Oedipus Lex

A very quick piece on a very com­plex issue!

This latest round of Israeli/Palestinian hos­til­it­ies (includ­ing sup­port­ers and detract­ors of both sides)is exactly that, another bout in a deeply com­plex and long run­ning series of scuffles, con­flicts and tit-for-tat repris­als. Before we rush to con­demn Israel, as it is often so easy to do, or defend them, we should put this in con­text (a very simplistic con­text for brevity):

In 1947 the Palestini­ans were offered a two state solu­tion but declined it; The Palestini­ans were evicted from Jordan for caus­ing trouble (brev­ity!), the wars of 1947, ’67 and ’73 were all ini­ti­ated by Arab nations (and yes, I am aware of the pre-emptive strike) with the declared intent of wip­ing Israel off the face of the map, an aim still main­tained by many neigh­bour­ing states and organ­isa­tions within the West Bank and Gaza.

Israel’s for­eign and domestic policy fail­ings are well doc­u­mented but as an example we have the count­less thou­sands of dis­placed and dis­possed Arabs res­ult­ing from the ’47 war, vari­ous inva­sions of neigh­bour­ing coun­tries, most sig­ni­fic­antly Lebanon; the seal­ing off of Gaza, turn­ing it into a vir­tual prison; the imple­ment­a­tion of a form of apartheid and the obses­sion with build­ing set­tle­ments for ter­rit­orial con­sol­id­a­tion and gain.

This is no simple story and there is no simple answer. I have just seen an argu­ment on Twit­ter ask­ing why, if the aid ships had noth­ing to hide, did they not allow the Israelis to search them? My imme­di­ate thought, in a con­tem­por­ary Brit­ish set­ting, was that if you have noth­ing to hide, why get aggrieved with being searched by the police or about car­ry­ing an ID card? If they had fol­lowed Israeli instruc­tions they could have appar­ently filled in the neces­sary cus­toms forms and shipped the sup­plies, but that wasn’t ever going to be allowed and wasn’t really the point, was it? The point was to break the block­ade that had kept a people con­fined to rot. How­ever, I digress. There are two real issues here and both need to be answered by the Net­an­yahu gov­ern­ment immediately.

Firstly, what is to be gained from the isol­a­tion of Gaza? Weapons and sup­plies to con­struct weapons are still get­ting through by sea and land. The Olmert admin­is­tra­tion allowed sup­plies to be delivered by sea, although in my mind this is a vir­tual admis­sion that aid is required and that the effects of the embargo are hurt­ing inno­cent civil­ians. What is to be gained from turn­ing the whole area into a prison? Cur­rently Israeli sol­diers are the best recruit­ing ser­jeants (I am an ex-Green Jacket, the spelling is cor­rect) that the Arab ter­ror­ists have, Israel must learn from the mis­takes made by other coun­tries such as Bri­tain and the United States. This will require a change in tac­tics to deal with insur­gents but it must be done.

The second issue is the method in which the oper­a­tion was car­ried out. The IDF had months of notice that this flo­tilla was going to sail, they had months to work out their tac­tics and prac­tice for every even­tu­al­ity. They got it very, very wrong. Who thought that fast rop­ing into a con­fined and hos­tile envir­on­ment would be a good idea? Who thought send­ing naval com­mandos with little exper­i­ence of crowd con­trol tac­tics would be a good idea? Why not block the ships or seek to divert them? Why not dis­able them with elec­tronic counter meas­ures or the myriad of non-lethal weapons pos­sessed by the IDF? It is here I would like to point out that I sup­port the troops who opened fire, just as I do the police­man who fired the rounds into Jean-Charles de Menezes. I real­ise this is con­tro­ver­sial, it is not delib­er­ately so, but faced with an extremely hos­tile and viol­ent crowd, in fear of their lives, I fail to see they had any other option. I also fail to see that until any­one has been in a sim­ilar situ­ation, that they are qual­i­fied to comment.

The entire oper­a­tion was a total fail­ure on every level. Israel is a pariah. The abil­ity of the IDF, senior officers and the gov­ern­ment to plan for mil­it­ary oper­a­tions is being ques­tioned around the world. The deterrence factor of the once invin­cible Tzva Hagana Le Yisra’el is slip­ping with every ill thought out mis­ad­ven­ture. Israel must learn from their enemies and allies alike. Sadly PR is as import­ant as effect­ive mil­it­ary cap­ab­il­ity, some­thing the Brit­ish learnt in Borneo and the US failed to in Viet­nam, and in this battle the IDF is light-years behind their neigh­bours, no mat­ter how soph­ist­ic­ated their main battle tanks are. How did they ever think this was going to look, even if it had gone well? And des­pite what they will tell you, that really does matter.

I’m afraid this response is a little con­fused, it is a con­fus­ing situ­ation. There are no good and no bad sides, both have their argu­ments. Israel is a coun­try under con­stant attack and that must be recog­nised, as must the his­tory of the Jews in Israel. Many argue that the Israelis have used up their right to play the holo­caust card, I would dis­agree. It is impossible to under­es­tim­ate that col­lect­ive exper­i­ence and the impact on those run­ning and fight­ing for their coun­try. One slip, one sign of weak­ness and a small nation sur­roun­ded will be gone and with it the safety and inde­pend­ence of an entire people. How­ever, this is not a carte blanche to carry out any and every oper­a­tion in clear con­tra­ven­tion of accep­ted inter­na­tional law and human­it­arian prac­tice. Israel can­not afford to hem­or­rhage sup­port as it con­tin­ues to do so, espe­cially in such an embar­rass­ing, ama­teur man­ner. Equally, the people of Gaza and the West Bank can­not be left to rot in the jail that their lands have been turned into