After now more than a year of war in Gaza, and one month into the war with Hezbollah, opinions on where this will lead differ.
On the one hand, there are those who think that the war, apart from the enormous human costs, is a resounding success for Israel, in the three main areas: The war against the Palestinians, the war against Hezbollah and the conflict with Iran. This is for example the case of Robert Grenier, a retired CIA veteran who has served in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and who has written an article in Vox, titled “How Israel’s brutal war strategy has remade the Middle East”. “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is harking back to a day, decades ago, when Israel’s military superiority was so overwhelming that no other power in the region could dare seriously challenge it” (...) “This is all about deterrence, demonstrated through overwhelming, asymmetric reaction to any military provocation”, he writes. Israel has succeeded in “cutting off both the head and the hands of its enemies” (Hamas and Hezbollah).
Regarding the third conflict, that with Iran, he considers the two missile attacks that Iran has carried out on Israel as “largely impotent” because of Israel’s efficient Iron Dome missile-defence system. “What this means is that we can stop fearing a wider regional war because it is already being fought, and Israel has largely won it. And with it, the relative deterrence Israel sought has been restored.”
As for Palestine, “its future is a question no more. Diplomats from the US, Europe, and the Arab world can save themselves the effort: There will be no negotiations worthy of the name and no solutions in Gaza or the West Bank, other than those unilaterally imposed by Israel and tacitly permitted by the US.” “Even if occupied Palestinian lands aren’t formally annexed, a unitary Israeli state from the river to the sea is all but inevitable. (…) What will be left is managing the optics of what is clearly apartheid.” And he thinks that Israel’s strategy is to make life unbearable for the Palestinians in Gaza and on the West Bank, making them flee endemic poverty and hopelessness. So that will solve the ethnic cleansing challenge. Time is on Israel’s side, he thinks.
There is of course a draw-back for Israel, as it is becoming an international pariah, “but (it) carries few practical consequences when balanced, as it is, with unblinking American support”. And he thinks that when dust has settled, geopolitical interests will be “driving a de facto Saudi alliance with Israel”. So according to him, Israel’s future looks bright.
CENTCOM Commander General Michael Erik Kurilla with IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi in Israel, 5 August 2024. The American Military is cooperating closely with the Israeli Military. At the same time we are supposed to believe that the US is doing its best trying to reign in the Israelis in their atrocities in Gaza and the West Bank. Truth is that they agree on Israel’s strategy. https://www.jfeed.com/news-israel/shr0ft
On the other hand, there are those who, while recognizing the relative success of Israel’s brutal military strategy, think that it is not that simple. One example is the American political scientist and international relations scholar, John Mearsheimer, for example in this video. He shares the interpretation of Israel as an Apartheid State and of Israel’s brutal strategy: First the creation of an Apartheid State, Greater Israel, “from the River to the Sea”, and second the “solution to the Palestinian question” by making life in Gaza and the West Bank unbearable, and hence drive them out. Consequently, if they achieve that, Israel would no longer be an Apartheid State, but an ethnically cleansed Jewish State. From the River to the Sea.
Moral and emotional questions apart (but more on that later, we start looking at Realpolitik), where they differ is in the assessment of Israel’s military successes and in the viability of their Greater Israel strategy.
In the video mentioned above, Marsheimer differs on several points:
Firstly, he thinks that Israeli has not been able to drive the Palestinians out. As long as there are Palestinians left within this Greater Israel, there will always be resistance, be that Hamas or other resistance groups. This is any occupying power's dilemma. When you take other people’s land you have to either kill them or drive them out.
Secondly, he thinks that Israel has lost the “escalation dominance”, which consists in being able to respond to any attack by taking the conflict to a higher level. Basically it is: you hit me, and I will hit you double so hard. This has been Israel’s principal strategy since its creation. So they clearly assess the effect of the October 1st Iranian missile attack on Israel and Israel’s military victory over Hamas and Hezbollah differently. Hezbollah has been shaken, but defeated?
Thirdly, Israel appears to have no strategy regarding what to do with Gaza if they can’t drive people out. I guess what they will do is strengthen the fencing of the area so it is a complete prison camp, do the utmost to hinder humanitarian aid and support to reconstruction to come into the camp and then let people rot until they either die or leave. They know that the “International Community” and most Arab countries in the end don’t care, as long as Israel has the backing from the US. Just look at the meek EU protests over the atrocities that are committed. No talk of sanctions, excluding Israel from international scientific cooperation projects, cultural events (they weren’t even excluded from the Eurovision contest), sports events etc. So the reaction is: nothing.
The fourth point is that Iran has not been defeated. It seems that Israel’s strategy is to provoke an escalation of missile blows with Iran, with the goal of drawing in the US more directly and force it to participate in a joint attack on Iran. The US hawks see this as a historic opportunity to defeat Iran and provoke a regime change to “reshape the Middle East”, Iraq-war style. But it is worth remembering how the US fared in Iraq. Do they really want to do that again? Anyway, don’t expect EU to do anything to stop it. Nobody takes them seriously.
The EU countries are lamenting the brutal killings in Gaza. But it is pure hypocrisy as they continue providing unconditional support, politically and militarily. They don’t lift a finger to stop the killings. Photo: Germany’s foreign minister Annelene Baerbock with her friend Netanyahu in April 2024.
So much on Realpolitik. Now some words on the morality of all this.
Personally I find the whole US-Israeli project of killing and ethnic cleansing in Palestine, and the lack of any response from the EU outrageous. The Zionist project has been fundamentally wrong from the beginning, and against all human rights principles. It was wrong that the US and the European powers (including the Soviet Union) let the Palestinian people pay for the European genocide against Jews under World War II, with which they had nothing to do. Until recently, I had the pragmatic viewpoint that whatever the injustices and massacres committed when creating the Jewish State of Israel, it is there, it is a reality on the ground, and it has been recognized by a majority in UN in 1948 (against the votes of the Arab countries). So the solution would be to give the Palestinians a State of their own on the occupied West Bank and in Gaza and find a way for the two peoples to coexist within Palestine (the “two-state solution” stipulated in the 1993 Oslo Accords).
However, it is clear that Israel will not accept “the two state solution”, and that the US is not going to force them to do that. To this comes that as Israel has continued expanding its settler-colonial project for decades with tacit support from the US and the EU, the two-state solution is becoming increasingly unviable. Israel defines itself as a Jewish State, but with the ongoing genocide in Gaza under the benevolent eyes of the US and the EU, Israel is risking the future of this State. Yes, it is a formally democratic State (if we don’t include the occupied territories), just as South Africa was under Apartheid, but it is an Apartheid State. It is worth remembering how Apartheid South Africa ended.
During the recent visit by Israeli President Herzog to the US, President Joe Biden repeated a line he famously said in 1986: “If there were not an Israel, we’d have to invent an Israel to protect out interests in the region.” So the support to Israel is to protect US interests in the region, not to defend democracy, values or whatever. By the way, the U.S. House of Representatives passed in that occasion a resolution stating that Israel is “not a racist or apartheid state”. But that doesn’t change the reality. They could just as well have voted denying that the Earth is round.
The Israeli (dissident) Historian Ilan Pappe, who is professor at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, argues that there is now hope for the collapse of Zionism and the creation of a free Palestine from the river to the sea. Really? With the US and EU standing firmly by their close military ally Israel, despite all atrocities, come what may, who will stop Israel? The Palestinians will have to rely on themselves.
Israel should remember the phrase from the New Testament: "All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword."
Cartoon from Lebanese Newspaper The Daily Star.
