unsought favour

Says Jim Lobe:

Israel's massive three-day aerial assault on Gaza is likely to complicate President-elect Barack Obama's hopes of aggressively pursuing Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, and it risks inflicting greater damage to Washington's standing in the Arab world, according to analysts.

Indeed, if the current campaign goes on much longer and the Israelis launch a major ground invasion of Gaza as they now appear to be preparing to do, Obama could face a major international crisis – comparable to Israel's failed 2006 war against Lebanon's Hezbollah – just as he takes office in three weeks' time.

I suspect Obama and his people will believe that the assault on Gaza has simplified their options. The Palestinians are not prepared to accept absolute submission, which is the only thing that Israel is prepared to offer, and no-one is willing or able to force the Israelis to offer anything better. The attack has taken the idea of a peace process off the table and therefore absolved Obama in advance of any responsibility for the failure of that process. It’s an unsought favour.

One beneficiary of this might be Hezbollah. I get the sense that Israel has finally formally abandoned its marker in Lebanese politics in turning southwards, at least for now. There’s also be countervailing pressure from the Arab world for some compensatory face saver, which a Hezbollah-led Lebanese government might adequately provide.

As far as a ground assault on Gaza goes, the obvious comparison is with Lebanon in ’06. Yet Gaza doesn’t have the geographical depth of Lebanon, making it harder for Hamas to conduct a fluid defence. This is more like a full scale assault on Hong Kong, with added defensible piles of rubble. Here the challenge for Hamas is to make a Grozny out of it, inflicting enough casualties on the IDF’s reservists to weaken Israeli political will to continue the slaughter. And that in turn means accepting the kind of casualty rate which could wipe out Hamas as an organization: either that or go back underground to preserve their cadre while inflicting attritional attacks on Israeli forces for however long it takes or for however long they can keep it up.

Comments

[Aaron]

Presumably Israel intends to assault Gaza to the point that it believes that Hamas will not be able to resist Fatah control over that territory, then toss the keys over to Abbas and the PNA.

At that point, do you expect Fatah to accept control over Gaza, or might it actually have the gumption to say to Israel, "This is your mess - you clean it up"? History suggests that they'll pick door number 1.

[dsquared]

I think you're right on the armchair generalship - Israel could, if they wanted, conquer Gaza pretty quickly and with high degree of certainty, but to do so would involve accepting more casualties than the current government regards as politically viable.

[Tom]

What's this likely to do to Hamas support in the West Bank? There's a snakes/barrels/lids situation here, presumably, but Hamas != Hizbollah by any reckoning.

Oh, and it just me or is Iraq the most anti-Israeli Arab government?

[Phil]

Israel could, if they wanted, conquer Gaza pretty quickly and with high degree of certainty, but to do so would involve accepting more casualties than the current government regards as politically viable.

Also, what would it gain them? "Gaza - an occupied territory again!"

I'm not sure the Israeli government has any end-state in mind; I certainly can't imagine what it would be if they have. I think it quite suits them to have a source of low-level panic and threat on the border, particularly if it gives them the chance to play at Shock and Awe before an election.

[jamie k]

I think the basic idea which they still have despite what happened in Lebanon is regime change from the air. I don't know why they believe this works. Apart from anything else the Hamas rocketeers are blasting away now at a vastly increased rate while the IDF air force are attacking empty buildings, which means there's going to have to be a ground attack because the alternative is to admit defeat.

Israel's problem is that it is simultaneously extremely belligerent and very casualty shy. Maybe the election will resolve that issue one way if it puts the far right in or close to power.

[Cian]

Its other problem, as demonstrated in Lebanon, is that its army really isn't very good. Losing to Hezbollah was pretty devastating, but "losing" (which really means not controlling the territory) to Hamas would be devastating. It seems unlikely that Israel's army would lose, but after 2006 it has to be a gamble.

[Chris Williams]

I wonder how we're rating 'good', here. Perhaps in the age of the RPG and the video camera, being 'good' at asymetrical warfare is like being 'good' late fifteenth-century armoured cavalry. Has anyone released any estimates of how many RPG rounds Hamas has got in Gaza?