That is why they will never declare a state, but will constantly whine and make excuses for their dysfunction, because they really don't want their own state, they want THIS:
Posted on 08/25/2005 6:35:26 AM PDT by manny613
"Brilliant tactician, lousy strategist." So goes the conventional wisdom about the old bulldozer Ariel Sharon.
But that assessment is exactly backward.
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
Another factor is that until the Palis have a state, there is no entity to crush in the final battle. You can't just root them out from among the Jordanians, Lebanese and Syrians with "surgical" strikes.
and probably a lot better the pali's have a state before Iran has nuclear blackmail as a weapon.
Mubarak can't be happy about this as he will now be forced back into the fray. The Palestinians, and the terrorist organizations who control them, are now an Arab issue again. Sharon knows what he's doing.
The Palis with their own state - I notice VDH takes for granted that they will be given the west bank next, unilaterally - will not cease attacks on Israel. VDH says a fence will let Israel "wait for a responsible government". But long before than hellfrost, Islamic extremists will upgrade the weaponry being fired from their new Afghanistan into Israel. So he says -
"Israel can strike back at an aggressor...a critical first step of turning the struggle from an asymmetrical war of terror back into a conventional standoff"
But why would it be a stand-off? The fact is, the terrorists will attack from Pali territory. If the Israel army wants to do something about it conventionally, they will have to invade conventionally. When they instantly succeed in that, they will have the same ungovernable populace under their same conventional military control. The difference will just be, this time all the terrorists will know to a certainty the Israelis don't want to be there and can be chased away again with a few kamikazes.
Perhaps VDH means to imply it would give the Palis something to lose. But they lose things to retaliation all the time anyway, and have for decades. It doesn't remotely stop them. Because (1) any nutjob can nominate himself the new foreign minister, and no government is going to stop him when his platform ("death to the Jews") is so popular, (2) killing Jews is a pretty good business that brings in billions in tribute from the west and billions in subsidies from the oil states. And nothing will have changed on this points.
No, the paradox people are confronting is the inability of conventional military power to change political realities on the ground, when it is used with such kid gloves that the ruled do not fear any lasting consequences, and wielded so relunctantly that everyone involved knows the wearer wielders would rather run away.
In ancient times the conquerer eagerly sought new subjects either to tax, or if too stiff necked to rule, to sell as slaves. Cities were depopulated as a matter of course. These practices were hellish for the world, but did ensure that the possession of conventional military power and political realities on the ground remained in line with each other. A people without a state was very careful not to upset a state with an army.
To the lasting benefit of the world, this eventually softened into civilized treatment of the conquered, in return for their genuine submission. The reality standing behind it was the threat of fire and sword, never all that suspended, menacing enough because occasionally exercised through hot temper or indiscipline. Submission became theater, in which the parties understood the motions and avoided the worst outcomes of collision.
There were parts of the world where that development basically never happened. And wars there were as bloody things as those in ancient times, as a result. When first world armies fought in those places, they were ready enough to act on local norms rather than their own, and wars decided things as a direct result.
In the 20th century that changed. The cold war was an essential part of the new environment, as war by proxy became the norm. The superpowers competed for sub-state groupings and did not submit to governments aligned with the hostile superpower. Such ideological polarizations were known in the past, and when they occurred they resulted in massacre and decade long wars. They did this time, too.
Now the cold war environment has largely but not entirely dissolved. There are still hostile powers who play the game of stoking up trouble for their rivals, but they are less open about it and ideological differences are local rather than system-wide polarized. They reason for restraint by occupiers, however, has shifted from fear of escalation by a rival superpower, to domestic political restraints and to implicit norms.
The behavior the Palis have engaged in for the last decade fully merits their dispossession, entire destruction of all political entities associated with their cause, an end to all funding or aid reaching their people, annexation of their territories, deprivation of all political and many civil rights, mass expulsions, and a generation of young hotheads either executed or rotting in jail. That this has not happened has everything to do with Israelis and westerners just being wimps, and nothing to do with strategy.
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That is why they will never declare a state, but will constantly whine and make excuses for their dysfunction, because they really don't want their own state, they want THIS:
From a distance, and in my view as an interested bystander, this move seems brilliant as it gives Israel a better..if not the best..strategic offensive and defensive position.
Hats off to the man.
Ping!
This is the historian I mentioned who shared your views on Gaza.
If VDH was a Kashmiri Pandit living in the slums of Delhi because Muslim jihadis from across the ME *had* paid him attention he would know how wrong he is.
That Europe and the UN has not paid any attention to Kashmir means nothing. Both are useless and have never paid attention.
VDH thinks another Kashmir acceptable?? He knows better...
ping
"The behavior the Palis have engaged in for the last decade fully merits their dispossession, entire destruction of all political entities associated with their cause, an end to all funding or aid reaching their people, annexation of their territories, deprivation of all political and many civil rights, mass expulsions, and a generation of young hotheads either executed or rotting in jail. That this has not happened has everything to do with Israelis and westerners just being wimps, and nothing to do with strategy."
So given that it is clear that the above is not going to happen, particularly as funding is not even an issue in Israeli control, what strategy do you recommend?
Ping
The Gaza Strip is unique amongst UNRWA's five fields of operations as the majority of its population is refugees and over half of the refugees live in eight camps. Most of the people who fled to the Gaza Strip as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war were from Jaffa, towns and villages south of Jaffa, and from the Beersheva area in the Negev. In all, some 200,000 refugees came to Gaza, whose original inhabitants numbered only 80,000. Such an influx severely burdened this narrow strip of land; an area of only 360 square kilometers. Over three-quarters of the current estimated population of some 1.4 million are registered refugees; representing 22.42 per cent of all UNRWA registered Palestine refugees. The refugee camps in the Gaza Strip have one of the highest population densities in the world. For example, over 78,700 refugees live in Beach camp whose area is less than one square kilometer. This high population density is reflected in the overcrowded UNRWA schools and classrooms. More than 2,066 new pupils registered in the Agency's schools for the year 2004/2005. In average, 81% of the camps houses are connected to sewers while total area of paved roads and alleys is 385,000m2 . UNRWA Headquarters (Gaza) and the UNRWA Gaza Field Office are located in Gaza City. The Agency co-operates its humanitarian work with the Palestinian Authority, which was established in 1994. FACTS AND FIGURES Total registered refugees – 961,645 Registered camp population – 471,555 Number of camps - 8 Elementary and preparatory schools - 180 Enrolled pupils for 2004/2005 – 194,171 Primary health care facilities - 18 Number of refugees registered as special hardship cases – 87,567 or 18,412 families Number of UNRWA Field Office Area staff posts – 8,393 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Figures as of 31 March 2005 http://www.un.org/unrwa/refugees/gaza.html
Thanks for the ping. I was away this past week.
Hanson mentioned the Roman pullback to the defensible borders of the Rhine and Danube which is a good historical example of what we both are advocating.
An opposite historical example would be that of Alexander.
As I had written before, once a population is under your control as a result of military conquest, the options are: Extermination, Expulsion, Reformation, Assimilation, Perpetual Occupation or a Parting of the Ways.
Alexander did use Extermination at Tyre and, ironically in terms of this discussion, at Gaza when both cities refused to surrender. The male populations of both Tyre and Gaza were put to the sword and the marketable women and children were sold into slavery.
Rome also used Extermination at Carthage after the Third Punic War and at Corinth in the same year, 146 BC, with both cities razed to the ground and their populations put to the sword and/or enslaved.
That was certainly a solution that took particular problems off the table.
Extermination, however, had its limits even in the ancient world, and, in the modern world, it is simply not an option for a civilized nation although the radical Arabs obviously have no qualms about it. (A fact that puts Israel at a distinct disadvantage in any scenario that entails the Palestinian fanatics and the Israelis living on the same real estate.)
Once Extermination was taken as far as was practical, the different paths of Alexander and Rome show the consequences of paying attention to the problem of captured populations and simply putting the problem aside to worry about it some other day.
The Roman strategy was, above all, to find a way to secure their gains for the long term. This they did by having Assimilation as their ultimate goal.
Occupation, as with the Gauls in France, the Celt-Iberians in Spain and the Britons in Britain, was resorted to until the population could be Romanized. The Romans did such good job of it that, over two thousand years later, those of us who are descended from those former barbarians are still Romanized, whether we care to admit it or not. (For those who snicker that the Anglo-Saxons de-Romanized Britain, remember that the Normans re-Romanized it again. That is why we don't have Times New Runic as a Microsoft Word font.)
For those populations, such as the Jews in Judea, that resisted Romanization, Expulsion was resorted to thereby also solving the "problem" once and for all.
Assimilation and Expulsion, however, also have their limits. You can keep on going all the way to China without running out of populations to Assimilate or Expel.
There is only so much pig that the python can swallow before it dies of indigestion.
With Rome, that indigestion point was reach with reign of Trajan who expanded the Roman Empire to its greatest geographic extent....even to Mesopotamia of modern-day Iraq.
Trajan's successor, Hadrian, realized that the Roman Empires borders were expanded beyond a defensible point and Mesopotamia and Assyria were given back to the Parthians. Thus, Augustus' advice that Roman Empire not extend beyond its naturally defensible natural obstacles of the Rhine, the Danube and the Euphrates was heeded except for Trajans conquest of Dacia that was worthwhile keeping because of its gold mines. A similar choice was made with the Picts of Scotland who were not deemed worth the cost of conquest and Hadrian's Wall kept them neutralized on their side of the Wall.
Although many other factors contributed to its fall, the end for Rome came when Rhine froze solid in 406 AD and the floodgates of barbarian invasion were opened. Still, Rome had an extremely long run.
By contrast, Alexander, like the dog chasing the SUV, had very little idea what he would do once he caught it.
Although a tactical genius, Alexander either had no strategic vision or simply did not care what happened after he ran out of lands to conquer. Given unlimited time, men and resources, he would have tried to go all the way to China but got only as far as India before his soldiers decided that enough was enough.
After his death, Alexander's empire evaporated.
The Macedonians were so few in number in relation to the conquered populations that, instead of the Macedonians assimilation the conquered, the conquered assimilated the Macedonians. The Seleucid and Ptolemaic Kingdoms may have had Kings of Macedonian descent but the sheer demographics ensured that kingdoms were never Hellenized in the manner that Rome Romanized its conquests.
Since 1967, the Israelis have also faced a similar Hobson's Choice in regards to the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
Unlike Alexander, who was unrestrained by any moral or geopolitical considerations, an Extermination of the troublesome populations of Gaza and the West Bank is not an option that can be exercised by Israel.
Likewise, an Expulsion along the lines of the Roman expulsion of the Jews from Judea is also not a card on the late 20th and 21st Century geopolitical table.
Assimilation would be a wonderful option but you can't assimilate the radical Palestinians (who double their number every generation) into peaceful Israeli society anymore than you can have a rattlesnake for a son-in-law.
The Palestinians who can be assimilated have "voted with their feet" and have chosen to live on the Israeli side of the Israeli Wall.
Unless the possession of land is your ultimate goal in war and you are ready, willing and able to go the Full Monty on one of the choices in the Extermination-Expulsion-Reformation-Assimilation Route, a resource draining Perpetual Occupation of an ever-increasing, ever-hostile, non-reformable and nonassimilable population that you can't simply put to the sword, sell into slavery or totally expel like you could in the "Good Ole Days" of Rome turns your tactical victory into a long term strategic defeat that allows your conquered enemy to slowly bleed you to death.
That leaves Hadrian's choice and Sharon's choice:
A Parting of the Ways with as impregnable a barrier between the two populations as is physically possible by geography by military engineering and by military power.
That has now been completed in Gaza and I envision a similar scenario in regards to the West Bank and Jerusalem.
There will be heartfelt protests about abandoning land won at the price of Israeli blood just as some in the Roman Army protested the abandonment by Hadrian of Mesopotamian land won at the price of Roman blood.
However, the strategic victory won by Israel is that, after four different ass-kicking in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973 the Arab nation-states that were chomping at the bit for Round Two, Round Three and even Round Four have been there and done that and want absolutely no part of another ass-kicking in Round Five. As discussed above, keeping the land turns a tactical and strategic victory into a strategic bleeding ulcer.
As for the Palestinians, they used to be like your visiting mother-in-law's chihuahua that was able to chew away at your ankle without you being able to take it to the dog pound to be put up for adoption or put to sleep.
Now, that chihuahua is being permanently locked out of your house and he becomes solely your mother-in-law's problem.
In the future, the West Bank will also be evacuated except for those strategic points that have been identified and are already enclosed or soon will be enclosed by the Israeli Wall.
For their part, the Palestinians will cry that the Israeli Wall is unilaterally annexing West Bank land. The Israelis will point to repeated attacks in the past, will point out that Russia still holds the Japanese Northern Islands and Germany's former East Prussia, will say that they have a right to defensible borders and will then totally ignore all protests over the matter.
The Palestinians and many Western liberals will also cry that a future Utopia with Arabs and Jews singing Kum-Ba-Yah arm in arm is not possible with the Israeli Wall.
Israelis will imagine the barbarians on the east side of the Rhine asking Rome to have its military engineers construct bridges over the Rhine, will have a good laugh and then concentrate on making the Wall even more impregnable and ways to make retaliatory strikes for rockets lobbed blindly over the Wall excruciatingly painful for the Palestinian Authority.
In the end, Israel's final ......and defensible.....borders will look like this (the region east of Carmel to the Dead Sea apparently not yet built at the time of this map):
You believe the borders will be the fence?
Keep in mind that the route of the fence was altered by the Israeli Supreme Court in lawsuits brought by pro-Palestinian groups. The reasoning of the Court would not necessarily apply in any permanent annexation or in any peace deal, not that I believe a deal will ever happen. Also the reasoning of the Court was not on the basis of Defensible Borders.
Also the religious attachment to Gaza was nothing compared to the attachment to places such as Hebron.
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