By Israel Piekarsh
Recently, since the Cabinet's decision on September 16th, the government has approved a series of military operations aimed at returning the residents of northern Israel to their homes. These actions reflect exceptional tactical boldness, alongside impressive intelligence capabilities in penetrating Hezbollah's ranks. There's no doubt that in the immediate term, these actions have created renewed and positive deterrence against the Iranian axis. Now, at a time of severe escalation risk in the north, we stand alongside IDF soldiers fighting on the front lines, and all other citizens of northern and central Israel who must defend themselves against missile barrages. We're all in the same boat. Without contradiction, I also wish to stand alongside Lebanese citizens, the vast majority of whom oppose war, and alongside all uninvolved Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and beyond the Green Line. We all deserve a different and more worthy future.
Despite the short-term tactical achievements, we must carefully examine the long-term implications of these steps. It appears that the government prefers to risk us all in a comprehensive regional war and maximum stretching of forces on all fronts, rather than withdraw from the Philadelphi Corridor in the Gaza Strip. This preference indicates poor judgment, and I wish to warn about this. In this article, I will first examine the government's priorities in its recent actions and then propose alternatives.
The Dilemma: The Risk of Withdrawal versus the Danger of War
On September 2nd, Prime Minister Netanyahu held a press conference where he clarified that he has no intention of withdrawing IDF forces from the Philadelphi Corridor. This corridor forms the land border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, and therefore, in his view, the IDF must continue to hold it in any scenario to prevent Hamas from rehabilitating through weapons smuggling from Egypt. He claims that after we withdraw from the corridor, the international community will not allow the IDF to return there. However, what wasn't sufficiently clarified in Netanyahu's words was the connection between the southern front and the northern front. Many commentators have pointed out the link between the fronts: if Israel doesn't agree to withdraw from the Philadelphi Corridor, not only might the hostages in Gaza remain without a deal, but Hezbollah will also find it difficult to agree to an arrangement. As a result, the likelihood of war in Lebanon increases significantly.
Image: Gaza Strip border demonstrations, 2021 Anas-Mohammed / Shutterstock.com
Indeed, it's possible that no hostage deal or arrangement can be implemented because Hamas won't agree to it. It's certainly possible that we have no choice but to go to a comprehensive war to return the residents of the north to their homes. But from the moment the Prime Minister preferred the risk of war over the risk of withdrawal – it can no longer be said that war in Lebanon is Israel's last resort.
Therefore, we must examine what dangers are inherent in a war in Lebanon, and whether they are preferable to the risk of withdrawing from the Philadelphi Corridor. First, a war in Lebanon could lead to a comprehensive regional war that would create enormous destruction in Israel and a high number of casualties not seen since the War of Independence. Even in the worst-case scenario of withdrawal from the Philadelphi Corridor, and even if Hamas rehabilitates itself, it's still not as severe a scenario as a comprehensive war with Iran or its proxies. Second, the current economic conditions do not allow us to go to war. Recently, Israel has dropped in several credit ratings and the national deficit has grown six times beyond expectations. This is accompanied by reports of delays in American funding for our air defense systems. Third, our recent actions in Lebanon continue to deteriorate our relations with the Americans to an unprecedented low. In our recent actions, we risk entangling the U.S. in a regional war, all this during elections in the U.S. and contrary to explicit calls for a ceasefire from the American administration.
Under current conditions, going to war in the north could be disastrous. It will end in one of two ways: territorially - either the IDF will return to a security zone in southern Lebanon or we will return to the border line; and politically - there will be an arrangement or an unofficial mechanism of 'quiet for quiet'. But in all the combinations of these four scenarios, Hezbollah is expected to rehabilitate and threaten the residents of the north and center - even after Nasrallah's removal from power. No military move will prevent this. Therefore, among all the bad options, the least bad scenario for us is a political arrangement without war. Only this scenario does not include widespread destruction and it reduces the threat to northern residents as much as possible. However, as long as the government's position is that withdrawal from the Philadelphi Corridor in the Gaza Strip is not on the table, this becomes more difficult. Moreover, under these circumstances, the IDF might be forced to stretch its forces beyond its capabilities and return to the security zone in southern Lebanon.
As mentioned, if I were convinced that a war with Hezbollah is the last resort, I would support it despite all the dangers. Moreover, if I thought that the recent military actions in Lebanon were intended to create a better arrangement, I would support them. However, given the high frequency of military operations and the accompanying war rhetoric, I believe this poses a long-term risk. Many wars in human history began with brilliant opening moves and ended in desperate defeats.
Even if this is a sophisticated strategy designed to detach Hezbollah from its commitment to the Gaza Strip and lead to an arrangement in Lebanon and a hostage deal, it still cannot justify holding onto the Philadelphi Corridor at any cost. Even from the perspective of those who support this approach, one could theoretically have acted with exactly the same military means in Lebanon without declaring in advance a non-withdrawal from the Philadelphi Corridor. This way, we would have been better prepared for the possibility that Hezbollah would insist on continuing the war despite everything. The declaration of non-withdrawal from the Philadelphi Corridor only reduced our options. Therefore, this declaration indicates a dangerous ideological gamble, preferring the danger of war in Lebanon over the lesser danger of withdrawal and Hamas rehabilitation. This is a gamble that reflects poor judgment.
Therefore, it should be emphasized that it's not too late to correct course. As of this writing, after we've severely hit Hezbollah and created renewed deterrence against the Iranian axis – this is the right time to unite the ranks between most of the right and left and promote an arrangement and hostage deal from a position of strength. This would be the real victory. Otherwise, we'll discover in the coming years that all the military successes of the last two weeks have turned into a double-edged sword.
Safe Harbor
This preference for the risk of war over the risk of withdrawal and political arrangement indicates, in my opinion, short-term thinking and severe misjudgment. It's like a modern version of the Masada story. On one hand, the unilateral withdrawals of the early 2000s from Lebanon and the Gaza Strip indeed proved dangerous. Consequently, many in the Israeli left have despaired and lost faith in any kind of withdrawal, and this trend is growing stronger among the left's political leadership in the past year. On the other hand, the Israeli right has not yet sobered up after October 7th. Most of the right still hasn't understood that all our fronts are interconnected, and that we don't have enough military forces, ammunition, or economic capability to deal with all fronts together. It's easy and cheap for the enemy to unite the many fronts. It's difficult and expensive for us to separate them. No military move will change this. Our leadership has no plan on how to deal with the IDF's forces being stretched on all fronts, while facing an economic and international crisis the likes of which we have never known before.
Therefore, most of Israeli society on the right and left needs to unite. We need to reconnect the political forces that founded Israel on the basis of new ideas. We need a new political capability that will prevent the strengthening of terrorist organizations after our withdrawals. We should strive for the state of Lebanon to weaken Hezbollah's ability to rehabilitate after the war, and for a future Palestinian state to weaken Hamas. While it's clear that such capability is not available to us in the foreseeable future, even a unilateral military and political pursuit of reconciliation with the Palestinian and Lebanese people over many years will lead to stabilizing our situation in the present within a few years.
To illustrate, only if we adopt the long-term vision mentioned above can we now abandon all the extreme ideas advocating for prevention or reduction of humanitarian aid, expulsion of uninvolved populations in northern Gaza Strip, or harming the Lebanese state to put pressure on terrorist organizations. Israel's interest is to take responsibility for the rights, dignity, and future of the uninvolved residents in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon in order to stabilize our position in the international arena and to have someone who will weaken terrorist organizations from rehabilitating. These unacceptable ideas indicate a loss of values and they don't stop at the border line. They encourage extremist forces and undermine the rule of law within Israel as well. These ideas are spreading in Israel due to the political vacuum in the absence of a long-term and agreed-upon vision. But if most of the right and left together adopt such a long-term vision, we can go to elections now and strive to implement the necessary step of a political arrangement in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip without fearing the collapse of the government as some politicians have threatened.
Image: Shutterstock.com
This reconciliation between the peoples of the region, proposed by our movement for the long term, is not based on trust, but leaves both sides with independent leverage to deal with future dangers and threats. We recognize that many things can go wrong. However, all the dangers inherent in our approach are not as acute and urgent as the dangers that exist today in northern and southern Israel. Therefore, we should act militarily, independently, and in a focused manner only against those organizations that will never agree to recognize the equal national rights of Jews and Palestinians. However, without any contradiction, we must simultaneously protect the rights of all uninvolved residents in the combat zones and strive for warm peace with all the peoples of the region – especially with the Palestinian people. This is the essence of the "Two States Two Communities" vision that our movement advocates. This is the safe harbor. We must strive for it together.
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