sometimes, somebody has to lose

Ok, on sober reflection, do I still want Hezbollah to defeat the forthcoming/already underway IDF invasion of Lebanon? I’ll explain.

In the past, I always thought there was a very strong practical argument for the Palestinians to just give up and admit defeat. For one thing, the injustices that saw them being made refugees in the first place seemed to be on the verge of drowning in the wider injustices of perpetual warfare. And though the Palestinians had successfully kept up the struggle, in the process of so doing they’d evolved the kind of attributes – willingness to die on demand, absolute loyalty to the idea of the nation – that tend to prosper best under totalitarian forms of leadership, either secular or religious. This doesn’t invalidate the Palestinian cause as such. To say that you won’t negotiate with the Palestinians as a matter of principle because they elected Hamas is to say that it’s OK to keep what you gained by theft and murder provided you effectively brutalize your victims. But on the other side of the argument, it’s only when you put the struggle behind you that you can produce your Attlees and Adenaurs, get on with rebuilding and maybe produce a humane polity. Sometimes it just has to be over, whatever the rights and wrongs, and sometimes that means that somebody just has to lose.

That perception took a knock over the course of the various Oslo negotiating processes, when it became clear that peace wasn’t worth magnanimity to Israel. And of course that shouldn’t have been too much of a surprise: it’s an extensively militarised nation founded by force and animated by a combination of blood and soil nationalism and a sense of religious entitlement. It’s a mirror image of what mobilises Hamas and Hezbollah. After all, this is what appears to get you places. And as we’re seeing in Lebanon, it seems to have produced a psycopath’s concept of respect and personal space. Look at me funny, and I’ll burn down your house. Capture my troops, and I’ll burn down your country. Along with that goes the grotesque adolescent self pity: we had to do this. Don’t you understand. Why do you hate me. I’m going to do it because you hate me and want me to die. It’s your fault.

This last bit’s more of a speciality of Israel’s apologists than of Israel itself, and the general mentality was at least defensible when Israel was fighting conventional armies in what really were existential conflicts against enemies that, anyway, didn’t really give a damn about the Palestinians. But Hezbollah poses no such threat. It can't roll up Israel. It doesn’t have the men or materiel to take and hold territory. It can’t even push Israel back to its pre-1967 borders. It can’t smash the IDF, thereby destroying Israel’s means of defending itself, nor does it thtreaten the economic and technological superiority on which that means of defense ultimately defends. What it could just conceivably do is push Israel back over the Lebanese border, either in direct response to an assault or after more protracted guerrilla warfare. It could take the option of an Israeli rampage through Lebanon off the table for an extended period of time. Lord knows the Israelis aren’t the only ones who’ve tried to wreck the place over the years, but they’ve been enthusiastic participants. And they are the ones who are doing it right now.

Would this mean that the forces of a democracy were defeated by those of religious militancy? Surely. But the consequence could be, to remove the option of reflexive belligerency from Israel – at least in regard to Lebanon - without threatening the existence of its people. Also, it’s a bit late to complain about a small triumph for Sh’ite fundamentalism in Lebanon when we’ve just spent years of effort and billions of dollars in securing a big triumph for Sh’ite fundamentalism in Iraq. And besides, sometimes somebody just has to lose.

Obviously, this isn't the whole picture. A Hezbollah victory would have other effects across the MENA region generally. I think in particular it would be bad for two countries, namely Iran and Syria. But that's for another post, maybe tomorrow.

Comments

[Justin]

Outstanding, Jamie.