Bernard Spiegal

The Middle East is in a phase of radical uncertainty. Speculation is rife.  Will Israel launch a ground offensive against Hezbollah?  Will Hezbollah expand the scope and severity of its attacks on Israel? By the time you read this, the answers may be known. Or remain as uncertain as it is at the time of writing.

Missed aim

Israel recently added a fourth war aim to its original three.  The original three are:

• The elimination of Hamas and its military capabilities
• The return of all the hostages taken during the 7 October attack
• Ensuring that the Gaza Strip no longer poses a threat to Israel

Commentators I have read are clear that none of the goals have been achieved, notwithstanding that the war on Gaza is entering its twelfth month. Israel continues to decimate Gaza, killing and maiming with perverse regularity.  OCHA’s September 6^th report confirm this:

Ongoing strikes by Israeli Security Forces (ISF) continue, with aerial, land and maritime bombardments across the Gaza Strip, resulting in civilian casualties, displacement and the destruction of residential structures and public infrastructure.

IDF Spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari agrees that Israel’s war aim of eradicating Hamas is not attainable:

This business of destroying Hamas, making Hamas disappear — it’s simply throwing sand in the eyes of the public. Hamas is an idea, Hamas is a party. It’s rooted in the hearts of the people — anyone who thinks we can eliminate Hamas is wrong

Now, Netanyahu has added a fourth war aim:

Returning the residents of the north securely to their homes

What is the point of generating additional war aims that, certainly if we take the first three as a guide, have a high probability of not being achieved? Is it perhaps that non-achievement is not seen as a straightforward negative?

From this perspective, non-achievement serves as a counter-intuitive justification for continuing the war. This because continuing the war is supportive of PM Netanyahu’s overriding objective – remaining as PM for as long as possible. His strategic aim is to avoid being held accountable for Israel’s unpreparedness on 7^th October, facilitating thereby Hamas’s Gaza breakout. This avoidance tactic – remaining as PM for as long as possible – is also functional in keeping at bay the corruption charges he will face once the protective carapace of immunity from prosecution that being PM affords, falls away.

Netanyahu’s personal motives mesh neatly with the strident, racist-infused, far-right, messianic Knesset members – Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir being vile examples – now part of the Government that sustains Netanyahu in office. 

All the above may well be correct, but this should not lead to the alluring, though erroneous, conclusion that but for Netanyahu being PM, Israel would take a more pacific path, one as yet untravelled. This would be a false reading. For beneath the surface of Netanyahu’s detractors runs a wide consensus that broadly agrees with his approach to Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem; and now Israel’s attacks on Lebanon and Hezbollah. Noa Landau in Haaretz puts it this way:

it’s important to remember that the Israeli opposition to Netanyahu is a movement that mainly opposes the man himself. Initially, this was due to the corruption cases against him, and over the years also because of the moves he led as a result – primarily the attack on the rule of law.

When it comes to hawkish security, the ‘Anyone but Bibi’ camp is quite close to Netanyahu’s policy.

There is a strategy

Many commentators, not least retired IDF Officers, berate Netanyahu for not having a strategy, this said in respect of Gaza, and now, arguably, applicable to the assault on Lebanon. But this may be wrong in a quite fundamental way.

There is a strategy. That strategy is to ethnically cleanse as many Palestinians as possible from historic Palestine.  This is ongoing, now with particular vigour as the world’s attention flows away from Gaza and the West Bank towards Hezbollah and Lebanon. Certainly, in this period, the dispossession of West Bank and East Jerusalem Palestinian land and houses by the Israeli state and settlers has intensified.

The tactic emanating from that strategy, is the pursuit of a continuous state of war.  Continuous military action, be that in Gaza, West Bank, East Jerusalem, and now Lebanon.

Deep roots of violence

At the deep, cultural-sociopsychological level, Israel is addicted to violence. There are three aspects to this.

First, Israel considers itself victim of others ingrained enmity. That such enmity exists, Israel believes, has nothing to with Israel’s actions. It is freestanding, but almost certainly motivated by antisemitism. And if it’s motivated by antisemitism, then what Israel actually does, is neither here nor there. The enmity is, so to speak, naturalised and inevitable. Armoured thus, protected by an ironclad sense of grievance and victimhood, Israel grants itself carte blanche to do as it chooses. And purports surprise and hurt if objection is raised.

Second, there is belief in the effectiveness of violence: it kills or cowers those opposing Israel’s will. This belief is immune to contrary evidence.  That Gaza, decimated beyond imaginings, continues to resist via Hamas and its allies, angers Israel, but also bemuses.

Because bemused, Israel has but a limited, colourless palate of possible responses to those that persist in resisting it. Israel knows only black and white, thereby condemning itself to repeating patterns of behaviour – the application of violence – that are deeply dysfunctional, ultimately for Israel itself.

The final aspect is Israel’s state ideology – implicit and explicit. That ideology is deeply racist, necessarily infusing day-to-day perceptions of reality, and the decision-making that flows from it.

A racist orientation presupposes that some class of people, in this case Palestinians (needless to say this extends to refugees and asylum seekers), are Untermenschen – sub-human. Sub-humans, by definition, neither think, nor indeed are able to feel, as we do; therefore, much cruelty against the Untermensch is permitted, indeed, viewed as deserved.

What Israel is incapable of seeing, is adept at avoiding, is that the political ideology that spawned it – Zionism – and the mode of being it has chosen to pursue, necessarily provokes opposition from its Palestinian victims. Deep-rooted, morally-infused, existential, justified opposition.  

Need for another war

The war on Gaza is not won. Equally, Hamas and allied groups, are not, for the present, the force they once were. Military action in Gaza will continue, still callous and cruel, but at a lower level of intensity than it has been up to now. 

Netanyahu and his allies needed another war, and thus Israel provoked one with Hezbollah. Provoked in the cruellest, most ethically-barren way by turning Pagers and Walkie-Talkies into lethal weapons. Weapons to be activated, with no warning, at a time of Israel’s choosing. By virtue of the nature of the now-weaponised devices, it was inevitable that civilians – children and adults – would be killed and maimed in great numbers. And so it has been. 

We are now in the aftermath of that initial bloody assault. As I write, Israel is pounding Lebanon and Hezbollah from the air.  We are seeing the Gaza playbook in action once again: civilians – children and adults – are necessarily targets, this by virtue of Israel’s approach to rules of engagement. It is, apparently, justifiable to kill an entire family so long as you also eliminate an alleged ‘terrorist’. A perverse equation.

The deafening sound of effective inaction

As to the hostages held by Hamas and allied groups, the cries of protest and distress of their relatives and friends have counted as nothing in the face of Netanyahu and his government’s pursuit of their own ends.

As to the International Community (so called) and the Rule-based International Order (so called), when most needed, it failed to save a single child, or prevent a single missile from finding its target. 

What should have been stopped, could have been stopped, if the USA in particular had required it. 

In the meantime, the USA, the UK and the West in general, shame themselves by inaction whilst mouthing contentless vacuities. 

The long-term consequences of all this, have yet to unfold.