As Israeli operations against Hamas wind down, here are seven insights into the month-long conflict:
Missile shield: The
superb performance of Iron Dome, the protective system that shot down
nearly every Hamas rocket threatening life or property, has major
military implications for Israel and the world. Its success signals that
"Star Wars" (as opponents maliciously dubbed it upon introduction in
1983) can indeed provide protection from short-range and also presumably
from long-range rockets and missiles, potentially changing the future
of warfare.
Tunnels: Tunneling behind enemy lines is hardly a new tactic; historically, it has had success, as in the 1917 Battle of Messines,
when British mines killed 10,000 German soldiers. The Israel Defense
Forces knew of Hamas' tunnels before hostilities began on July 8 but
failed to appreciate their numbers, length, depth, quality of
construction, and electronic sophistication. Jerusalem quickly realized,
as the Times of Israel wrote, that "Israel's air, sea and land
supremacy is not mirrored underground." The IDF thus requires additional
time to achieve subterranean dominance.
Consensus in Israel:
Hamas' unrelenting barbarism created a rare consensus among Jewish
Israelis in favor of victory. This near unanimity both strengthens the
government's hand in dealing with outside powers. Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu admonished the U.S. administration never again to
second-guess him and is likely to move Israeli domestic politics decisively to the right into the nationalist camp.
Middle Eastern
response: With the exception of Hamas' state patrons (Turkey, Qatar,
Iran), the Islamist terrorists found almost no governmental support in
the region. In one striking example, Saudi king Abdullah said of Hamas
killing Gazans, "It is shameful and disgraceful that these terrorists
are [mutilating the bodies of innocents and proudly publicizing their
actions] in the name of religion." How well he knows his mortal enemy.
Rising anti-Semitism:
Especially in Europe, but also in Canada and Australia, anti-Semitism
came to the fore, mainly from Palestinians and Islamists as well as from
their far Left allies. This response will, in all probability, increase
immigration to the two havens of Jewish life, Israel and the United
States. By contrast, Middle East Muslims kept quiet, with the exception
of Turks and those Arabs living under Israeli control.
Elite vs. popular responses: It's not every day that the secretary-general of the United Nations and all 28 foreign ministers of the European Union side with Israel against an Arab enemy, but that did occur. In the U.S. Congress, the Senate unanimously approved and the House voted 395-8 in
favor of an additional $225 million for the Iron Dome program. In
contrast, among the wider public, pro-Israel sentiment declined almost
everywhere (although not in the United States).
How to explain this disparity? My hunch: Leaders imagine what they
would do if faced with enemy rockets and tunnels, while the public
focuses on photographs of dead babies in Gaza.
Dead babies: Which
brings us to the most complex, counter-intuitive, and strange aspect of
the entire conflict. Because the IDF enjoys a crushing advantage over
Hamas on the battlefield, their confrontation resembled a police
operation more than a war. Thus, Israelis were judged primarily by the
clarity of their leaders' public statements, the judicious use of force,
and the handling of evidence. Accordingly, media attention invariably
drifted from the military sphere to questions of proportionality,
morality and politics. Hamas' greatest strategic weapon in its effort to
damage Israel's reputation and ostracize it was neither rockets nor
tunnels, but wrenching photographs of dead civilians purportedly killed
by the IDF.
This leads to the
bizarre situation in which Hamas seeks the destruction of Palestinian
property, compels civilians to sustain injuries and death, inflates
casualty figures, and may even intentionally attack its own territory -- while the IDF takes gratuitous fatalities to spare harm to Palestinians. The Israeli government goes further, providing medical care and food and sending technicians into harm's way to make sure that Gazans continue to enjoy free electricity.
It's a curious war in
which Hamas celebrates Palestinian misery and Israel does its best to
keep life normal for its enemy. Strange, indeed, but this is the nature
of modern warfare, where op-eds often carry more weight than bullets. In Clausewitzian terms, war's center of gravity has moved from the battlefield to public relations.
In all, the civilized
and moral forces of Israel came off well in this face-off with
barbarism. But not well enough to forestall, for too long, yet another
assault.
Daniel Pipes is president of the Middle East Forum.
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