To Cease or to Fire?
It is possible that by the time this blog goes up, a negotiated cease-fire between Israel and Hamas will be in place. At the moment of this writing, rockets are still being fired on Southern and Central Israel from the Gaza Strip and the Israeli Air Force continues to fly sorties; bombing rocket launchers, ammunition stores and Hamas institutional structures. For many of us in Israel, we seem to be having a kind of déjà-vu (all over again, as Yogi Berra once remarked). Weren’t we in this exact place 4 years ago, as Israel embarked on Operation Cast Lead, responding to the bombardment of the south of the country?
Although the basic parameters of the current round of conflict between Israel and Hamas are quite similar to the situation in November 2008, the trajectory and development of the conflict is radically different. There have been a few remarkable developments in the interim period that are impacting the decision-making process of Israel’s leadership. The two most important changes in the past year and a half are Israel’s development and operational deployment of the world’s first effective missile-based, missile defense system and the replacement of the Mubarak regime in Egypt with the Moslem Brotherhood. The Iron Dome system has been a roaring success, interdicting around 87% of the projectiles fired on Israel in the past 8 days. The upshot is that only 5 Israelis have been killed despite the shooting of upwards of 1100 rockets towards all of the urban centers in the South of the country. On the Palestinian side, 95 people have been killed, with at least one third of them non-combatant civilians. With such a small number of Israeli casualties and relatively little damage to infrastructure, the Iron Dome missile defense has become a strategic asset which is enabling Israel to decide whether or not a ground incursion is necessary.
On the political front, the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood as the new regime in Egypt has constituted a restraining force on Israeli policy makers. As long as the Mubarak regime was in power, there was relatively close cooperation between Israel and Egypt concerning the Gaza Strip and Hamas’ activities there. The Egyptian regime change has destabilized the aforementioned strategic partnership. Hamas is an off-shoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. The affinity between the new government in Cairo and the terror organization is transparent. One of the big questions still being asked by American and Israeli decision-makers is whether the Israeli-Egyptian peace accord (signed in 1979) will unravel at the initiative of Egypt. As long as the Muslim Brotherhood was the political opposition in Egypt, they virulently attacked the peace treaty, calling for its abrogation. Since their ascent to power, they have lowered the volume on the popular calls for dismantling the relations with Israel, although they have publically declared a determination to change the content of the accord. It appears that the $2 Billion in foreign aid that the US grants to Egypt as part of the peace treaty has prevented its collapse (and the complete collapse of the Egyptian economy, which is in dire straits).
From an Israeli perspective, the peace treaty has been extremely important both militarily and economically. Removing the largest and strongest army from the conflict alleviated Israel’s defense burden so that the military could concentrate on other fronts, such as Lebanon and Syria, etc. Up until the early 1980s, Israel’s defense budget was close to 30% of the GDP. Member states of the OECD (which Israel joined 3 years ago) typically have a defense budget that doesn’t exceed 6%. Japan typically has less than 1%, Western European countries such as Great Britain and France around 3-4% and the US has 7% (due to the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq). Israel’s defense budget is around 13%, which is quite high compared to the rest of the OECD, but considerably less than it was in the 1970s. The drop in defense expenditures enabled the Israeli economy to take off, particularly in the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century. The country is uninterested in rolling back the achievements of the past twenty years. In addition, given the ramifications of the so-called “Arab-Spring”, with the neighboring regimes in flux (read: Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, etc), it behooves Israel to keep relations with Egypt at the very least, calm and businesslike.
Given the importance that Israel places on maintaining relations with Egypt, the government has been cautious about sending in the ground troops to Gaza. The fear is that in the event of large Palestinian casualties that will most likely ensue, this incursion could push Egypt over the edge. In the first two days of the “Operation”, the Israeli Air Force succeeded in knocking out the vast majority of the long-range missiles that could hit large population centers such as Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem. A few of the key military leaders of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad were also killed through targeted assassinations from the air. Thus far, relatively few Palestinian civilians have been killed and as the operation continues the chances of mistakes being made and more lives being lost, grow from day to day.
The real question from an Israeli perspective is what are the goals behind the operation and are they achievable in the present configuration? Declaratively, Israel wants to stop the missile fire on its population and to restore its deterrence vis a vis Hamas in Gaza. While it might be possible to considerably slow down the re-arming of Hamas, it is hard to see a complete cessation to the rocket fire. Deterrence is an amorphous term and in any event does not typically last for long periods of time. It is also apparent that there is no “military solution”. An Israeli land incursion would undoubtedly cause numerous civilian deaths, which is what happened in Operation Cast Lead (2008-9). Uprooting Hamas completely would mean huge casualties on both sides, something that deters Israel from going down that path. Thus far, international public opinion has supported Israel’s right to self-defense. If more civilian casualties pile up on the Palestinian side, Israel will see the international community turn against it. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking.