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Chaturanga

~ statecraft, strategy, society, and Σοφíα

Chaturanga

Tag Archives: Hamas

Mischief in Gaza

15 Tue May 2018

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in Israel, Middle East

≈ Comments Off on Mischief in Gaza

Tags

counter-terrorism, Gaza, Hamas, IDF, Israel, Israeli Defence Forces, Kerem Shalom, Nakba, Palestine, terrorism

It has been a bus couple of weeks in the world: the two Koreas are finally talking peace, the United States hopes to talk Pyongyang into at least curtailing if not abandoning its nuclear programme, US president Donald Trump has abandoned the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action his predecessor signed with Iran to bring its nuclear programme under greater international scrutiny, the US embassy in Israel shifted from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and elections were held in the Indian state of Karnataka that many see as make-or-break for the Congress party before the general elections next year. In the midst of this, Gaza has been on the boil as thousands of Palestinians have attempted to charge the border fence into Israel and the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) have, predictably, responded with strength.

The Gaza protests, dubbed the Great March of Return by Hamas, started on March 30 and are supposed to last until May 15, the day Palestinians commemorate as Nakba (catastrophe) Day. The purpose is manifold – to demand that Palestinian refugees be allowed to return to their lands in Israel, to protest the moving of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and to draw attention to the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip. Palestinians participating in the protests have varied in number from around 5,000 to 15,000 except on the first day which saw a turnout of 30,000.

Approximately 110 Palestinians have died so far in the protests. On May 14 alone, the 70th anniversary of the proclamation of the State of Israel, 58 Palestinians were killed and approximately 2,700 injured at the border fence in what many are calling a massacre. While the world paints the protests as peaceful and accuses Israel of using disproportionate force, the IDF maintains that the Palestinian demonstrations have been anything but peaceful and are a cynical and bloody ploy by Hamas to gain international sympathy and headlines by paying in Palestinian corpses. Interestingly, the loud international outcry has been drowned out in the muted response from Arab capitals.

The international version of the Gaza protests does not add up. For starters, the Palestinian protesters have been photographed in possession of Molotov cocktails and machetes, flying swastika flags – which can have only one meaning to a Jew – and been arrested trying to breach the border fence into Israel. This has been accompanied by the usual stone pelting and colourful calls to slaughter all Jews and wipe out all Zionists. In the early days of the demonstrations, Palestinians set fire to large mounds of tires in the hope that the smoke would damage Israeli agriculture; a sudden change in the direction of the wind foiled that plot. Undeterred, kites were used to carry tear gas and bombs into Israel to set crops on fire. These attempts have been slightly more successful but also largely failed thanks to an alert citizenry and the emergency services.

There is also the question of what the intentions of this unruly, violent mob were had they succeeded in crossing over into Israel. The locus of the protests was barely 500 metres away from the border fence but protesters attempted to approach the fence at several locations. Is it plausible that the mob, with inflamed passions, calmly turn around and head back to Gaza? The tactics of the crowds suggest otherwise. The IDF was, then, acting in a purely preventive manner.

The claim of peaceful gathering does not hold for yet another reason – nowhere in the world would security services allow such a large gathering of clearly incited people to accumulate so close to a high security zone. Areas such as borders, nuclear facilities, military bases, and the prime ministerial residence are not the same as roads and parks which are open to the common public. Any suspicious activity, let alone mass gatherings, near such restricted areas are viewed as a security threat and dealt with accordingly. Hamas’ call for Gazans to gather at the border must therefore be seen as at least provocative if not outright aggressive in its nature in the challenge it posed to Israeli security.

It is also telling that Kerem Shalom, the only crossing for goods from Israel to Gaza, was attacked. In three separate attacks, mobs torched the border crossing and damaged depots containing building material destined for Gaza and fuel infrastructure. This would only worsen the electricity shortage in Gaza and slow international aid coming into the Strip. Hamas has also refused to accept Israeli humanitarian aid for the Palestinians injured in the clashes, reiterating their noxious brand of politics: the Gaza circus would only get international attention if there are enough casualties to merit a place in Western newspaper columns.

Finally, there is the old argument that Israel uses disproportionate force against terrorists. This is not the first time that accusation has been made but it is as unjustified as it has been in the past. The nature of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is fundamentally asymmetric – Palestinian terror organisations by design operate around non-combatant zones like civilian population centres, schools, and hospitals; they ensure the presence of women, children, the handicapped, and old people to manipulate the sympathies of the international audience in case of an Israeli strike against their bases; they do not wear uniforms and their targets are civilian structures rather than military assets. It is virtually impossible to strictly follow the rules of engagement reserved for inter-state conflict in such a scenario. The best that can be hoped for is the minimisation of collateral damage, civilians who have been put at risk by the terrorists’ strategy than by Israeli counter-attacks.

Moreover, deterrence contains an element of psychological warfare, of fear, and relies on disproportionate damage. If Israel is proportionate in its counter-terrorism strategy, it loses its advantage of power in the asymmetric struggle while the terrorists retain theirs. Furthermore, as a democratic country – that happens to be under demographic pressure – Israel cannot the tolerate casualties as casually as Hamas. Expectations also contribute to this – Hamas’ sympathisers do not expect it to be able to inflict equal damage upon Israel while the Israeli mainstream opinion remains in favour of punitive action to demoralise and humiliate the enemy.

Responsibility for the loss of life in Gaza over the past six weeks lies entirely at the feet of Hamas. It cannot be reasonably expected that the IDF sit back and allow tens of thousands of demonstrators to approach the border and breach the security fence, attack farms, crossing points, infrastructure, and Israelis. Anyone saying otherwise is either naïve or performing for a select audience.

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If I Forget Thee, O Jerusalem…

06 Wed Dec 2017

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in Israel, Middle East

≈ Comments Off on If I Forget Thee, O Jerusalem…

Tags

Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Ali Khamenei, Egypt, Fatah, HaBayit HaYehudi, Hamas, Iran, Israel, Jerusalem, Jordan, King Abdullah, Manuel Hassassian, Mavi Marmara, Mohammad bin Salman, Palestine, Psalm 137, Reuven Rivlin, Saudi Arabia, terrorism, Tzipi Hotovely, United States

“If I forget thee, O Jerusalem,” sang the Israelites, “may my right hand forget her cunning, may my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth.” That was approximately 2,600 years ago during the Babylonian captivity, a memory preserved in Psalm 137. To most Israelis, US president Donald Trump’s decision to declare his country’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel was simply a late awakening to a most basic fact.

To the rest of the world, Trump’s actions, as always, were reason for hyperbole and haranguing. The spokesman for the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said the US was “plunging the region and the world into a fire with no end in sight,” and the Palestinian envoy to the UK, Manuel Hassassian, added, “He is declaring war in the Middle East, he is declaring war against 1.5 billion Muslims.” As can be expected, criticism has been sharpest from Muslim states and with a little more diplomatic decorum from Europe, Russia, and China. In addition, analysts of all stripes have been all over print and the airwaves predicting great upheaval in the Middle East and the derailment of decades of patient US diplomacy.

It is unclear, however, how much of the breast-beating is warranted. The primary argument against Trump’s declaration seems to be that it will cause unrest in the Middle East. Yet when in the past several decades has something not caused unrest in the region? What is the guarantee that there will be no violence in Gaza if the United States desists from the announcement? Can anyone even distinguish the chaos due to the US declaration from the upheaval, tumult, riot, violence, or disturbance that are routine to the region, and at that point, does it really matter?

The countries of the Levant are swirling in a whirlpool of chaos, instability, and terrorism that has been largely of their own making for almost a decade. Arab street decries any move by the international community that may benefit Israel as detrimental to peace and stability, implicitly encouraging a complete blockade and destruction of the Jewish state.

It must also be remembered, as Tzipi Hotovely recently alluded to, that Israel has constantly lived in a state of undeclared war. Any more unrest that is promised by the terrorists of the Middle East will hardly be noticed in the quotidian deadly exchanges with Hamas, Hezbollah, the occasional Syrians, and other armed thugs.

Another point of criticism of the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital has been that it violates international law – Jerusalem is seen as occupied territory and any change of demographics on disputed land or official recognition to it is illegal. However, this fails to recognise that the United States has merely recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel but has not defined the boundaries of the city – that is still left to the Israelis and Palestinians in future peace negotiations.

One might argue that Washington’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel muddies its role as an impartial arbitrator. Yet that ship, at least in Arab eyes, has already sailed – no one views the Great Satan as a neutral judge. What Arabs and Israelis both count on is the diplomatic, economic, and military wherewithal the United States is capable of bringing to bear upon the side that violates a peace agreement.

What will Trump’s announcement have on the other states in the region? Iran’s leader Ali Khamenei has warned of dire consequences but it would be an unusual day when the Islamic Republic does not threaten to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. Trump’s announcement may force the Palestinians to show strength through terror and this might fray relations between Fatah and Hamas that had only recently been mended with much difficulty. However, Jerusalem does not recognise any Palestinian player as a genuine partner for peace – translation: dial down the terrorism – and there is no missed opportunity here.

Ankara has threatened to cut off diplomatic ties with Israel but relations have already been frigid between the two American allies after the Mavi Marmara incident in 2010. Egypt and Jordan, the two Arab states Israel has peace treaties with, have also not reacted positively to the news. Yet it is not sure what either Abdel Fattah el-Sisi or King Abdullah will or can do as neither country has had a particularly good past with the Palestinians.

The real question is about Saudi Arabia’s reaction to this all. Traditionally, Riyadh has stoked the Palestinian crisis periodically and refused to recognise the Jewish state. Recent rumours, however, have left several commentators murmuring about a clandestine US-Israel-Saudi Arabia alliance to contain Iran’s expanded influence in the Middle East after a successful turn of events in Iraq and Syria. The whispers became even louder after Trump tacitly supported a great purge in the Saudi royal family by the crown prince, Mohammad bin Salman. This has always seemed far-fetched to me and Washington’s recent dousing of Saudi ambitions in Lebanon – Saad Hariri’s removal – leaves one thinking that there are still some kinks in that plan.

More importantly, there were even rumours that Mohammad bin Salman had secretly flown to Israel to meet with its leaders to discuss a Palestinian peace plan, a normalisation of relations, and Iran. Such delicate ventures may be beyond the crown prince in view of his streak of recklessness on display in dealing with other crises such as Yemen. While there is indeed a temporary alignment of interests between Israel and Saudi Arabia, one bête noire does not a rapprochement make.

It is also unlikely, if such a triumvirate ever existed, that the topic of Jerusalem would not have cropped up. In that case, despite Riyadh’s official dismay at the US decision, it will be interesting to see what it actually does. Yet what about the impact on US ties with its other allies in the region such as Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates? Regardless of what State Department mandarins think, this administration has made it quite clear that American allies around the globe have not done enough. It is not improbable that Trump prefers to deal with Riyadh alone and coerce the “smaller” allies with the former’s help.

Could the Jerusalem declaration be part of Trump’s personal “charm?” The president is enveloped in legal battles and his administration has yet to be fully staffed or retain any member for a decent period. Trump had also promised during his election campaign that he would recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move the US embassy to the city. The Jerusalem declaration not only distracts his opponents from the domestic quagmire but also delivers on a campaign promise, thus reinforcing his image to his base, perhaps, as the anti-politician. It is also possible that Trump is using his declaration as a bargaining chip to force the Palestinians to the negotiating table, the message being that there is much to lose by holding out.

Ultimately, the issue is more religious than national as Hassassian’s statement clearly reveals. As the Oslo Accords and the failed Camp David Summit in 2000 demonstrated, Jerusalem is not a negotiable issue for either side. The Arabs want to control their holy site, the Haram al-Sharif; the Jews remind us that when that was the case before 1967, they were not given access to their holy sites. More than geopolitics, it is this facet that will shape the reaction of the Arab states to American recognition of Jerusalem as the Israelis capital – it would be political suicide to even sit idly by as the United States moved its embassy to the disputed city.

It is altogether a different matter to discuss Palestine’s right over Jerusalem or even its own existence, given that it has never existed as a state – before 1967, the West Bank, along with Jerusalem, was occupied by Jordan and the Gaza Strip by Egypt. The Palestinian government Cairo set up in the Strip, ironically, was not recognised by Jordan.

Israel’s reaction to Trump’s announcement has so far been muted but the bubbling joy underneath the uncharacteristically nonchalant surface is palpable. The most reaction came from Naftali Bennett, the leader of the HaBayit HaYehudi and the Minister for both, Education and Diaspora Affairs, who is said to have written to the US president, “thank you from the bottom of my heart for your commitment and intention to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.” Otherwise, the government has generally been quiet. The Israeli commentariat, however, has been effusive, Caroline Glick calling the decision 70 years late but welcome and Arsen Ostrovsky reiterating that Jerusalem is the “eternal & undivided capital of the State of Israel and the spiritual homeland of the Jewish people!” Most Israelis probably relate to the words of HaAvoda leader Avi Gabbay. When asked about the imbroglio that had resulted from Trump’s announcement he replied, “When my parents came from Morocco to Jerusalem, I can assure you they didn’t check the State Department website to see if it’s the capital or not. They knew Jerusalem was the capital and just came.”

But what does Trump’s declaration really matter? Jerusalem is the seat of the Israeli government as President Reuven Rivlin remarked, and no military in the Arab world is capable of removing them from it. No borders change on the ground and no one falls one the wrong side of a line; territories are not swapped. Is the whole drama not purely symbolic? Perhaps, but society is not so cynical yet that symbols have lost their value. And in the Middle East, few symbols are bigger than the City of David.

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That Longest War

17 Sat Jun 2017

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in Book Review

≈ Comments Off on That Longest War

Tags

A High Price, Charles Orde Wingate, counter-terrorism, Daniel Byman, David Ben-Gurion, Fatah, Hamas, Hezbollah, Israel, Khaled Mashal, Moshe Dayan, Palestine, Palestine Liberation Organisation, PLO, Raed Karmi, Ze'ev Jabotinsky

A High PriceByman, Daniel. A High Price: The Triumphs and Failures of Israeli Counterterrorism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. 496 pp.

Think of Israeli counter-terrorism and you are likely to conjure up an image that rivals any Hollywood blockbuster action film. The tiny Middle Eastern country is admired and looked up to by security professionals the world over from India to the United States for its grit, boldness, and methodical approach to counter-terrorism. Israel’s intelligence elite have maintained and even encouraged this myth for its psychological effect. The reality of this David and Goliath story, however, is closer to A Bridge Too Far than Raid on Entebbe. In his extensive study, A High Price: The Triumphs and Failures of Counterterrorism, Daniel Byman details the unending challenges, grinding successes, and mixed impact of Israeli counter-terrorism operations on its security and the national psyche.

Byman, a professor at Georgetown University, takes Carl von Clausewitz’s dictum that war is a continuation of politics by other means seriously and looks at the political fallout of Israel’s counter-terrorism strategies rather than a tactical or operational analysis. Israel’s foes have also been varied over the years – some terrorist groups have been disciplined and methodical, others were rag-tag militia; some are state-backed, others independent. Some terrorist groups are militant branches of a larger social movement while others are small radical cells. The Jewish community has faced virtually every type of terrorist that has been imagined.

It is not surprising then, that most counter-terror tactics have also been pioneered in Israel and have been implemented by other law enforcement forces around the world. Although some analysts scoff at Israel’s record, claiming that its methods have not solved the terrorist plague even after decades of conflict and thousands dead, Byman’s research indicates that the world has much to learn from even the imperfect solutions.

A High Price starts in the pre-independence era when the Yishuv were threatened by Arab terrorism in the aftermath of the Balfour Declaration. Byman argues that Israeli counter-terrorism strategy is broadly based on the experience of British administration in Mandatory Palestine. The legacy of one pro-Zionist officer in particular, Charles Orde Wingate, is visible in Israeli security doctrine to this day.

Israeli strategy has essentially three components. One aspect is deterrence: the belief that Israel’s enemies would cease and desist from hostile operations against it out of fear of retribution. Another component is offensive operations: Israel’s small size means that it cannot risk fighting wars on its own soil. Furthermore, fighting on Israeli soil would mean damage to infrastructure and civilian casualties. Therefore, the conflict must be taken to the enemy. The third feature of Israeli security thinking is preemption and speed: like Napoleon Bonaparte preferred, strike first, strike fast, and maintain the element of surprise; keep the enemy off-balance until he capitulates.

Israeli politicians often felt restricted and cornered in their response to Arab violence. Besides national morale, Israeli leaders found it difficult to advocate restraint to people who had just escaped the Holocaust. Their new country was founded specifically on the premise that it would defend Jewish lives at all costs and it was not possible to appear to renege on that promise. Their only hope was to bludgeon their neighbours into inaction.

Ironically, Israeli actions also put Arab leaders in a corner: their retaliatory operations against the Israeli military humiliated the very militaries on which their power depended, and it outraged the Arab people. Arab capitals were very quick to embrace the idea of asymmetric warfare.

For their part, Israeli leaders – military and political alike – understood the Arab hatred towards them. “Can we argue with their intense hatred for us?” Moshe Dayan asked, “before their eyes we are turning the land and the villages in which they and their forefathers lived into our inheritance.” Similar warnings had been uttered by Ze’ev Jabotinsky and other luminaries of Zionism decades before Israel became a reality. The harsh choice was, according to Dayan and these others, “to be prepared and armed, strong and determined, otherwise the sword will fall from our hands and our lives will be obliterated.” As Golda Meir would say later, Israel’s secret weapon against the Arabs was that they had nowhere else to go.

Byman explains how the nature of warfare that Israel faced shifted rapidly from inter-state to non-state agents. This altered the rules of the game dramatically. Suddenly, the media became immensely important and the military could not use indiscriminate force in civilian-populated areas. Terrorists also improved over the years – from the early fedayeen who were essentially unskilled, angry, displaced Palestinians crossing back into Israel to retrieve as much of their belongings as possible to cool and zealous individuals who had received professional training from Arab and Communist armies or other terrorist groups. While Israel was able to deter the Arab states, particularly Egypt and Jordan, from supporting cross-border terrorist raids, non-state actors proved much harder to deter.

Of most value to readers should be the attention A High Price pays to the self-goals Israeli security services have scored in their war on terror. As Washington and its partners are learning now after their invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, military victory does not matter if you lose the battle over public perception. Israel has experienced this bitter lesson first-hand several times and years earlier as its leaders bought into the false dichotomy of physical security and perception. Wingate’s methods gave psychological satisfaction but did not always produce satisfactory results. David Ben-Gurion had realised this even in the 1940s and used it against the British but countries – not just Israel – seem doomed to repeat this error.

Byman argues that the Knesset has often ignored the political consequences of their counter-terrorism. The assassination of terrorist leaders, Raed Karmi for example, have sometimes unleashed cycles of violence that resulted in the loss of several lives. Some operations, such as the attempted assassination of Khaled Mashal in Amman, jeopardised important alliances. The IDF’s success in demolishing a group has usually been only temporary – in some cases, several splinter groups emerge in the place of one or space is made for more radical (Islamist) terrorists.

Israel is also guilty of underestimating the importance of the media and public narrative. Its opponents, be they state on non-state actors, have excelled at manipulating domestic, regional, and international fora, think tanks, and news organisations to portray an image of the conflict that is slanted, incomplete, exaggerated, and, at times, blatantly false. Israeli engagements in Lebanon, for example, were overwhelmingly successful militarily if losses of men and materiel were to be tallied. However, the perception of victory and defiance holds more water than the reality. What have often been successful Israeli operations are sometimes perceived as failures even by Israeli citizens.

Byman also notes that while Israel excels at the tactical and operational levels, a long-term strategy for the region is sorely lacking. Israelis are still debating whether they have temporarily occupied the territory that in the end belonged to Arabs or liberating historic land that really belonged to the Jews. A banal, vacuous, and unconsidered desire for peace is a sufficient strategy only if you are building a graveyard. Many of Israel’s problems arise from predictable long-term consequences of its ad hoc decisions. The invasion of Lebanon in 1982 to root out the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, for example, turned into a gruelling occupation that gave birth to a far more dangerous threat in the Hezbollah. Eventually, it led to the collapse of the very state that Israel was trying to pressure into curtailing the PLO. Similarly, some of Israeli policies in the West Bank and Gaza, though they may have succeeded in stemming the tide of terrorist attacks, have altered the situation on the ground so much that peace talks have become difficult; both sides claim to a different stunde null as the basis of negotiations.

One of the astute observations in A High Price is that there is a growing expectation in the media and its poorly uninformed subscribers of proportionality in military operations against terrorists. The very nature of deterrence, however, is the threat of disproportionate force against the enemy. While this doctrine may work well against the militaries of Israel’s neighbours, it does less so against terrorists who hide in civilian areas with the expectation that either propriety will spare them or an opportunity for propaganda will present itself.

As Byman contends, with no considered policy in place, day-to-day counter-terrorism is sometimes not conducive towards achieving the broader goal. However, he is also quick to admit that most often, the choice before the IDF or Knesset is between different shades of bad. Israeli security officials have been fully aware of this but see no escape. Collective punishment, for example, was not justified or moral but effective, admitted Dayan. The IDF’s organisational ethos gives commanders tremendous autonomy with the understanding that there could be occasional mistakes. “I prefer initiative and excessive action, even if they’re accompanied by the occasional mistake, over passivity”, Dayan is supposed to have said.

It is also true that the IDF’s harsh measures have the support of the Israeli people. House demolitions, cross-border strikes, targeted assassinations, and the refusal to recognise the PLO have many supporters. Each time there was a terrorist attack or peace talks broke down, the uncompromising Israeli Right gained supporters. Continuing talks under terrorist activity was unacceptable to Israelis for whom the very purpose of talks was to end terrorism. Additionally, the assassination of senior operatives did hurt terrorist groups in that they lost valuable experience in bomb-making, logistics, money laundering, arms acquisition networks, and other aspects of the terrorist’s craft. The number of warm bodies that Hamas or Hezbollah can throw up is not nearly as much a concern as the skills some of these bodies may possess.

Byman walks a fine line between the Israelis and the Palestinians and presents an objective study of Arab terrorism against Israel. He does not shirk from calling out the IDF’s excessive policies even if he admits they may bring immediate gains while at the same time pointing out that there is much that the Palestinians have done to hurt their own cause. The civil war between Fatah and Hamas in 2006 is but one example. It also goes unacknowledged that in the first five years after the Six-Day War, Israeli assistance in terms of fertiliser, irrigation, and farming techniques tripled the agricultural production of the West Bank. Yet although violence diminished, support for violence did not.

It is disconcerting to note that over the years, support for talks has reduced and both Israelis and Palestinians appear more unwilling to compromise, readier to shed blood, and accepting of atrocities against the other. Decades of living in terror has, as many psychologists have suggested, caused a nationwide post-traumatic stress disorder in Israel. This does not bode well for the peacemakers, for their efforts will be viewed with suspicion and the bar of acceptability has inched that much higher.

A High Price is an indispensable read for anyone interested in counter-terrorism and its pitfalls. Furthermore, there can be no no better case study than Israel where citizens have lived experience first as conscripts in the IDF and then as civilians or politicians. A High Price is chronologically packed with events as well as interviews with senior officials that gives readers a view from the cockpit, so to speak. Byman’s ability to present facts and arguments dispassionately is an incredible achievement for a topic that is not known for calm and rational discussion. In the Age of Terror that we live in, I do not see how A High Price is a book that can be skipped.

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