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After decades of stalemated diplomacy and months of renewed violence, the Sharon government appears ready to launch a massive blow against the Palestinian political infrastructure.
The strike will aim to decapitate the Palestinian leadership, destroy key facilities and isolate the Palestinian community. In the absence of external constraints from the United States and regional neighbors, Israel may consider expanding this option to Syria and Iraq as well.
Since it seized the West Bank in 1967, Israel has had three options for dealing with the Palestinian people and territory it controls. The first was to attempt a negotiated settlement such as the Oslo peace accords. The second was to accept the ongoing stalemate and low-intensity conflict. The third option was to escalate the conflict and break out of the gridlock by destroying the Palestinian movement once and for all.
Events over the past few weeks clearly indicate the current Israeli government has chosen the third option and is now in the process of preparing to implement it. Given the Israeli view that the Palestinian leadership is carefully coordinating anti-Israeli operations, the Sharon strategy will be to shatter that capability.
The third option will involve a massive military blow aimed at decapitating the Palestinian leadership, destroying key military infrastructure and communications facilities, and isolating the Palestinian community. It also will involve the occupation and destruction of certain political facilities and the capture, death or exile of the political elite.
And in the absence of external constraints against Israel by the United States and regional neighbors, there is a chance Israel may apply this option to two other longstanding problems: Syrian control over Lebanon and the potential Iraqi military threat to Israel. International condemnation, including the potential for sanctions, will follow any Israeli action. From Israel’s standpoint, a broader strike would carry minimal additional cost.
Once the third option is chosen, a broader logic takes over. Since there is little doubt that taking out the Palestinian Authority will increase the risk of conflict with Iraq and Syria, this option might well lead to a decisive strike at a time of Israel’s choosing against these two adversaries. From Israel’s point of view, now is much better than later.
Several factors stemming from the Six-Day War in 1967 are driving Israel toward such a massive military option.
Israel’s national security requirements historically have exceeded the capacity and capabilities of the nation’s industrial output. Israel’s national strategy is predicated on a negative: avoiding at all costs a war of attrition it cannot wage indefinitely. So Israel has always strived to keep a massive technological edge over its enemies, primarily by maintaining a strategic relationship with an outside power that could provide the means to maintain that edge.
For more than a decade spanning the mid-1950s to 1967, Israel’s main patron and ally was France (after a brief relationship with the Soviet Union in the early 1950s). Then came 1967, and Israel made a major shift.
In the 1967 war, Israel concluded that the benefits of seizing the territory outweighed the loss of French patronage, and Jerusalem defied France’s demand not to launch the attack. Israel calculated – correctly, in retrospect – that its national interest in redefining the regional balance of power outstripped its interest in placating France, and it could replace French patronage with American support.
A prime reason Israel went to war in 1967 was to redefine its frontiers. Seizing the West Bank and Golan Heights allowed Israeli forces to be anchored on the Jordan River line and the Golan Heights (as well as to expel Egypt from the Sinai Desert). Through decades of low-intensity conflict and the 1973 war, all of these Israeli gains from 1967 have remained intact.
The drawback was that the move to the Jordan line placed a large, hostile Palestinian population under Israeli control and responsibility. For the past 34 years, Israeli energy has been sapped by having to maintain security on the West Bank while avoiding a level of military action that would lead to a rupture in U.S. aid and political support.
But that also contained the seeds of failure for diplomatic efforts such as the Oslo peace strategy. Given Israel’s intractable security requirements, the West Bank can never be economically autonomous. Since Israel controls the transport and communications infrastructure to support its Jordan River strategy, Palestine cannot be allowed to become militarily independent. Therefore, the political autonomy and sovereignty for Palestine inherent in the Oslo process has been an illusion.
When it became clear to Palestinians at Camp David last summer that Oslo meant that this condition would be institutionalized permanently, the result was the re-emergence of the deep hostility of Palestinians toward Israel and the resurgence of the cycle of violence.
Since 1967, the United States has been the primary patron for Israel, and it has been out of fear of alienating the United States that Israel has rejected the third option – until now.
This is even more the case because of the current global geopolitical situation. The period of greatest strategic danger to Israel was from the mid-to-late 1950s to the mid-1970s, when the Soviet Union had forged close relations with Egypt and Syria and when the flow of Soviet weapons was massive.
But Russia and China are not inclined to inject themselves into the crisis through arms shipments to Syria or Egypt. Moreover, Cairo itself is constrained in its actions by the United States because of its dependence on weapons and foreign aid from Washington.
Russia might ultimately have such an interest, but not now. President Vladimir Putin is preoccupied with his diplomatic balancing act between China and the United States and is not prepared for a massive challenge to fundamental American interests in Egypt. China is a potential replacement source, but logistical and operational limits would make such an effort long, costly and complicated. It is not clear that China has a geopolitical interest in a deep challenge to the United States here either.
Israeli leaders know that a window of opportunity has opened for them to deal definitively with the strategic consequences of 1967.
Israel appears willing to pay the price of international condemnation and ostracism that will follow the execution of the third option. From its point of view, it is a small price to pay to try to end the low-grade warfare that has raged since the failure of the Camp David initiative. And it is likely that Israeli officials are also asking themselves, “Why limit it to the West Bank? Why not deal with the Syrians now and decisively? We are deeply concerned with Iraqi development of weapons of mass destruction – why not deal with that now?”
The chances are high for a major military explosion in the Middle East.
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WND Staff