the US the very next year two of the most devasting terrorist attacks took place against the US, the April 1983 bombing of the US Embassy in Beirut and the Marine Corps barracks bombing. 63 were killed in the Embassy bombing of which 52 were American and Lebanese employees. The Marine Corps bombing killed 241 US servicemen mostly Marines and six Lebanese civilians. 79 US Marines were wounded.
A few moments later 58 French Paratroopers were killed in another suicide bombing.
The first major attacks by Hezbollah welcomed the US to the world of terrorism, this line extends directly to the present with the same countries/people involved.
There was a lesson that no one paid attention to, it seems.
Semper Fi.
What lesson?
1. The invasion by Israel turned into a disaster for Israel
2. Helbollah proved that they could withstand the full onslaught of Israel
3. It changed how Israel was viewed by the world community
4. It dragged the US and France in as ''peace keepers'' putting us in great danger.
5. The bombing of both the US Embassy and the Marine Corps barracks which showed that we were not ready/prepared for any terrorist groups by killing hundreds of Americans and allies.
6. That the US was no longer immune to terrorist attacks.
7. That the terrorist groups were far more advanced and wide spread then we imagined.
There you go.
You make some interesting points, but consider the gist of this article and what's really going behind the scenes...
I saw and read your article, and without a doubt, there is communication or signals being sent behind the scenes most ME nations want the Palestinians protected but have no use for Hamas or Hezbollah.
Jordan who has a treaty with Israel, in public told Israel they have to stop bombarding GAZA and the civilians that are being killled there, but they also have NO use for Hamas, but all of the Arab countries have to be very careful with what they say in public, most have large Palestinian populations and a revolt by them is something they don't need or want.
While all that is true, what other option does Israel have, given such an attack?
Don't get me wrong, I do see your points, but I really don't see that Israel had any other option.
Look at it this way, Perrie. Israel is between a rock and a hard place. What ever they do will piss some one off so IMO the best thing to do is one that will piss off the least number of people and at the same time ensuring the security of Israel. The current operation will do neither.
I'm not sure that there is one right way to handle this. Israel has been pissing off people for a while now. When we were bombed on 9/11, which is personal to me, since I was an eyewitness, we went into Afghanistan and basically leveled the place and then decided to take on two other countries, which was utter madness. Yet, we faced very little kickback. Sometimes people are going to hate on you, whether right or wrong.
There isn't only one right way there are numerous ways some better than others. Of course Israel has been pissing off people as has the US. It is best to find allies not create more enemies. Draw on your strengths when some lay right in front of Israeli eyes.
Our involvement after 9/11 was beyond stupid, don't get me started on that fiasco.
This article is no surprise to me. As you know, previously on another seed posted here I posted the words that Israel may win the war against Hamas, but it will also lose, and in that regard it is already losing - did you see that a pro-Palestinian protester lit himself on fire? Have the pro-Palestinian demonstrations demand with the words "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free", the chant demanding the eradication of Israel, I am convinced that winning the battle against Hamas will be a pyrrhic victory, because Israel is already losing. I said it before, Hamas has ALREADY won. The bleeding hearts have won. Israel will be reviled, and will never be safe. New groupings of terrorists will continue to rise even if Hamas is obliterated. The civilized world will NEVER be safe from the bloodthirsty sadistic barbaric terrorists. Obviously 9/11 was not a good enough lesson.
No, I did not see that, Buzz.
No Buzz, I don't believe that at all, there is still a lot of support for Israel, and here that are going to those support the Palestinians, that is a fact and reality. My point is that the current ''solution'' isn't working and never will so what does that leave us? We need to find a way to establish peace in that Israel is secure and the Palestinians have a country. How is that accomplished, the author of the article came up with some good ideas and that is where you start, mix and match pieces of one solution and part of another, what every will work because the current path is not working.
Protester lights self on fire. LINK ->
Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad will never give up and wasn't it you who said that if you cut the tentacle off of something it will grow back? Israel is blamed for contravening International Law, but the terrorists are not blamed for doing worse, and for making it impossible to stop them because it is their religion to do worse and they lodge themselves among the civilians, and notwithstanding they use the civilians as cannon fodder as human shields it will NEVER END. Never mind NEVER AGAIN, it will NEVER END.
No, they will not, and as I've stated on a number of occasions the Palestinians will have to throw them out with whatever help they can muster.
Yes, Israel is blamed for contravening Intl law, but terrorists are blamed as well as can be seen right here on NT.
It will never end with the present solution, you cannot kill your way to peace. A new path must be found and tried because the current one is just carrying on a history of failure.
Israel isnt going anywhere. Their existence and independence is guaranteed by the stated foreign policy of the greatest military power in world history, the United States of America. The idea that Israel's existence is threatened by groups like Hamas is borderline ridiculous.
It sounds better though to say that Israel is fighting for its existence therefore it must bomb civilian areas.
Everything you say here is correct Kavika.
Policies are subject to change, especially from pandering politicians.
That is their goal, clearly stated, and they will not quit until dead or successful.
Maybe Israel should just resign itself to random rocket attacks and ignore them as they bury their dead.
What would sound better is the truth. Israel is doing what it must to protect its citizens, and Palestinians are collateral damage BECAUSE OF HAMAS, who use them as shields and because Palestinians seem loathe to change.
Why go way back to 1982? It's only necessary to go back to 2008 to find an example of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
What is happening now is deja vu all over again. The Oct. 7th terrorist attack provides its own lesson in the context of past dealings with Hamas. Or is this some sort of dog whistle call for Israel to nuke Iran?
1982 was a turning point in the items I listed above and it wasn't about the crease fire as it was about the change in the whole terrorist/Israeli/US/World opinion and actions.
A question that ignorant isn't worth responding too.
Terrorism against Israel did not begin in 1982. If there is a lesson from 1982 Lebanon it is that Israel cannot stop until Hamas is destroyed. Otherwise the terrorism continues. World opinion will always be against Israel regardless of circumstance. Why should Israel appease the world by giving up safety? The lesson from 1982 is never agree to a ceasefire with terrorists. That's the lesson the US ignored in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
Neither Israel nor Hamas have any good options going forward. Ultimately there will be a cease fire until is again violated in the future. Right or wrong, Israel has lost world opinion. Gaza was poor and miserable before, now it is even more so and the damage will last for years. If Hamas's strategic goal was disrupting a Saudi-Israel peace deal, they accomplished it at least for a while, but at a tremendous cost. Hamas had to know what would occur following 7 Oct proving that they don't give a shit about the Palestinian civilians. The PA is a pathetic, old corrupt organization that remains impotent.
Neither side has a lasting endgame. Israel will be forced to either occupy Gaza or fortify and main tain tight security around Gaza that will prevent any kind of real economy. Gazans will remain dependant on donations as the live in squalor.
None of the Arab neighbors want to accept large numbers of Gazan's even to extend medical aid. The UN also has no solution, the EU won't do more than send a check. Demographics continue to work against a lasting settlement. The population of Gaza has grown from 340,000 in 1970 to more than 2.1 million know and continues to grow by 2% per year. Most of the population is young with no meaningful prospects. Ironically, their population will probably see a growth spurt following this round of hostilities.
After a cease-fire and several years of rebuilding Gaza to the same level of misery of 6 Oct. hostilities will resume.
Screw world opinion.
The UN has demonstrated adequately how much the world is on the wrong side of this war.
Schools in Gaza, run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) celebrated 7 Oct. Text books, paid for with US tax dollars are filled with propaganda and anti-Israeli hate. UNRWA has a history of glorifying terrorism.
Nothing the UN fails at surprises me anymore.
It would be surprising to see the UN actually accomplish something positive.
I agree with that drinker, and IMO it's going to get worse for Israel, having to occupy Gaza will require many of their reserves to be held active for years which is going to have a tremendous effect on the financial well-being of Israel. There are going to be millions of unemployed young Palestinians who will be radicalized in Gaza.
The other situation that plays into this is the West Bank it is going to explode any time soon. I saw today that a ''Settler'' killed a Palestinian. Israel will be facing a two-front war soon.