I write on Friday the 14th of July. Four thousand miles to the east rockets are exploding, bombs are dropping; the emotional reverberations are felt in my home; yours too, I imagine. What the situation will be when the paper arrives at your door, I do not know, but today, it is bad. Worse, Israel has only itself to blame. It did not learn the lessons of history.
Out of Gaza on June 25 came Hamas gunmen to kill Israeli soldiers on Israeli soil, and then they kidnapped one of them, a young corporal with dual Israeli-French citizenship. For weeks Jews in southern Israel had been hit with rockets, more annoying than lethal, but always an unprovoked menace.
Then on July12 Hezbollah forces crossed into northern Israel and killed and kidnapped other soldiers. Israel responded with an incursion into Lebanon, hitting bridges and the airport in an effort to prevent the kidnappers from taking their prey out of Lebanon into Iran. Already Nahariya and Haifa have been hit by Hezbollah rockets. Each side’s fury mounts with each rocket landing, each soldier or civilian killed or wounded.
What is to be learned? Nothing is learned. That’s the problem. The British and the French gave the Sudatenland to Hitler to buy peace; the French then hid behind the Maginot line while the British felt secure on their side of the Channel. None to any avail. That’s the lesson that ought to have been learned by Israel, but wasn’t. The most fundamental lesson is that Israel must never again unilaterally withdraw from territory. It does not work. Israel pulled out of Sinai when Anwar Sadat and Menachim Begin reached agreement on how and when and for what in exchange. In short, the Sinai for peace—real peace, not just the hope of peace. For this the Arab leader won the Noble Peace Prize and later an Arab bullet. But the peace held. (Israel offered Gaza in the same package, but Sadat was too smart to accept it. Gaza had only been occupied by Egyptian forces, it had never been part of Egypt proper; “No, Menachem, you can keep that snake pit,” the Egyptian leader conceded. One can only wonder what Begin’s reaction was. Probably not joy.)
But that’s it, the one example of negotiated handover of land. Later, in 2000, Israel surprised the world by unilaterally withdrawing, overnight, from southern Lebanon, callously abandoning its Christian allies to their fate. Munich redux. Almost immediately Hezbollah moved in and started attacking northern Israel with rockets and mortars claiming that a small area (Shebaa Farms, a 28 sq. km. piece of land) was still occupied territory, despite this time the usually hostile world siding with Israel, saying “no, it’s not.” And then last year, after a year’s buildup, Israel removed its settlers and soldiers from Gaza. Immediately weapons were smuggled from Egypt into Gaza. The Hamas led government either turned a blind eye or actively engaged in the process of illegally arming its militants. Either way, the results were inevitable and soldiers and civilians on both sides died.
So the first uncomfortable conclusion is that Israel must not again retreat without ironclad guarantees that it will not be assaulted by the very people to whom it returned land taken in defensive wars. The tail of the tiger is an uncomfortable thing to hold. Letting go is more than uncomfortable; it’s disastrous.
And the other choice? Can there ever be peace with the Palestinians? Egypt was one thing; Israel occupied another country’s territory and then gave it back following negotiations. But the Palestinian leadership believes that Israel itself is occupied Palestine. So what to do? Expel the Arabs from Gaza and the West Bank? Re-occupy southern Lebanon? One choice is worse than the next. Even if Israel succeeds in its intention of destroying the Hezbollah leadership, the Arabs can wait. If not now, then later their attack will be successful, they think. By this scenario, the only way to avoid the killings is to pull down the flag, blow up the improvements made over the past 60 years and go back to Europe and other places from which the Jews came with their talents. That’s not going to happen either. The Jewish people are in this thing for the long term. Withdrawal is not an option.
What the situation will be when the paper arrives at your door, I do not know, but today, it is bad.
