The Tightrope
Michael Cecire • January 7, 2009 • Uncategorized
Israel’s recent military campaign against Hamas in Gaza has got a lot of folks talking, and most of them using their voices to disparage the Jewish state’s right to take action and some, by extension, merely imply legitimacy to Hamas and their ilk’s desire to see the Jewish population of the Near East (and beyond) eradicated.
My own opinions on the matter are pretty straightforward: I support Israel’s right to exist and its obligation to defend its citizens – which leads me to nod my assent (for what it’s worth) to the IDF’s long-in-coming retaliation against Hamas. Of course, a typical complaint from some friends of mine who subscribe (no pun intended) to the NYT’s blame-Israel caricature of the situation, is that I always give Israel a ‘free pass,’ to paraphrase. Like so many other things, I reserve my criticism for ‘within the family,’ as Michael Corleone might offer, as I see no reason to give the foaming, snarling dogs of anti-semitism any more ammunition than they have. Suffice to say that Israel, like anyplace, is not free from my critiques; however, I am inclined to give the most consistently marginalized group in human history the benefit of the doubt.
As a demonstration, allow me to report that I have serious, serious misgivings about Israel’s operation in Gaza. I would never go so far as to post such a thing on my facebook page or write an article, for the fear of misrepresenting myself as a Hamas apologist or even as unsupportive of Israel; let me reiterate: I support Israel’s campaign, but I doubt its wisdom. Quite frankly, I’m not convinced that a sustained operation against Hamas will accomplish anything except retain Kadima in power over Likud and temporarily weaken Hamas for a time.
Success will be like an elephant balancing a tightrope – Hamas needs to be sufficiently weakened to allow for a more moderate Fatah to regain their momentum, which would be welcomed by the ‘moderate’ Arab states, but not so much that Fatah acts with the same impunity as during the era of Yasser Arafat. The Intifadas, if we recall, were not kicked off by a then comparatively-nascent Hamas. If the Hamas terrorist organization is indeed destroyed, the Gaza power vacuum would be one that Fatah – its corrupt and inefficient organizational infrastructure already crumbling – would be hard-pressed to fill adequately. And there is no appetite in Israel to reestablish occupation.
The most likely scenario, even if Israel achieves most of its military objectives by severely weakening Hamas, is that Hamas will reform, rearm, and redeploy – and all the negative attention and fanfare and money spent and soldiers lost will have done nothing for Israel besides a temporary reprieve (that could have been bought with more limited raids), while giving the anti-Israel crowd new life and a lifetime worth of propaganda pictures. Does anyone really expect that this will be the end of Hamas?
I don’t claim to know the solution to the fundamental problems, but I certainly don’t think peace in the Middle East will have been won by this present Gaza campaign. Does this mean Israel doesn’t have the right to respond as it has? No, Israel does have that right – and the responsibility – to end the threat of Hamas as best they can, but I don’t see this campaign as offering or exposing that solution.
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