According to Clausewitz, a Napoleonic era general, war is just a matter of attaining a political or diplomatic aim, but by using other means. This idea can be used to shed a little light on the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Arab side is not willing to get involved in any direct negotiations with Israel. To do so amounts to de facto recognition of Israel. Neither the current Palestinian Authority nor the Hamas controlled Gaza Strip governing bodies really want to do that. Never mind that Yasser Arafat did exactly that when he signed the Oslo Accords. He later explained that he was just following in the steps of the prophet, Muhammed, who kept an agreement with some of his opponents only until he was strong enough to defeat them.
The major objective of the Arab side has been to destroy Israel. But they are not stupid. They know that they haven’t got the capability to win a conventional armed conflict. Israel is simply too strong. Neither are they willing to give up any of their important interim demands; Independence, Sovereignty, Jerusalem as their capital, or the Right of Return for all Palestinian Refugees. What to do? Keep on doing some kind of violent confrontation with the Israelis. But keep the level of the activities at a low enough point so that the Israelis side won’t be able to take major military actions without risking their position on the world political scene. This isn’t a new idea, but it has proven to be effective. Minor successes like killing a Jew can be used to promote more individual actions. If there is a strong Israeli response then shift to condemning Israel for killing or wounding “innocent” civilians. As an alternative, Israel can be blamed for causing humanitarian suffering because Israel is the “occupation”.
Another important point is that the casualties or humanitarian suffering doesn’t even have to be real. There is a reason that people like myself who follow what the Palestinians are saying refer to their media machine as “Pallywood”. Once in a while the Arab side comes up with a truly clever initiative. The most recent was to use children’s balloons to carry explosives or incendiaries from Gaza to burn the fields of Israeli farmers. The damage caused isn’t going to make a significant impact on the Israeli economy, but it is very irritating, and has the potential for seriously harming a few individuals. Recently 3 such balloons were found at a Kibbutz near where I live. We are quite some distance from Gaza, so these cases are most likely copycat actions.
All of this, like the firing of unguided rockets and mortars at Israeli border towns, are techniques to try to keep world attention focused on the issue and hopefully to cause world opinion (if there really is such a thing) to force the Israeli side to make some kind of political concession in return for absolutely nothing.
I will write more about this in a later post.
Wetherhorn 