- Israel-Gaza War: New Realities?
- Ukraine: The Other War
By Shashi P.B.B. Malla
Since the atrocious Hamas attacks on 7 October, no reportage, analysis and commentary has been able to give the full picture. It is, of course, hard to penetrate the fog of war to work out what is happening on the battlefield and more so behind the scenes.
The new shape of the Israel-Palestinian conflict has not yet emerged. Events are still moving very fast. Fears that the still limited war could spread in the region are very real.
New realities in the Middle East are still amorphous and their shape and the way that they will function will depend on the way this current war goes on for the rest of the year, and probably beyond.
The BBC’s Jeremy Bowen analyses the few things that we know, and a few that we do not. Donald Rumsfeld, US defence prophetically of the “unknown unknowns”, and if they emerge, they can make a big difference (Nov. 3).
- According to Bowen, one certainty is that Israelis fully support the military campaign to break the power of Hamas in Gaza and also of its junior partner, Islamic Jihad.
Their sense of retribution is driven by the sudden shock of the Hamas attacks, the killing of more than 1,400 people and the fact that around 240 hostages are still being held in Gaza.
Noam Tibon, a retired general in the Israeli army conceded that innocent Palestinian civilians were also getting killed.
But it was the time of unforgiving war: “Gaza is going to suffer…no nation will agree that your neighbour will slaughter babies, women or people…We live in a tough neighbourhood, and we need to survive…we have to be tough. We have no choice.”
A lot of Israelis are echoing Gen. Tibon’s sentiment that Palestine civilian deaths are terribly unfortunate, but they are the victims of the actions of Hamas.
- It is also clear that Israel’s attack on Hamas is causing terrible bloodshed.
The latest figure for Palestinian deaths from Gaza’s health ministry, run by Hamas, has exceeded 9,000 – of whom 65% percent are children and women.
It is not clear how many of the men who have been killed were civilians or fighting for Hamas or Islamic Jihad. US President Joe Biden and the Israelis do not trust the ministry figures.
Some of the Palestine dead would have been part of Hamas.
It is unusual that a US administration has stated so publicly that Israel needs to observe the laws of war. It seems that Israel is not following Biden’s advice.
- We know for certain that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under great pressure.
Unlike Israel’s security and military chiefs, he has not accepted any personal responsibility for the catastrophic series of failures that left border communities virtually undefended on 7 October.
On 29 October, he caused uproar when he sent out a tweet blaming the intelligence agencies. Netanyahu later deleted the message and apologized.
Three prominent Israelis, a former peace negotiator, the ex-head of Shin Bet (Israel’s internal intelligence agency) and a tech entrepreneur, wrote in Foreign Affairs saying that Netanyahu should not have any part of the war and whatever follows.
The Israeli PM has loyal supporters, but he has completely lost the confidence of leading figures in Israel’s military and security establishment.
Retired General Noam Tibon who personally fought his way into a kibbutz to rescue his family said: “This is the biggest failure in the history of the state of Israel. It was a military failure. It was an intelligence failure. And it was the failure of the government…the one really in charge – and all the blame is on him – is the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu…He is in charge of the biggest failure in the history of Israel.”
- It is also crystal clear that the old status quo has been shattered.
It was unpleasant and dangerous, but it seemed to have a certain grimly-familiar stability.
Since the end of the last Palestinian intifada (uprising) around 2005, a pattern has emerged that Netanyahu believed could be sustained indefinitely. That was a dangerous illusion, for all concerned – Palestinians as well as Israel.
Netanyahu and his ilk believed that the Palestinians were no longer a threat to Israel. Instead, they were a problem to be managed. The tools available include sticks, carrots and the ancient tactic of “divide and rule”.
Netanyahu, who has been prime minister for most of the time since 2009 – after an earlier spell between 1996 and 1999 – has argued consistently that Israel does not have a partner for peace.
But, potentially it did. The Palestinian Authority (PA), which is the main rival to Hamas, is a deeply flawed organization, and many who support it believe its aged President Mahmoud Abbas needs to step aside. It did accept the idea of establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel back in the 1990s.
“Divide and rule” for Netanyahu meant allowing Hamas to build its power in Gaza at the expense of the PA.
Netanyahu’s actions over many years show that he does not want to allow the Palestinians to have an independent state. That would involve giving up land in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, which the Israeli right wing believes belongs to the Jews.
In 2019, a number of Israeli sources say that he told a group of his Likud party members of parliament (Knesset) that if they opposed a Palestinian state they should support schemes to pump money – mostly provided by Qatar – into Gaza.
He told them that deepening the division between Hamas in Gaza and the PA in the West Bank would make it impossible to establish a Palestinian state!
- It is also indisputable that Israel, backed by the United States, will not tolerate an agreement that allows Hamas to remain in power.
That guarantees a lot more bloodshed. It also raises fundamental questions about what or who replaces them, which so far cannot be answered.
The conflict between Arabs and Jews for control of the Holy Land between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea has lasted for more than 100 years. One lesson of its long and bloody history is that there will never be a military solution.
In the 1990s, the Oslo peace process was established to try to end the conflict by establishing a Palestinian state with a capital in East Jerusalem alongside Israel.
The last attempt to revive it, after years of on-off negotiations, happened during the Obama administration. It failed a decade ago, and since then the conflict has been allowed to fester.
As President Biden and many others have said, the only possible chance for avoiding more wars is to establish a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
That will not be possible with the current leaders on either side.
Extremists, both Israeli and Palestinian, would do all they can do to sabotage the idea, as they have done since the 1990s.
Bowen concludes that without a mutually acceptable way of ending the conflict, more generations of Palestinians and Israelis will be damned to fighting more wars.
The Information War
The conflict between Israel and Hamas is fast becoming a world war online.
The deluge of online propaganda and disinformation is larger than anything seen before – a reflection of the world’s geopolitical division.
It is being seen by hundreds of millions of people around the world and it’s impacting the war in a way that is probably just as effective as any other tactic on the ground.
“The content – visceral, emotionally charged, politically slanted and often false – has stoked anger and even violence far beyond Gaza, raising fears that it could inflame a wider conflict” (NYT, Nov. 6).
A Humanitarian Pause
Israel’s allies, including the United States, have called for a humanitarian pause to see to the urgent and immediate needs of Gaza civilians.
A humanitarian pause would not only give some relief to Gazan civilians, it would also allow Israel to make progress on the release of the hostages held by Hamas.
Ukraine: A Long Attritional War?
In the other raging war in Europe, Ukraine’s president and military chief are both exhausted and disappointed with their Western allies and warn of a long attritional war benefitting Moscow beckons (Tim Lister/CNN, Nov. 3).
General Valery, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian military, says in a long essay and interview with The Economist that “just like in the First World War we have reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate.”
An interview with TIME’s Simon Schuster portrays Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as exhausted by the constant effort to cajole and persuade allies to keep the faith.
“Exhaustion with the war rolls along like a wave. You see it in the United States, in Europe,” Zelensky is quoted as saying.
But Zelensky is fixated with victory and won’t countenance a truce or negotiations. “For us it would mean leaving the wound open for future generations,” he tells TIME.
Five months after Ukraine launched its much-anticipated counteroffensive, Zelensky’s fears and Zaluzhny’s assessment come as the world’s focus shifts to the Middle East and the risk that Israel’s war with Hamas might spill over into a broader regional conflict.
Stalemate on the Front
Ukrainian forces have taken just a sliver of land since the summer, Russia still occupies nearly one-fifth of the country.
In some areas, such as around Avdviika and Vuhledar in Donetsk, and near Kupyansk in Kharkiv, the Ukrainians are on the defensive, as Russia pours munitions and men into battle.
Zaluzhny tells the Economist that the Kremlin is oblivious to the huge losses sustained by the Russian army – well over 100,000 men according to many estimates.
Zaluzhny is dejected that the arsenal supplied to Ukraine by its Western allies, and the mobilization of several more brigades, has made so little difference. Changing commanders and moving divisions have had no impact, he says.
“Four months should have been enough time for us to have reached Crimea, to have fought in Crimea, to return from Crimea and to have gone back in and out again” he adds.
Instead, deep and well-entrenched Russian defences have been impossible to penetrate. Even where dense minefields are penetrated, often at great cost, the Russians restore them through remote mine-laying.
Ukraine’s inferiority in the air has stymied advances on the ground, and Zaluzhny warns that at the end of 2023, Russia may deploy new attack squadrons.
Zaluzhny candidly admits that Russia “will maintain an advantage in armaments, equipment, rockets, and ammunition for some time.”
Kyiv’s Wish List
Ukraine’s military chief says it will take a qualitative leap to break the remorseless war of attrition that has set in – just as winter begins to bite.
He lists five major requirements for progress – none of them quick fixes and all of them demanding renewed commitment
- Gaining air superiority to support ground operations;
- Breaching Russian mine barriers;
- Increasing the effectiveness of counterbattery combat (targeting Russian artillery, for example);
- Creating and training the necessary reserves;
- Building up electronic warfare capabilities.
He says that Ukraine must deliver massive strikes “in a single combat formation”, using decoys and combat drones to overload the Russian air defence systems.
Russian Perspective
The Kremlin seems grimly satisfied by the stalemate in the belief that ultimately its larger military machine will break Ukrainian morale.
Moscow is also likely relishing shifting sentiment in the U.S. , in both Congress and among the public.
United States & Ukraine
According to a new Gallup poll, 41 % percent of Americans say the US is doing too much to help Ukraine, up from 29 % percent just five months ago.
That figure rises to 55 % percent among Republicans, according to the poll, as the 2024 US presidential election looms.
The paralysis on Capitol Hill [ Congress ] has also interrupted the flow of military aid to Ukraine. The Biden administration’s efforts to link a year’s worth of aid to (US $ Dollar 24 billion) to other funding priorities, such as aid to Israel, have run into strong headwinds among Republicans in Congress.
The Way Forward
Zelensky and other Ukrainian officials have consistently warned that the volume and type of aid coming from Western allies – as well as what they see as damaging delays in its arrival – has enabled Ukraine to stay in the fight but not to prevail.
Only now are US-made ATACMs (a longer-range tactical missile) being brought to bear against targets far behind the front lines.
F-16 fighter jets will not be deployed until next spring at the earliest.
If the Russians have an Achilles heel, Zaluzhny believes, it is Crimea. That is partly because it is the jewel in Putin’s crown, and partly because the peninsula is an important channel for resupplying Russian troops as well as the home of its Black Sea fleet.
Over the past few months, the Ukrainian military has stepped up missile, drone and sabotage attacks against Russia’s defence infrastructure in Crimea, as well as Putin’s prized land bridge to Russia.
For now, Zaluzhny’s greatest fear is prolonged trench warfare against an enemy with three times the number of men under arms.
Ukraine is Winning the Information War
However, Ukraine’s information war has taken at least 17,000 Russian soldiers out of the fighting according to the head of US Army Special Operations Command, Lt.Gen. Jonathan Braga.
Ukraine’s success is attributed to the advancement of technology and the country’s widespread use of social media.
The writer can be reached at: shashipbmalla@hotmail.com
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect People’s Review’s editorial stance.
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