Feature: Israel’s Three Laws of Action or Lessons Still Not Learned

Ten months ago, the last time things heated up between Israel and Hamas, I posted this comment. At the time, a full flare-up was avoided and a six month cease fire was set in place. This time around, the political leadership seems to have convinced the Israeli public that confrontation is the best option. Actually, negotiations were the anomaly. Israel’s current behavior is the norm. In order to understand why, one needs understand Israel’s Three Laws of Action.

Israelis have long been indoctrinated by three political (or military – in Israel those are basically the same) laws. The first is one  I often heard repeated while I was in the army reserves: “if force doesn’t work, apply more force.” This law means that force is the first tool Israelis turn to for addressing any problem. It is also the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth etc. In fact, force is the only tool Israelis use. Of course, Israel has been involved in negotiations and even treaties. This is merely a corollary of Newton’s First Law of Motion: “Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.”  Israelis will use force until subject to an external force – viz. massive amounts of arm twisting by their patron, the US. 

The second law that most Israelis blindly accept is that “in a tough neighborhood, you have to be the toughest, whatever the cost.” Israel is with out a doubt, at least in the eyes of Israelis, located in the toughest neighborhood in the world (South Asia or Africa or the Balkans –  those are tough for sissies). Hence, for Israelis there is no such thing as a “disproportionate response.” The crappiest Hamas rocket attack deserves a blanket bombing of Gaza. Otherwise those pesky Palestinians might think Israelis are wimps.

Finally the third law is: Arab leaders are intractable terrorists out to destroy Israel so there is no one on the other side to talk to. Why bother negotiating, since they are hell bent on erasing Israel off the map?  This doctrine has undergone some modification over the years as American arm-twisting forced Israelis to negotiate against their will. Neighboring countries fell off the “no one to negotiate list” one by one, as Israel negotiated and signed treaties with them. Fatah fell off the list when Rabin signed a treaty with Arafat. Arafat was in the dog house again (almost literally) when Sharon came to power, but Fatah is now on the negotiating partner list at least in theory. In practice, Israel is only paying lip service to the idea of Fatah as a negotiating partner. Abbas is seen as weak and powerless vis-a-vis the real Palestinian power – Hamas. And of course Hamas are intractable terrorists out to destroy Israel so there is no one on the other side to talk to. Why bother negotiating, since they are hell bent on erasing Israel off the map?

Of course, unfortunately for Israel, these laws come against the real world and don’t seem to work very well. Yet time after time Israelis seem to forget the facts of the real world and resort to the three laws. I’ve already mentioned how Israel abandons force and turns to negotiations only because of outside pressure. Why this should be the case is hard to understand. The treaties with Egypt and Jordan has had tremendous benefits for Israel. And despite every one in Israel trashing the Oslo accords, it is a universal consensus now in Israel that the ending point of Oslo is basically the starting point of a final resolution of the conflict with the Palestinians. The only explanation seems to be that Israelis have an astonishing capacity to forget the benefits of negotiations. 

Israelis also seem to have forgotten Newton’s Third Law of Motion: “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” In the past I have discussed how and why  this plays out in the real world: the more Israel uses force, the more determined the Palestinians seem to be to resist and apply counter-force.  Yet over and over and over again, Israelis argue that they have to use excessive force against Hamas because that is the only way to convince the Palestinians to stop using force.

I often bring Amos Harel’s analysis to this blog, since he reflects the thinking of the Israeli military/political leadership. His latest piece is quite illuminating.  While Harel clearly lays out how the Israeli’s justify the current war (using the three laws) he manages to show how beneath the surface, reality slips in. He starts the article by explaining why Israel killed senior Hamas official Nizar Ghayan. The arguments all tie back in one fashion or another to the three laws:

Gazans have been asking Haaretz why Israel is hitting Hamas foot soldiers, empty buildings and innocent civilians rather than the leadership. They see this as proof of Israel’s inability to really deal with Hamas. Ghayan’s killing shows that Israel is no longer hesitating. The Hamas leader in Gaza, Sheikh Ismail Haniyeh, his government and certainly Hamas military leaders such as Ahmed Jabri know they have good reason to stay in hiding. 

The assassination in the spring of 2004 of Abdel Aziz Rantisi and Ahmed Yassin was the main factor behind the Hamas decision to suspend suicide bombings and limit friction with Israel. 

This last sentence flies in the face of reality. Hamas’ armed activity continued long after the spring of 2004, into 2005. The main factor in ending Hamas’ war with Israel was Hamas desire to become a political force, culminating in the elections of early 2006. Once it began to focus on being a political party and not merely a resistance movement, it had every reason to change its behavior towards Israel and agree to a truce.

But even if one agrees that these assassinations were the reason Hamas agreed to the truce, Harel notes how the assassinations of Rantisi and Yassin actually undermined Israeli interests:

But these killings also increased sympathy for Hamas in Gaza and led to its electoral win two years later. In the same way, Hamas television quickly made use of Thursday’s incident, repeatedly showing footage of Ghayan’s headless body.

Harel also fails to mention that just a few months before they were assassinated both Rantisi and Yassin made statements about Hamas willingness to reach a long term cease fire with Israel and settle for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. In other words Israel assassinated the two main Hamas leaders just as they were moderating their views towards co-existence with Israel.  

The arguments for the necessity of moving from air strikes to ground action perfectly follow the three laws:

The Southern Command expects that a ground offensive will cause Israeli casualties but achieve its aims of increasing the direct threat against Hamas.

But here too, reality rears its ugly head:

Unlike the Second Lebanon War, the ground war in the Gaza Strip will be waged in densely populated urban areas. The civilian population in Lebanon fled during the fighting. In the Gaza Strip, however, there is nowhere to run but the beach and the Egyptian border, and many civilian casualties can be expected.

What is left unsaid, is that there will be many Israeli casualties as well. Palestinian civilian deaths will up the international pressure on Israel to end the war and turn to negotiations. High Israeli casualties will likely cause the Israeli population to turn against the war as well. Yet despite all this, the Israelis continue to cling to their foolish laws.

Tags: Feature, Israeli Army, War Crimes