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July 18, 2006
How I Spent My Summer Vacation
Caroline Glick explains why Hizbullah, Hamas and Fatah cannot be deterred, and thus must be destroyed, and why she has no faith in the Olmert government.
Northern Israel is a vacationer's paradise. From hiking
trails to walk on, to rivers to swim in, to luxury hotels to
bask in, to mystical sites to seek inspiration from, it has
something for everyone. This is why, when last week I took
my first vacation in four years, I made my way to the North.
As Hizbullah attacked an IDF patrol on the Lebanese border
Wednesday morning and so opened its newest round of war, I
was standing at the fortress of Megiddo looking at the ruins
of civilizations and their wars for this land stretching
back 5,000 years. Thursday found me in Nahariya walking on a
battlefield of the current war: the street where two hours
earlier Monica Seidman was killed by a Katyusha while
sitting on her balcony drinking her morning coffee.
After I left Nahariya with its residents huddled in bomb
shelters and stairwells of apartment buildings, I headed
west along the border highway to Kiryat Shemona. As I drove
along the empty, beautiful, mountain road and gazed at the
rocket smoke buffeting upwards from Mt. Meron, Safed, and
Rosh Pinna below me, commentators on the radio kept asking,
"Why is Hizbullah attacking Israel now?" Former generals
spoke of the need for Israel to restore our deterrence
against Hizbullah.
For six years, since Ehud Barak surrendered to the demands
of the radical, EU-funded Israeli Left and withdrew IDF
forces from southern Lebanon in May 2000, Israel stood by
and did nothing as Hizbullah built up its massive arsenal of
rockets and missiles. The IDF did nothing as Iran
effectively set up shop along the border.
All day Thursday Lebanese radio stations played military
marches. Announcers made repeated statements invoking Allah,
Lebanon, mujahadin and jihad. Clearly, they were thrilled
that the long anticipated war had begun.
For six years Israel was deterred by Hizbullah. The
knowledge that the Iranian proxy has missiles capable of
hitting Haifa and Hadera sufficed to convince three
successive governments to ignore or appease repeated
Hizbullah provocations while praying that Hizbullah would
wait for the next government to start its war.
Now that Hizbullah has started the war, can it be deterred
from continuing to attack Israel? What can Israel do now, as
more than one million Israelis live in areas that have
already come under attack?
Hizbullah struck last week because Iran ordered it to
attack. Immediately after the Iranian delegation rejected
the European-American offer of all manner of goodies in
exchange for a suspension of its uranium enrichment
activities, they flew to Damascus and gave Hizbullah its
marching orders.
Hizbullah is always ready to attack Israel. That is what it
exists to do. As its leader Hassan Nasrallah makes clear
every day, Hizbullah sees the destruction of Israel as a
central battle in the global jihad. And jihad is all that
matters to Hizbullah.
In this, Hizbullah is no different from Hamas. Hamas (and
Fatah for that matter), defines itself by its goal of
destroying Israel and conquering Jerusalem in the name of
jihad. Both Hamas and Fatah have used all their resources to
build up their political, social and military capabilities
to fight Israel.
Because these groups exist only to destroy Israel and
advance the cause of global jihad, they cannot be deterred.
They have no interest other than war and there is nothing
they are not willing to sacrifice in order to win. Since
they cannot be deterred, the only thing that Israel can do
is destroy their ability to fight by demolishing their
military capabilities.
Although it is impossible to deter Hizbullah, there are
parties in the current conflict that can be deterred.
Specifically, Israeli officials have rightly pointed their
fingers at the Lebanese and Syrian governments as central
enablers of Hizbullah. Although both governments are also
Iranian proxies, unlike Hizbullah and Hamas, they have
interests beyond the destruction of Israel and therefore,
they can be deterred. To date, because Lebanon is weaker
than Hizbullah, Iran and Syria, successive Lebanese
governments have cooperated with Hizbullah rather than fight
it.
The Lebanese army cannot disarm Hizbullah. It can however be
deterred from assisting Hizbullah. If Israel is able to
credibly assert to the Lebanese that IDF forces will not end
their operations in Lebanon until Hizbullah is completely
destroyed as a fighting force, then it can persuade the
Lebanese government to stay out of the conflict and deploy
its military along the border with Israel after the fighting
is ended.
Syria too has interests unrelated to Israel. Bashar Assad
wants to maintain his grip on power. Israel can weaken
Syria's bond with Iran by threatening his regime. In the
first instance, this should involve targeting Hamas
headquarters and Hamas chief Khaled Mashal's home in
Damascus.
By targeting Hamas in Syria, Israel would be making clear
that national borders are not sacred for states that sponsor
terrorism. If attacking Hamas in Damascus is not enough to
make Assad recalibrate his national interests, then Israel
should attack the headquarters of the regime's secret police
as well as Syria's Scud missile bases and its chemical and
biological weapons arsenals.
By destroying Hizbullah and peeling away its client states,
Israel would be striking a serious blow at Iran which is
directing the violence in Lebanon and Gaza as well as in
Judea and Samaria and Iraq. Iran has made destroying Israel
a central plank on its agenda because by attacking the hated
Jews, Iran is successfully raising its stature as the leader
of the Muslim world. By leading the war against Israel, Iran
has rendered itself immune to attacks from Arab states like
Saudi Arabia and Egypt that, while objecting to Iran's power
grab, cannot condemn aggression against the same Israel they
have indoctrinated their people to despise.
Iran's proxy war against Israel follows the same strategy as
its proxy war against the US in Iraq. In both cases its goal
is to defeat its enemies through a prolonged war of
attrition that will defeat the will of the Israeli and
American people to fight to victory.
Given the diverse interests of all the parties involved in
the current war against Israel, the Olmert government
rightly defined Israel's objectives as destroying Hizbullah
as a fighting force and compelling the Lebanese army to
deploy along the border with Israel after Hizbullah is
routed.
But is the Olmert government capable of achieving its stated
objectives?
Disturbingly, several indicators lead to the conclusion that
to the contrary, the government does not have the will to
accomplish its declared goals. First, by Sunday evening,
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was signaling that he was ready
to start negotiating a cease-fire through UN or EU
intermediaries.
Since both the UN and the EU are organizations dedicated to
ensuring the survival of organizations like Hizbullah and
Hamas, Olmert's willingness to use these groups as
intermediaries exposes his willingness to stop far short of
destroying Hizbullah.
Second, Olmert's strategy in the south against Hamas and
Fatah in Gaza shows that he does not understand that
Israel's terrorist adversaries are by their nature
undeterrable. When Saturday Palestinian forces blew a hole
in the wall separating Gaza from Egypt and so enabled
hundreds of terrorist to pour across the border, they made
quite clear that they have not been impressed by Israel's
military actions in Gaza. Indeed, Israel's continued support
for Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas in spite of his group's
intense collaboration with Hamas both in the guerrilla raid
that led to Cpl. Gilad Shalit's capture, and in the rocket
offensive against the Western Negev is a clear indication
that Israel is not serious about destroying its terrorist
enemies.
Third, the Olmert government's continued insistence on going
forward with its plan to retreat from Judea and Samaria and
partition Jerusalem indicates that the premier has not
accepted the now obvious fact that Israeli withdrawals
strengthen our enemies. Since the central policy of the
government contradicts its stated objective of denying
operating bases to terrorists, it is difficult to see how
the government will muster the necessary enthusiasm to see
its campaign in Lebanon to a successful conclusion.
Finally, the fact that the government has limited the IDF
campaign in Lebanon to aerial bombardment indicates that it
is not willing to take the necessary actions to secure the
country from Iranian-Hizbullah attacks. The IDF campaign
recalls the NATO bombing campaign against Kosovo and Serbia
in 1999. Yet the situation on the ground in Lebanon is more
analogous to the situation in Afghanistan in 2001. It was
possible to limit the campaign in Kosovo to aerial
bombardment because the Serbian government was deterrable.
Yet, like the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan, Hizbullah
is not open to persuasion and so must be destroyed utterly.
This can only be accomplished with ground forces.
As my interrupted vacation proved, by retreating from
Lebanon and Gaza, Israel effectively surrendered the
initiative for waging war to its enemies. Israelis no longer
control when war comes to us. It is therefore imperative
that the Olmert government understand that retreat is not an
option. Otherwise, whether at work or at play, at home or on
the town, we will all be sitting ducks.
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at July 18, 2006 10:08 AM
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