[R-G] War of Choice: How Israel Manufactured the Gaza Escalation

[Anthony Fenton]

War of Choice: How Israel Manufactured the Gaza Escalation

Steve Niva | January 7, 2009

Editor: Erik Leaver

http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5776

Foreign Policy In Focus 	
www.fpif.org

Israel has repeatedly claimed that it had "no choice" but to wage war  
on Gaza on December 27 because Hamas had broken a ceasefire, was  
firing rockets at Israeli civilians, and had "tried everything in  
order to avoid this military operation," as Foreign Minister Tzipi  
Livni put it.

This claim, however, is widely at odds with the fact that Israel's  
military and political leadership took many aggressive steps during  
the ceasefire that escalated a crisis with Hamas, and possibly even  
provoked Hamas to create a pretext for the assault. This wasn't a war  
of "no choice," but rather a very avoidable war in which Israeli  
actions played the major role in instigating.

Israel has a long history of deliberately using violence and other  
provocative measures to trigger reactions in order to create a pretext  
for military action, and to portray its opponents as the aggressors  
and Israel as the victim. According to the respected Israeli military  
historian Zeev Maoz in his recent book, Defending the Holy Land,  
Israel most notably used this policy of "strategic escalation" in  
1955-1956, when it launched deadly raids on Egyptian army positions to  
provoke Egypt's President Nasser into violent reprisals preceding its  
ill-fated invasion of Egypt; in 1981-1982, when it launched violent  
raids on Lebanon in order to provoke Palestinian escalation preceding  
the Israeli invasion of Lebanon; and between 2001-2004, when Prime  
Minister Ariel Sharon repeatedly ordered assassinations of high-level  
Palestinian militants during declared ceasefires, provoking violent  
attacks that enabled Israel's virtual reoccupation of the West Bank.

Israel's current assault on Gaza bears many trademark elements of  
Israel's long history of employing "strategic escalation" to  
manufacture a major crisis, if not a war.
Making War 'Inevitable'

The countdown to a war began, according to a detailed report by Barak  
Raviv in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, when Israel's Defense Minister  
Ehud Barak started planning the current attack on Gaza with his chiefs  
of staff at least six months ago — even as Israel was negotiating the  
Egyptian brokered ceasefire with Hamas that went into effect on June  
19. During the subsequent ceasefire, the report contends, the Israeli  
security establishment carefully gathered intelligence to map out  
Hamas' security infrastructure, engaged in operational deception, and  
spread disinformation to mislead the public about its intentions.

This revelation doesn't confirm that Israel intended to start a war  
with Hamas in December, but it does shed some light on why Israel  
continuously took steps that undermined the terms of the fragile  
ceasefire with Hamas, even though Hamas respected their side of the  
agreement.

Indeed, there was a genuine lull in rocket and mortar fire between  
June 19 and November 4, due to Hamas compliance and only sporadically  
violated by a small number of launchings carried out by rival Fatah  
and Islamic Jihad militants, largely in defiance of Hamas. According  
to the conservative Israeli-based Intelligence and Terrorism  
Information Center's analysis of rocket and missile attacks in 2008,  
there were only three rockets fired at Israel in July, September, and  
October combined. Israeli civilians living near Gaza experienced an  
almost unprecedented degree of security during this period, with no  
Israeli casualties.

Yet despite the major lull, Israel continually raided the West Bank,  
arresting and frequently killing "wanted" Palestinians from June to  
October, which had the inevitable effect of ratcheting up pressure on  
Hamas to respond. Moreover, while the central expectation of Hamas  
going into the ceasefire was that Israel would lift the siege on Gaza,  
Israel only took the barest steps to ease the siege, which kept the  
people at a bare survival level. This policy was a clear affront to  
Hamas, and had the inescapable effect of undermining both Hamas and  
popular Palestinian support for the ceasefire.

But Israel's most provocative action, acknowledged by many now as the  
critical turning point that undermined the ceasefire, took place on  
November 4, when Israeli forces auspiciously violated the truce by  
crossing into the Gaza Strip to destroy what the army said was a  
tunnel dug by Hamas, killing six Hamas militants. Sara Roy, writing in  
the London Review of Books, contends this attack was "no doubt  
designed finally to undermine the truce between Israel and Hamas  
established last June."

The Israeli breach into Gaza was immediately followed by a further  
provocation by Israel on November 5, when the Israeli government  
hermetically sealed off all ways into and out of Gaza. As a result,  
the UN reports that the amount of imports entering Gaza has been  
"severely reduced to an average of 16 truckloads per day — down from  
123 truckloads per day in October and 475 trucks per day in May 2007 —  
before the Hamas takeover." These limited shipments provide only a  
fraction of the supplies needed to sustain 1.5 million starving  
Palestinians.

In response, Hamas predictably claimed that Israel had violated the  
truce and allowed Islamic Jihad to launch a round of rocket attacks on  
Israel. Only after lethal Israeli reprisals killed over 10 Hamas  
gunmen in the following days did Hamas militants finally respond with  
volleys of mortars and rockets of their own. In two short weeks,  
Israel killed over 15 Palestinian militants, while about 120 rockets  
and mortars were fired at Israel, and although there were no Israeli  
casualties the calm had been shattered.

It was at this time that Israeli officials launched what appears to  
have been a coordinated media blitz to cultivate public reception for  
an impending conflict, stressing the theme of the "inevitability" of a  
coming war with Hamas in Gaza. On November 12, senior IDF officials  
announced that war with Hamas was likely in the two months after the  
six-month ceasefire, baldly stating it would occur even if Hamas  
wasn't interested in confrontation. A few days later, Israeli Prime  
Minister Ehud Olmert publicly ordered his military commanders to draw  
up plans for a war in Gaza, which were already well developed at the  
time. On November 19, according to Raviv's report in Haaretz, the Gaza  
war plan was brought before Barak for final approval.

While the rhetoric of an "inevitable" war with Hamas may have only  
been Israeli bluster to compel Hamas into line, its actions on the  
ground in the critical month leading up to the official expiration of  
the ceasefire on December 19 only heightened the cycle of violence,  
leaving a distinct impression Israel had cast the die for war.

Finally, Hamas then walked right into the "inevitable war" that Israel  
had been preparing since the ceasefire had gone into effect in June.  
With many Palestinians believing the ceasefire to be meaningless,  
Hamas announced it wouldn't renew the ceasefire after it expired on  
December 19. Hamas then stood back for two days while Islamic Jihad  
and Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades militants fired volleys of mortars and  
rockets into Israel, in the context of mutually escalating attacks.  
Yet even then, with Israeli threats of war mounting, Hamas imposed a  
24-hour ceasefire on all missile attacks on December 21, announcing it  
would consider renewing the lapsed truce with Israel in the Gaza Strip  
if Israel would halt its raids in both Gaza and the West Bank, and  
keep Gaza border crossings open for supplies of aid and fuel. Israel  
immediately rejected its offer.

But when the Israel Defence Forces killed three Hamas militants laying  
explosives near the security fence between Israel and Gaza on the  
evening of December 23, the Hamas military wing lashed out by  
launching a barrage of over 80 missiles into Israel the following day,  
claiming it was Israel, and not Hamas, that was responsible for the  
escalation.

Little did they know that, according to Raviv, Prime Minister Olmert,  
and Defense Minister Barak had already met on December 18 to approve  
the impending war plan, but put the mission off waiting for a better  
pretext. By launching more than 170 rockets and mortars at Israeli  
civilians in the days following December 23, killing one Israeli  
civilian, Hamas had provided reason enough for Israel to unleash its  
long-planned attack on Gaza on December 27.
The Rationale for War

If Israel's goal were simply to end rocket attacks on its civilians,  
it would have solidified and extended the ceasefire, which was working  
well, until November. Even after November, it could have addressed  
Hamas' longstanding ceasefire proposals for a complete end to rocket- 
fire on Israel, in exchange for Israel lifting its crippling 18-month  
siege on Gaza.

Instead, the actual targets of its assault on Gaza after December 27,  
which included police stations, mosques, universities, and Hamas  
government institutions, clearly reveal that Israel's primary goals go  
far beyond providing immediate security for its citizens. Israeli  
spokespersons repeatedly claim that Israel's assault isn't about  
seeking to effect regime change with Hamas, but rather about creating  
a "new security reality" in Gaza. But that "new reality" requires  
Israel to use massive violence to degrade the political and military  
capacity of Hamas, to a point where it agrees to a ceasefire with  
conditions more congenial to Israel. Short of a complete reoccupation  
of Gaza, no amount of violence will erase Hamas from the scene.

Confirming the steps needed to create the "new reality," the broader  
reasons why Israel chose a major confrontation with Hamas at this time  
appear to be the cause of several other factors unrelated to providing  
immediate security for its citizens.

First, many senior Israeli political and military leaders strongly  
opposed the June 19 ceasefire with Hamas, and looked for opportunities  
to reestablish Israel's fabled "deterrent capability" of instilling  
fear into its enemies. These leaders felt Israel's deterrent  
capability was badly damaged as a result of their withdrawal from Gaza  
in 2005, and especially after the widely criticized failures in the  
2006 Israeli war with Hezbollah. For this powerful group a ceasefire  
was at best a tactical pause before the inevitable renewal of  
conflict, when conditions were more favorable. Immediately following  
Israel's aerial assault, a New York Times article noted that Israel  
had been eager "to remind its foes that it has teeth" and to erase the  
ghost of Lebanon that has haunted it over the past two years.

A second factor was pressure surrounding the impending elections set  
to take place in early February. The ruling coalition, led by Barak  
and Livni, have been repeatedly criticized by the Likud leader  
Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister, who is leading in the  
polls, for not being tough enough on Hamas and rocket-fire from Gaza.  
This gave the ruling coalition a strong incentive to demonstrate to  
the Israeli people their security credentials in order to bolster  
their chances against the more hawkish Likud.

Third, Hamas repeatedly said it wouldn't recognize Mahmud Abbas as  
president of the Palestinian Authority after his term runs out on  
January 9. The looming political standoff on the Palestinian side  
threatens to boost Hamas and undermine Abbas, who had underseen closer  
security coordination with Israel and was congenial to Israeli demands  
for concessions on future peace proposals. One possible outcome of  
this assault is that Abbas will remain in power for a while longer,  
since Hamas will be unable to mobilise its supporters in order to  
force him to resign.

And finally, Israel was pressed to take action now due to its sense of  
the American political timeline. The Bush administration rarely  
exerted constraint on Israel and would certainly stand by in its  
waning days, while Barack Obama would not likely want to begin his  
presidency with a major confrontation with Israel. The Washington Post  
quoted a Bush administration official saying that Israel struck in  
Gaza "because they want it to be over before the next administration  
comes in. They can't predict how the next administration will handle  
it. And this is not the way they want to start with the new  
administration."
An Uncertain Ending

As the conflict rages to an uncertain end, it's important to consider  
Israeli military historian Zeev Maoz's contention that Israel's  
history of manufacturing wars through "strategic escalation" and using  
overwhelming force to achieve "deterrence" has never been successful.  
In fact, it's the primary cause of Israel's insecurity because it  
deepens hatred and a desire for revenge rather than fear.

At the same time, there's no question Hamas continues to callously  
sacrifice its fellow Palestinian citizens, as well as Israeli  
civilians, on the altar of maintaining its pyrrhic resistance  
credentials and its myopic preoccupation with revenge, and fell into  
many self-made traps of its own. There had been growing international  
pressure on Israel to ease its siege and a major increase in creative  
and nonviolent strategies drawing attention to the plight of  
Palestinians such as the arrival of humanitarian relief convoys off of  
Gaza's coast in the past months, but now Gaza lies in ruins.

But as the vastly more powerful actor holding nearly all the cards in  
this conflict, the war in Gaza was ultimately Israel's choice. And for  
all this bloodshed and violence, Israel must be held accountable.

With the American political establishment firmly behind Israel's  
attack, and Obama's foreign policy team heavily weighted with pro- 
Israel insiders like Dennis Ross and Hillary Clinton, any efforts to  
hold Israel accountable in the United States will depend upon American  
citizens mobilizing a major grassroots effort behind a new foreign  
policy that will not tolerate any violations of international law,  
including those by Israel, and will immediately work towards ending  
Israel's siege of Gaza and ending Israel's occupation.

Beyond that, the most promising prospect for holding Israel  
accountable is through the increasing use of universal jurisdiction  
for prosecuting war crimes, along with the growing transnational  
movement calling for sanctions on Israel until it ends its violations  
of international law. In what would be truly be a new style of foreign  
policy, a transnational network that focuses on Israeli violations of  
international law, rather than the state itself, could become a  
counterweight that forces policymakers in the United States, Europe,  
and Israel to reconsider their political and moral complicity in the  
current war, in favor of taking real steps towards peace and security  
in the region for all peoples.

Steve Niva, a professor of International Politics and Middle East  
Studies at The Evergreen State College, is a contributor to Foreign  
Policy In Focus. He is currently writing a book on the relationship  
between Israel's military violence and Palestinian suicide bombings.