A review of Israel’s wars since 1947 (Part 3 of 3)

This is the third of a three-part recap of Israel’s wars since 1947.

Second Intifada 2000-2005 (aka, Al-Aqsa Intifada), including Operation Defensive Shield 2002.

By all accounts, the event that set off the second intifada was a deliberate provocation by Ariel Sharon, then opposition leader. On September 28, 2000 he visited the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the location of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, considered a sacred site by Muslims.

Richard Kreitner recalled the incident 15 years later:

In a truly manful display of resolve on this day 15 years ago, the leader of the Israeli political opposition, Ariel Sharon, toured the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, surrounded by several hundred, and perhaps more than a thousand, armed riot police. The visit had the desired effect: After Sharon left the compound, Palestinian rioters began hurling stones and other projectiles in the direction of Jewish worshipers at the Western Wall. Rarely has it been more accurately said that hell broke loose of its restraints. (1)

Over four thousand deaths were registered during the second intifada, most of them Palestinians. Bader Araj and Robert Brym describe events from 2002 as follows:

In March 2002, following an especially horrific suicide bombing that killed 30 people, the Israeli army launched Operation Defensive Shield to reoccupy the West Bank and parts of Gaza. One year later Israel started building a separation barrier in the West Bank to match a similar barrier erected in Gaza in 1996. Also helping to suppress the uprising were more than 200 state-directed assassinations of Palestinian military operatives and political leaders.
Although the violence had nearly subsided by the end of 2005, the conditions causing it had in some respects worsened. Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank continued, and tight controls were placed on the movement of Palestinian goods and people, stifling economic growth. Negotiations were at a standstill. In addition, the Palestinian Authority lost support amid charges of widespread corruption. Many Palestinians now turned to Hamas, which won the 2006 legislative elections and took power by force in Gaza in 2007. [my emphasis] (2)

Second Lebanon War (July-August 2006).

Dieter Vieweger gives this description of the 2006 Lebanon War, a short but significant event:

The trigger for a second, much more extensive armed conflict in 2006 was [an] attack on the Israeli border with Lebanon. On July 12, 2006, Hezbollah first attacked northern Israel with heavy rocket fire and at the same time carried out an attack on a border patrol, killing seven soldiers and kidnapping two. Hezbollah hoped to be able to negotiate the release of Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners held in Israel in exchange for both two abductees.

Beginning on July 12, Israeli warplanes bombed the international airport and Shiite neighborhoods in Beirut, soon followed by Tyre and many other places identified by the Israeli military as Hezbollah strongholds, as well as infrastructure facilities of all kinds. The damage ran into the billions. As always, the force of the destruction also hit the civilian population. It was not until UN Security Council Resolution 1701 of August 12 that the way was paved for the cessation of fighting, which took effect two days later.

The war cost the lives of well over 1100 Lebanese. In addition, thousands of people were injured and hundreds of thousands were made into refugees. (3)

The next three short wars were “operations” of the kind that the Israeli leaders refer to cynically as “mowing the grass.” Essentially, this is the assumption that Israel can keep the Palestinians in Gaza under tight control by regulating their supplies of food, fuel, medicine, even water. And every few years carry out a brief war (or “operation”) to intimidate them.

This approach regards Gaza as an open-air prison. Others like Masha Gessen have referred to it as a ghetto. Including the far-right Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich. (4)

This approach to Palestine is in keeping with the commitment in Netanyahu’s coalition agreement in forming the current government that Israel must control all of Eretz Israel. Also known as “from the river to the sea.”

Operation Cast Lead (Dec. 27, 2008-January 18, 2009).

Belén Fernández calls Operation Cast Lead “a twenty-two-day affair that ultimately dispensed with some 1,400 Palestinian lives, among them more than three hundred children.” Sounds like standard operating procedure for the Israeli government and the IDF. (5)

She continues:

Western mainstream media outlets, ever-reliable conduits for Israeli propaganda, explained Cast Lead in the same way they explain all Israeli onslaughts: as “retaliation” for some Palestinian offense. In this case, Hamas was accused of breaking a ceasefire by firing rockets into Israel — even though the rockets (which injured no one) were themselves a response to Israel’s lethal, ceasefire-violating raid into the Gaza Strip.

The media’s insistence on endowing Israel with a perennial monopoly on retaliation obscures the reality that any Palestinian action against Israel is fundamentally a reaction to Israel’s brutal usurpation of Palestinian territory, institutionalized policy of ethnic cleansing, and habitual massacres.

If either side in the conflict actually cares, the laws of war apply to states and to liberation movements also.

But Israel is a nuclear power with what has long been taken to be one of the most formidable armies in the world. A reputation that hasn’t let them succeed in eliminating Hamas yet. And their government and their politicians don’t seem to have much more to offer than permanent insecurity for the indefinite future.

A later report from the Israeli human rights group B’tselem would report of Cast Lead:

On 27 December 2008, Israel launched Operation Cast Lead, its most extensive operation in Gaza. The operation, which ended on 18 January 2009, resulted in unparalleled harm to civilian Palestinian population: 1,391 Palestinians were killed, including at least 759 civilians who did not take part in the hostilities; thousands were wounded. Israel also extensively damaged buildings and infrastructure, so that electric, water, and sewage facilities, which were on the verge of collapse even before the campaign, ceased functioning altogether. According to UN figures, Israel destroyed over 3,500 residences, rendering tens of thousands homeless. (6)

Operation Pillar of Defense (Nov.14-21, 2012). This conflict lasted only eight. But it racked up an impressive record of criminal behavior on both the IDF and Palestinian sides.

B’tselem notes of the Pillar of Defense operation that the one-week operation did feature changes in IDF behavior that limited civilian casualties more than they did in Cast Lead:

Operation Pillar of Defense was significantly different from Operation Cast Lead which took place about four years previously. The harm to the civilian Palestinian population during Operation Cast Lead was enormous: over the three plus weeks of the campaign, 1,391 Palestinians were killed, including at least 759 who did not take part in the hostilities. Thousands more were wounded, hundreds of homes were destroyed and civilian infrastructures were severely damaged.

Granted, Operation Pillar of Defense was of shorter duration than Operation Cast Lead and was conducted entirely from the air. However, the less extensive harm to civilian population during Pillar of Defense should probably be attributed also to the fact that this time, the Israeli military adopted a different open-fire policy and firing was more restricted and focused. Nonetheless, in this report, B’Tselem seeks to draw attention to violations, or alleged violations, of the law, based on the conduct of both sides during the campaign. [my emphasis] (p. 35)

The report also explains:

Because the military [IDF] refuses to provide real information about incidents in which Palestinians who did not take part in the hostilities were harmed, B’Tselem is unable to investigate the lawfulness of each and every military strike during the operation. In the vast majority of cases the target of the attack cannot be discovered and therefore, it cannot be determined whether the target was legitimate and, if so, whether the strike was proportional. Nonetheless, B’Tselem’s investigations have found that, in some cases at least, the military violated IHL [international humanitarian law] and in other cases there are substantial reasons to believe IHL was violated. [my emphasis] (p. 37)

After the eight-day operation, “Netanyahu declared the Israeli offensive to be a success, saying that his forces had dealt a painful blow to Hamas, destroying thousands of rockets and killing many ‘terrorist commanders’. Hamas also claimed victory, despite the Palestinian losses.” (7)

Operation Protective Edge (July 8-August 26, 2014).

This was yet another Israeli incursion in Gaza against Hamas. A 2017 RAND Corporation report summarized the results:

Protective Edge took a toll in both blood and treasure. On the Israeli side, at least 66 soldiers and six civilians died in the conflict. According to the Israeli Tax Authority, Protective Edge caused almost $55 million in direct damage to private and public infrastructure and another $443 million in indirect damage given economic disruptions caused by the conflict.

On the Palestinian side, the United Nations (UN) estimated the number of Palestinian deaths at 2,133, of whom 1,489 were civilians—a point that Hamas used to advance its legal and international claim that Israel used disproportionate force. By contrast, Israeli estimates suggest that there were 1,598 Palestinian fatalities in Protective Edge, of which 75 percent were combatants. In addition, the UN estimated 500,000 people—28 percent of Gaza’s population— were internally displaced, while the homes of some 108,000 people were uninhabitable. (8)

If those last three operations or “Gaza wars” seem to have produced inconclusive results for both sides, that’s actually the point of the “mowing the grass” approach. Control the population of Gaza and then periodically terrorize the people and degrade Hamas’ capabilities and wait for a chance to take a more drastic approach to establishing permanent Israeli control “from the river to the sea.”

The RAND report remarks, “Israel tries to maintain a difficult balance with respect to Hamas. On one hand, it wants to punish Hamas for its attacks; on the other hand, it does not want to eliminate Hamas because it worries that the organization could be replaced by one that is much more violent.”

Maintaining that status indefinitely seems to have been the purpose of the “mowing the grass” approach. RAND’s 2017 evaluation of the prospects in the immediate future:

In the three years after Protective Edge, Hamas has maintained its control in Gaza and does not appear in danger of being replaced in the near term. And yet, the underlying political and economic pressures on Hamas remain today. Thus, many believe a fourth major Gaza conflict is only a matter of time.

The Netanyahu government’s approach in the current war seems to go well beyond just maintaining the “mowing the grass” indefinite stalemate.

Israel-Palestine Crisis of 2021 (May 10-May 21).

For 12 days in May 2021, Israel and Hamas exchanged heavy fire. The number of casualties suffered reflected the balance of capabilities—offensive and defensive—and decisions made by policymakers on how to respond to attacks: 10 Israelis, 3 foreign workers, and approximately 260 Palestinians were killed, with many more injured. The immediate trigger for this round of violence seemed to have been developments that took place far from Gaza: the eviction of Palestinian families from Sheikh Jarrah (a neighborhood of East Jerusalem, which is territory occupied by Israel in 1967 and subsequently de facto annexed) and a gradual increase in the number of Jews permitted by Israeli authorities to pray on the Temple Mount (also known as the Noble Sanctuary). The absence of a deliberate response to these developments by the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority (PA) both motivated Hamas and provided it an opportunity to assert itself as the guardian of Palestinian and Arab rights in Jerusalem. (9)

In his interview with Patel, Shai Feldman gives an interesting evaluation of the results of the 2021 round of conflict.

Hamas [in 2021] seemed to have estimated correctly that numerous Israeli threats notwithstanding, Israel would be self-deterred from taking steps that would truly threaten Hamas: a major ground operation followed by sustained reoccupation of Gaza and a weeding-out of Hamas operatives, similar to the de-Ba‘thification campaign that the U.S. oversaw in Iraq following the 2003 invasion. Hamas knows well that Israelis have neither the appetite for reconquering Gaza nor the will to try to manage the chaos that would ensue there should Hamas no longer control this very densely populated area. [my emphasis]

This was the context of the “mowing the grass” strategy. On implication of that now is that Hamas presumably knew very well that the October 7 attack would be likely to provoke a ground operation. But Israel is not yet pursuing a “sustained reoccupation of Gaza” and by all current accounts, Hamas is still the functioning government of Gaza – to the extent they still have a functioning government after the war’s devastation.

Feldman also suggests that Hamas may have taken the lesson from the 2021 fighting that Israel’s forces were overestimating their own capabilities:

Israel seems to have sustained a number of losses as a result of the May 2021 violence. First, it failed to defeat Hamas strategically, let alone suppress its rocket fire operationally. Such a result could not have enhanced its deterrence. Thus, there appears to be a wide gap between the announcements made by some Israeli leaders to the effect that their objective in the fighting was “to change the deterrence equation” vis-à-vis Hamas and the realities on the ground. There is no evidence that Hamas was impressed by the IDF’s post-fighting public relations campaign that attempted to convince it that the IDF was the clear winner of the “round.” Quite the contrary: By appearing in public and above ground immediately after the intense fighting ended, Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, took special pains to demonstrate that Hamas was not intimidated. [my emphasis]

Feldman also identifies another weakness in Netanyahu’s calculations in the mowing-the-lawn strategy:

More than any other constituency, Israelis residing in the south—and thus paying attention to detail—have also observed over the years that when it came to the actual implementation of policy vis-à-vis Hamas, Israel has contributed significantly to the erosion of its deterrence. It has done so by assisting the transfer of Qatari money to Hamas while continuing to insist that it was fighting the terror organization relentlessly; negotiating with Hamas while stating that it is not engaged in such talks; and concluding very generous deals with Hamas—notably the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange agreement, in the framework of which Israel released 1,027 Palestinians (far more generous than anything it has ever granted the PA). [my emphasis]

At the end of the interview, Feldman makes virtually the same prediction that the RAND Corporation report made in 2017, saying, “without anything in the international, regional, and domestic environments that could drive a significant change, and given that living conditions in Gaza continue to be intolerable, it is only a matter of time before another explosion will erupt.”

But the mowing-the-grass approach was based on assuming that such explosions could be contained indefinitely at a comparatively minimal cost to Israel itself. And the last year has shown us that eventually turned out to be a very bad assumption.

Summary

And that process led to the current war, beginning with the October 7 attack and Israel’s war on Gaza civilians, has been spreading to war on West Bank civilians and military actions of one kind or another in Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.

If the record of Israel’s wars since 1973 – over fifty years ago – show any serious indication of trying to achieve a diplomatic and peaceful solution to the conflict with the Palestinians, I find it very hard to see what that would be. In the meantime, they have created a rigid apartheid system in the illegally occupied territories and are moving away from rather than toward a healthy liberal democracy.

The US is basically the only external power at this point that can push Israel in the direction of a less destructive policy. But until we have a government again that is willing to put restraints on Israel, which relies critically on US support to fight the wars it keeps getting itself into, the question will be how many military disasters it will take and how much damage to Israeli society and economy will be done before it changes course in a major way.

Notes:

(1) Kreitner, Robert (2015): September 28, 2000: Ariel Sharon Visits the Temple Mount, Sparking the Second Intifada. The Nation 09/1/2015. <https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/september-28-2000-ariel-sharon-visits-the-temple-mount-sparking-the-second-intifada/> (Accessed: 2024-22-09).

(2) Araj, Bader & Brym, Robert J (2024): "intifada". Encyclopedia Britannica 09/17/2024, <https://www.britannica.com/topic/intifada> (Accessed: 2024-22-09).

(3) Vieweger, Dieter (2023): Streit um das Heilige Land (8th edition), 258. Munich: Gütersloher Verlagshaus. My translation from German.

(4) Karanth, Sanjan (2023): Senior Far-Right Israeli Official Admits Gaza Is A ‘Ghetto’ For Palestinians. Huffpost 12/31/2023. <https://www.huffpost.com/entry/israeli-official-gaza-ghetto-palestinians_n_6591f45de4b0b01d3e40260c> (Accessed: 2024-22-09).

(5) Fernández, Belén (2018): A Milestone on the Timeline of Israeli Brutality. Jacobin 12/27/2018. <https://jacobin.com/2018/12/operation-cast-lead-ten-year-anniversary-israel-occupation 1/> (Accessed: 2024-22-09).

(6) Stein, Yael (2013): Human Rights Violations during Operation Pillar of Defense: 14-21 November 2012, 8. B’Tselem. <https://www.btselem.org/download/201305_pillar_of_defense_operation_eng.pdf>

(7) Hussain, Hana (2017): Remembering Israel’s ‘Operation Pillar of Defence’. Middle East Monitor 11/14/2017. <https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20171114-remembering-israels-operation-pillar-of-defence/> (Accessed: 2024-22-09).

(8) RAND Corporation (2017): Lessons from Israel's Wars in Gaza. <https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9975.html>

(9) Patel, David Siddhartha (2021): The Impact of the May 2021 Hamas-Israel Confrontation: A Conversation with Shai Feldman (introduction). Brandies University Crown Center for Middle East Studies 10/28/2021. <https://www.brandeis.edu/crown/publications/crown-conversations/cc-10.html> (Accessed: 2024-22-09).