[Peace-discuss] Wallerstein…"What can Israel Achieve?"

[Morton K. Brussel]

A succinct and cogent view of Israel's predicament. Wallerstein tends  
to pronounce/assert too unequivocally, but this short piece is worth  
considering. --mkb

What Can Israel Achieve?

By Immanuel Wallerstein

Fernand Braudel Center, Binghamton University

Commentary No. 190, August 1, 2006

Al-Jazeerah, August 3, 2006

The State of Israel was established in 1948. Ever since, there has  
been continuous violence between Jews and Arabs in Israel, and  
between Israel and its neighbors. Sometimes, the violence was low- 
level and even latent. And every once in a while, the violence  
escalated into open warfare, as now. Whenever full-scale violence  
broke out, there was an immediate debate about what started it, as  
though that mattered. We are now in the midst of warfare between  
Israel and Palestine in Gaza and between Israel and Lebanon. And the  
world is engaged in its usual futile debate about how to reduce the  
open state of warfare to low-level violence.

Every Israeli government has wished to create a situation in which  
the world and Israel's neighbors recognize its existence as a state  
and intergroup/interstate violence ceases. Israel has never been able  
to achieve this. When the level of violence is relatively low, the  
Israeli public is split about what strategy to pursue. But when it  
escalates into warfare, the Jewish Israelis and world Jewry tend to  
rally around the government.

In reality, Israel's basic strategy since 1948 has been to rely on  
two things in the pursuit of its objectives: a strong military, and  
strong outside Western support. So far this strategy has worked in  
one sense: Israel still survives. The question is how much longer  
this strategy will in fact continue to work.

The source of outside support has shifted over time. We forget  
completely that in 1948 the crucial military support for Israel came  
from the Soviet Union and its eastern European satellites. When the  
Soviet Union pulled back, it was France that came to fill the role.  
France was engaged in a revolution in Algeria, and it saw Israel as a  
crucial element in defeating the Algerian national liberation  
movement. But when Algeria became independent in 1962, France dropped  
Israel because it then sought to maintain ties with a now-independent  
Algeria.

It is only after that moment that the United States moved into its  
present total support of Israel. One major element in this turn- 
around was the Israeli military victory in the Six Days War in 1967.  
In this war, Israel conquered all the territories of the old British  
Mandate of Palestine, as well as more. It proved its ability to be a  
strong military presence in the region. It transformed the attitude  
of world Jewry from one in which only about 50% really approved of  
the creation of Israel into one which had the support of the large  
majority of world Jewry, for whom Israel had now become a source of  
pride. This is the moment when the Holocaust became a major  
ideological justification for Israel and its policies.

After 1967, the Israeli governments never felt they had to negotiate  
anything with the Palestinians or with the Arab world. They offered  
one-sided settlements but these were always on Israeli terms. Israel  
wouldn't negotiate with Nasser. Then it wouldn't negotiate with  
Arafat. And now it won't negotiate with so-called terrorists.  
Instead, it has relied on successive shows of military strength.

Israel is now engaged in the exact same catastrophic blunder, from  
its own point of view, as George Bush's invasion of Iraq. Bush  
thought that a show of military strength would establish U.S.  
presence unquestionably in Iraq and intimidate the rest of the world.  
Bush has discovered that Iraqi resistance was far more formidable  
militarily than anticipated, that American political allies in Iraq  
were far less reliable than he assumed they would be, and that the  
U.S. public's support of the war was far more fragile than he  
expected. The United States is heading towards a humiliating  
withdrawal from Iraq.

Israel's current military campaign is a direct parallel of Bush's  
invasion of Iraq. The Israeli generals are already noting that  
Hezbollah's military is far more formidable than anticipated, that  
U.S. allies in the region are already taking wide distance from the  
United States and Israel (note the Iraqi government's support of  
Lebanon and now that of the Saudi government), and soon will discover  
that the Israeli public's support is more fragile than expected.  
Already the Israeli government is reluctant to send land troops into  
Lebanon, largely because of what it thinks will be the reaction of  
its own people inside Israel. Israel is heading towards a humiliating  
truce arrangement.

What the Israeli governments do not realize is that neither Hamas nor  
Hezbollah need Israel. It is Israel that needs them, and needs them  
desperately. If Israel wants not to become a Crusader state that is  
in the end extinguished, it is only Hamas and Hezbollah that can  
guarantee the survival of Israel. It is only when Israel is able to  
come to terms with them, as the deeply-rooted spokespersons of  
Palestinian and Arab nationalism, that Israel can live in peace.

Achieving a stable peace settlement will be extremely difficult. But  
the pillars of Israel's present strategy - its own military strength  
and the unconditional support of the United States - constitute a  
very thin reed. Its military advantage is diminishing and will  
diminish steadily in the years to come. And in the post-Iraqi years,  
the United States may well drop Israel in the same way that France  
did in the 1960s.

Israel's only real guarantee will be that of the Palestinians. And to  
get this guarantee, Israel will need to rethink fundamentally its  
strategy for survival.

To contact author, write: immanuel.wallerstein at yale.edu.

http://www.binghamton.edu/fbc/commentr.htm
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