Two summers ago Israel spent a month playing war in Lebanon. They bombed cities all over the country, sent thousands of troops into the border area and inflicted a shitload more casualties, military and civilian, than they sustained. However, the war was provoked by Hezbollah and in the aftermath it was Hezbollah that was widely viewed as having won. You’d be hard pressed to call it a total victory, they did get the crap kicked out of them, but they fought the Israeli giant for a month, gave him a bloody nose, and lived to tell about it.
Flash forward to last weekend and the parallels are striking. Operating out of the Gaza Strip, Hamas declared its paper thin “cease-fire” expired and stepped up its ineffectual but highly disruptive rocket attacks on Israel. The rockets they use are little more than metal tubes which have no guidance, very little ordinance, and extremely limited range. Those deficiencies are more than offset by their advantages, however, as they are quick and easy to manufacture and a firing position can be setup and dismantled in minutes.
As a result of the ease with which these rockets can be built and fired there is no way for the Israeli military to effectively counter them short of reoccupying Gaza. Of course, doing that would put their soldiers in close proximity to very hostile Palestinians running the gamut from stone throwing children to battle hardened soldiers with automatic weapons. They’ve tried that before and it didn’t work, on the other hand they can’t just sit back and watch the rockets fly. It’s a lose-lose situation for Israel.
Hamas knows that, its leadership isn’t stupid, and that is precisely why they fire the rockets: to provoke an Israeli response. And the Israeli government, which is all but leaderless at the moment and less than two months away from an election, just gave Hamas exactly what it wanted. Hamas knows the Israeli response is going to be painful and that its going to kill a lot of their own people, but they also know that the chances of Israel being able to wipe them out completely are close to zero.
It is a grisly gambit, but there is an undeniable logic to it. Hamas sees Hezbollah as a model to be emulated. The latter gained immense prestige for twice driving Israel out of Lebanon; has now become a legitimate part of the Lebanese government; and is slowly inching its way towards wider respectability. Hamas would very much like the same thing and the Israelis are obliging them.
The Israeli bombardment has been big on explosions but has done little more than fill hospitals and generate world outrage. Hamas is in little to no danger of immediate collapse; their top leadership isn’t even located in Gaza. The only potential upside to this is that when the dick waving is done the Israeli government may finally realize that control over Gaza and the West Bank are no longer feasible objectives. It was a realization dearly purchased in southern Lebanon, and though the same people are in charge, here’s hoping they learn a little quicker this time; because the sooner cooler heads prevail, on both sides, the better.
