Eternal vigilance is a bad military policy and a bad political policy.
Now that there is a ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza war, attention is less paid by the media about it at least until the peace talks during the second stage, where I don’t see what kind of permanent peace between Hamas and Israel can be arranged, and so we will be back in the kettle of a prospective forever war, the Israelis wanting their state and the Palestinians not wanting Israel to be an independent state. Meanwhile, we can consider the reverberations of this fifteen month war. Some Jews worldwide are shocked at the killing of many Gazans during the course of the war and people around the world are so outraged that they call it genocide, a blot on the history of the Jewish people, though the Israelites are a warrior people all the way back to Samson. For their part, Netanyahu and most Israelis are disappointed that the Israelis were not able to achieve tier war aims despite all that time and the flesh and treasure sacrificed for it, which was to expunge Hamas as an organization from Gaza and let other people run the area, but Hamas forces seem to be reasserting themselves in Gaza. So what came out of the war flor the Israelis but the stain of cruelty and killing? Stand aside well enough so as to judge the state of play for the Israelis.
The Israelis change offered a two state solution for many times, including before Israel not yet existed as a state. Every one of them were declined by the Arab residents in Palestine before and after the Palestineans started regarding themselves as an ethnic identity following the 1967 war. The Israelis expected to trade the West Bank for a peace treaty. Arafat rejected Clinton’s plan for a two state solution, plans having been developed so roadways could be constructed so the Palestinian state would be contiguous. Note that no plan for partition was ever offered bhy the Palestinians. Whether you regard it as a matter of principle or as foolhardy, the Palestinians have always regarded theirs as the country between the river and the sea. So there is no palestinian partner for peace and the Peace Now movement on the Israeli Left died out because of that, leaving Netanyahu with an ever more decided attitude not to make peace and to extend settlements int the West Bank and not just those close to Jerusalem, because time eroded the desire to hold the west bank in abeyance because of some future deal that never came. The West Bank wasn’t the issue; it was whether Israel would survive, expansionist or not.
So what is the condition of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians before Oct. 7th? The Palestinians in the West Bank had an ethnic identity without a state and that leads to unrest as it has for other stateless ethnic enclaves present in another state, never mind the legalities whereby Israel is legally entitled to its boundaries as the successor of the British Mandate. The Palestinians are there and want their own nationhood. The same is and remains true for the Kurds in Syria, who run an autonomous region backed by the United States but not declaring themselves a state. Indigenous American Indian tribes are supported by federal money in tribal territories which have some powers of autonomy. Catalonia remains in Spain despite its cultural distinctiveness and occasional attempts to resist Spanish rule. The Palestinians on the West Bank are controlled by the Israelis through the Palestinian Authority claims to supervise the West Bank population.. Presenting in their schools an anti-Israel point of view.
What were the Israelis to do to protect their own borders? They constructed walls and entry points that allow Palestinians to come into Israel for work permits, both from the EWest Bank and from Gaza. That prevented terrorist attacks against Jerusalem pizza parlors. Controlling Gaza was more difficult. The expression went that every few years, the Israelis “had to mow the lawn” through military means to degrade the missiles and other weapons deployed and used by Hamas. But that is an unstable situation in that vigilance is eternal and one mistake can make a disaster, such as might have happened if the Am ericvan no fly zone over Assad’s Syria had been violated and some American fliers captured because Syrian rockets knocked down American jets. The advantage was to the Syrians in that the Americvans had to remain always vigilant while vulnerable and only one lapse might put the United States in a bad position. Indeed, I still think the real reason for the invasion of Iraq was because the United States could no longer bear the burden of a no-fly zone, never mind the ruse of weapons of mass destruction, though that plausible reason was never offered as the reason for that war.
The Israelis were in the same predicament. They had to engage in eternal vigilance against Hamas attacking Israel in a big way rather than unjust some tit for tat every few years or so, the United States sure to mediate a truce by telling the UIsraelis had done enough and end hostilities. But Hamas needed to destabilize any Israel-Saudi Arabia detente and so unleashed Oct. 7th, expecting that the return fire would end soon enough as had happened before. And the Israelis had misjudged that Hamas was largely talk and their real danger was on the West Bank. But the Israelis were fed up with trying to sift through levels of threat and entered a full scale attack against Hamas even though the U S military warned that Israel would be alienated by the world for the collateral damage. But Netanyahu was motivated by his failure to protect the homeland and his misjudgment about Hamas intentions and Biden stood by Israel through the end of his term in supporting the Israel-Hamas War while making minor qualms about the extent of collateral damage. Hamas, however, is weakened but not chastened and Israel is seen as the killers of mothers and children.
There are other occasions where a nation is fed up and doesn’t do the most humane thing in pursuing a war. The U. S. engaged in massive civilian bombing at the end of world war II and is considered as being punitive rather than of military necessity. Nixon bombed Hanoi just to help the Vietnamese agree to a truce. Netanayahu was told by Americans that a longer war of covert assassinations of Hamas leadership would accomplish the same end without so much civilian damage, but Netanyahu had to show his retaliation against Hamas, whatever the civilian damage. Enough was enough trying to maneuver with Hamas and the West Bank. Stop feeling sorry for the Palestinians wherever they are. They offer no quarter. Why should the Israelis?
It is remarkable that Israel which has been at war since the time it was founded in 1948 remains a western democracy, one which has freedom of speech, an independent judiciary and legitimate elections. But the Israeli government was embarrassed by its security failure on Oct. 7th and the Israeli public is preoccupied with the small number of Israeli hostages rather than the large number of Palestinian civilian hostages. There are mass gatherings about the former. It is understandable however that Israeli society is frayed and people inclined to violence without the niceties. I am not applauding that, just observing it.