[Peace-discuss] The David Brooks and Thomas Friedman of American-Israelis

[David Green]

Each of whom spent 3 weeks in residence at the U of I
last academic year.

ISRAEL'S NEXT WAR HAS BEGUN.
Battle Plans

by Yossi Klein Halevi   

Only at TNR Online | Post date 07.12.06

The next Middle East war--Israel against genocidal
Islamism--has begun. The first stage of the war
started two weeks ago, with the Israeli incursion into
Gaza in response to the kidnapping of an Israeli
soldier and the ongoing shelling of Israeli towns and
kibbutzim; now, with Hezbollah's latest attack, the
war has spread to southern Lebanon. Ultimately,
though, Israel's antagonists won't be Hamas and
Hezbollah but their patrons, Iran and Syria. The war
will go on for months, perhaps several years. There
may be lulls in the fighting, perhaps even temporary
agreements and prisoner exchanges. But those periods
of calm will be mere respites. 

The goals of the war should be the destruction of the
Hamas regime and the dismantling of the Hezbollah
infrastructure in southern Lebanon. Israel cannot
coexist with Iranian proxies pressing in on its
borders. In particular, allowing Hamas to remain in
power--and to run the Palestinian educational
system--will mean the end of hopes for Arab-Israeli
reconciliation not only in this generation but in the
next one too. 

For the Israeli right, this is the moment of "We told
you so." The fact that the kidnappings and missile
attacks have come from southern Lebanon and
Gaza--precisely the areas from which Israel has
unilaterally withdrawn--is proof, for right-wingers,
of the bankruptcy of unilateralism. Yet the right has
always misunderstood the meaning of unilateral
withdrawal. Those of us who have supported
unilateralism didn't expect a quiet border in return
for our withdrawal but simply the creation of a border
from which we could more vigorously defend ourselves,
with greater domestic consensus and international
understanding. The anticipated outcome, then, wasn't
an illusory peace but a more effective way to fight
the war. The question wasn't whether Hamas or
Hezbollah would forswear aggression but whether Israel
would act with appropriate vigor to their continued
aggression. 

So it wasn't the rocket attacks that were a blow to
the unilateralist camp, but rather Israel's tepid
responses to those attacks. If unilateralists made a
mistake, it was in believing our political
leaders--including Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert--when
they promised a policy of zero tolerance against any
attacks emanating from Gaza after Israel's withdrawal.
That policy was not implemented--until two weeks ago.
Now, belatedly, the Olmert government is trying to
regain something of its lost credibility, and that is
the real meaning of this initial phase of the war,
both in Gaza and in Lebanon. 

Still, many in Israel believe that, even now, the
government is acting with excessive restraint. One
centrist friend of mine, an Olmert voter, said to me,
"If we had assassinated [Hamas leader] Haniyeh after
the first kidnapping, [Hezbollah leader] Nasrallah
would have thought twice about ordering another
kidnapping." Israel, then, isn't paying for the
failure of unilateral withdrawal, but for the failure
to fulfill its promise to seriously respond to
provocations after withdrawal. 

Absurdly, despite Israel's withdrawal to the
international borders with Lebanon and Gaza, much of
the international community still sees the kidnapping
of Israeli soldiers as a legitimate act of war: Just
as Israel holds Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners, so
Hamas and Hezbollah now hold Israeli prisoners. One
difference, though, is that inmates in Israeli jails
receive visits from family and Red Cross
representatives, while Israeli prisoners in Gaza and
Lebanon disappear into oblivion. Like Israeli pilot
Ron Arad, who was captured by Hezbollah 20 years ago,
then sold to Iran, and whose fate has never been
determined. That is one reason why Israelis are so
maddened by the kidnapping of their soldiers. 
Another reason is the nature of the crimes committed
by the prisoners whose release is being demanded by
Hezbollah and Hamas. One of them is Samir Kuntar, a
PLO terrorist who in 1979 broke into an apartment in
the northern Israeli town of Nahariya, took a father
and child hostage, and smashed the child's head
against a rock. In the Palestinian Authority, Kuntar
is considered a hero, a role model for Palestinian
children. 

The ultimate threat, though, isn't Hezbollah or Hamas
but Iran. And as Iran draws closer to nuclear
capability--which the Israeli intelligence community
believes could happen this year--an Israeli-Iranian
showdown becomes increasingly likely. According to a
very senior military source with whom I've spoken,
Israel is still hoping that an international effort
will stop a nuclear Iran; if that fails, then Israel
is hoping for an American attack. But if the Bush
administration is too weakened to take on Iran, then,
as a last resort, Israel will have to act
unilaterally. And, added the source, Israel has the
operational capability to do so. 
For Israelis, that is the worst scenario of all.
Except, of course, the scenario of nuclear weapons in
the hands of the patron state of Hezbollah and Hamas. 
YOSSI KLEIN HALEVI is a foreign correspondent for The
New Republic and senior fellow of the Shalem Center in
Jerusalem. 

Essay: Declare victory in Lebanon

Hillel Halkin, The Jerusalem Post
July 20,2006

A friend of mine is on the Left. But I mean Left. He
votes Hadash with misgiving because he finds it too
moderate. He doesn't miss a demonstration: Against the
occupation, against the security fence, against
targeted assassinations, against arresting Hamas
leaders, you name it. And so when he told me that he
had just been to a demonstration in Tel Aviv over
Lebanon, I said: "Sure. You were protesting the
persecution of Nasrallah. You want us to rebuild the
Hizbullah outposts on the border. You were calling on
the government of Israel to swap the Western Wall for
the two soldiers that Hizbullah holding." 
"Not at all," he said. "We were calling on Israel to
stop shooting so that negotiations with the Lebanese
government can begin." 
"That's all?" 
"That's all." 
"You should have told me that," I said. "I might have
gone to the demonstration with you." 
It's not that Hizbullah didn't get what it deserved.
One would love to see Nasrallah's head on a pike in
front of the Knesset, along with the heads of his best
friends. But sometimes, just as it can be important to
realize when you're beaten so that you can cut your
losses while it's still possible, it can be important
to realize when you've won so that you can cash your
chips in on time. 
And we have won, even if, as I write these words, the
rockets keep falling. Hizbullah has taken a bad
licking; Israel has suffered far less damage and loss
of life than could have been anticipated; the
international community, for a change, has backed us
and let us do the job with a minimum of squawking; and
most importantly, the government of Lebanon has
announced that it is prepared to take responsibility
for its southern border and keep Hizbullah from
returning to it. 
That's a victory, even if not everyone in our cabinet
seems to have noticed it. 
True, Hizbullah is down but not yet out. True, it
still has our two soldiers. True, too, if we keep
dropping enough bombs in enough places, one of them
may yet fall on Nasrallah's head. It would be
interesting to see if that man of a thousand smug
smiles has one for such an occasion. 
But you can't always have everything. Tafasta merubeh,
lo tafasta, the rabbis said: If you try to grab too
much, you may end up by dropping it. 
WE'VE DONE it before. Israel has a history of military
victories that were never turned into equivalent
political capital. We won big in 1967 and then sat
back and waited for the famous telephone calls from
Arab leaders that never came. We won again in 1973 and
let four years go by for Sadat to make us an offer
when we might have gotten him to accept a better one
if we had made it first. We marched to Beirut in 1982
and then stuck around in Lebanon for nearly two costly
decades longer than we should have when we could have
gotten out quickly on far better terms than we got out
slowly on. In each case we held out for the maximum
and ended up with less than was probably attainable. 
It would be a shame to let it happen again. It's not a
question of theoretical justice. Of course it would be
right and proper for Nasrallah to be given the chance
to meet his Maker, with whom he has often expressed
the desire to commune personally. Of course the
Lebanese army should trot right down south and take up
positions on its side of the border. Of course the two
abducted soldiers should be released immediately.
These are all perfectly reasonable desires. 
But they're not all perfectly attainable within the
next few days or even weeks. Take the Lebanese army.
It's not only an Israeli interest that it should be in
control of southern Lebanon, it's a Lebanese interest
too, and any agreement hammered out now among Israel,
Lebanon, the United States, and the European Community
should unequivocally demand that this be done and lay
down a timetable for it. But if the Lebanese army
doesn't feel that it's up to the job immediately,
there's no reason why Israel can't live with an
international force on the border as an interim
measure. 
International troops haven't always worked out well
for us - UNIFIL in Lebanon is a good example - but
they've been fine in other places, such as the
multinational contingent in Sinai. For Israel to rule
out such a temporary solution on a knee-jerk basis
could just end up creating a vacuum that Hizbullah
could slowly creep back into. 
Or take the two soldiers. Hizbullah presumably has
them stashed away some place that won't be easy to
uncover. Are we going to keep bombing day after day
until they're released? But why should Hizbullah
release them? It's already lost men and equipment,
it's been pushed back from the border, its
installations have been demolished or badly damaged -
how much worse, in the short run, can life be made for
it? Why should it simply surrender one of its best
cards, especially since doing so will make it lose
more face in the eyes of the Arab public than all its
military setbacks put together? 
This is not to say that we should negotiate with
Hizbullah over the soldiers' return. On the contrary:
We should not talk to Hizbullah at all. But we can and
should negotiate with the government of Lebanon. Not
only is it the address we should be dealing with, it
has leverage over Hizbullah that we don't. If there is
going to be a concerted effort now on the part of the
United States and Europe to turn this government into
one that can genuinely govern, this is precisely the
kind issue that it should be asked to handle. 

A tremendous opportunity exists now in Lebanon, and it
exists only because Israel went to war against
Hizbullah. But smashing Hizbullah isn't the same as
putting Lebanon together again. For that we need the
rest of the world. And the rest of the world can't act
until the fighting has stopped. It's been a long time
since so much of it has been on our side. Let's try to
keep it there, at least for a while.




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