Denying Israel Final Victory

David Frum in his latest CNN column argues that peace processes don’t always mean peace. As always, good intentions do not always bring good results, that is, to the extent that the peace process promoters’ intentions are as good as they seem.

But there is an even more fundamental issue with peace processes: not only do they keep war from ever ending, they also create instability because they remove predictability from the strategic equation.

War is always hazardous. There would never be wars if their results could be predicted with 100% certainty.

That said, in real life, it is sometimes possible to predict the result of a war between a very strong party and a weak one. For instance, in an open field, Hezbollah would be no match for the IDF. What makes it more complicated are elements such as the presence of civilians in the war zone, the fact that the Israelis do not want to hurt innocent people or the fact that the Israelis do not want to suffer too many casualties themselves either.

But even in such conditions, a decisive victory is still possible. Examples abound of successful counter-insurgencies.

What makes victory even harder to attain in the Middle East is the fact that every time Israel seems close to a decisive result, the “international community” imposes a cease-fire, in the name of peace, of course. The reality is a bit different: diplomatic pressure from countries that do not want a complete Israeli victory acts as a final guarantor for Israel’s enemies. Even Hezbollah, a movement that no Western country considers with real sympathy, found itself protected by a diplomatic shield in 2006. However unsuccessful the IDF may have been, it was known as a fact from the minute the war started that Israel had a limited time period in which to act. The so-called “unconditional support” from Washington meant that Israel was allowed to defend itself for a few weeks, after which it would have to accept a ceasefire.

Negotiations and transitional agreements follow the same logic. According to the 2002 “roadmap”, the Palestinian Authority was supposed to prevent acts of war against Israel.  Israel however did not pledge to release Palestinian prisoners. But when it became obvious that the roadmap was not being implemented, Israel was called upon to make “gestures”, like freeing some Palestinian prisoners, so that the Palestinian leadership could “deliver”, i.e. show their constituency that they could obtain concessions from Israel.

Likewise, Israel has been routinely criticized for building settlements during the 90’s Oslo process, and this argument has been widely used in order to excuse terror attacks from the Palestinian side, or at least to excuse Arafat for not doing anything about it. But the September 1993 Washington Protocol (“Oslo”) contained no commitment to abstain from building settlements.

In other words, Israel is regularly expected to do more than it had committed to, while the Palestinians are excused for failing to fulfill their own commitments, and these passes are usually justified with “realistic” arguments like the idea that the peace process cannot make any progress otherwise.

Does it mean that Israel is unfairly treated? Does it show a bias against Israel? Partly; but there is more to it.

There are basically two ways to interpret the word “peace”. It can mean the end of a war, like in 1945. In this sense, the best way to promote peace in the Middle East would be to just let the parties fight it out. One of them, probably Israel, would win and that would be it.

But nowadays, “peace” is more often considered to be the opposite of victory. Or put in a different way, war would be made useless if victory was made impossible. That is the pacifist idea of peace. Any territorial gain, for instance, must be denied, so that no country will be tempted to make war on another in order to expand its borders, No forced transfer of population must be accepted, lest other countries be tempted to expel their own minorities.

What we usually call the “peace process” is based upon this idea of peace. Otherwise, real peace processes would be military victories.

So the Middle East seems to have served as a laboratory for “peace processes”. No other conflict has been treated with the same attention by the “international community”. Israelis and Palestinians seem to be guinea pigs for peace activists from the whole world. That may be due to a general hostility to Israel from certain countries, but also to more objective factors, such as the size of the parties or their dependence on their respective allies.

In any case, the result of this real-life experiment in collective security is that the war has been going on for decades and shows no sign of receding, and that is at least partly due to the fact that no one can ever seem to win. Every time a party shows signs of having the upper ground, be it during a war or a negotiation, the “international community” finds a way to put the scale back and equalize the game. And so Israel is probably deterred from trying to force an endgame in its favor, but it is also deterred from expecting any result from a new round of peace talks. On the other hand, Israeli governments have learned how to keep peace promoters happy by making them feel good.

As for the other side, the result seems to be the opposite. Palestinian movements and Hezbollah have a permanent incentive to attack, not because they can expect a complete victory, but because they cannot be completely defeated. To the contrary: any war may result in an increase in financial aid from the international community. And when there is a negotiation going on, they do have an incentive to sign documents such as the roadmap, since no one will ask them to implement it completely.  Complying with their agreements might weaken them and create a situation that would be too favorable to Israel.

In other words, applied pacifism is a doctrine that tries to directly influence the final result, instead of trying to deal with the causes of a conflict; and the result must never be victory. And as is the case with many modern doctrines, the real-world results do not seem to be much of a concern for those who promote pacifism in the first place.

So it is possible, in theory at least, that Israel is not so much the victim of a worldwide bias against it. Maybe the problem is not anti-Semitism, or anti-Westernism, but pacifism — in other words another so-called idealistic doctrine that brings more disasters than good old-fashioned cynicism.

What remains to be seen, though, is if Israelis would benefit from the same perpetual protection if they were the weakest party.