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The current operation in Gaza is a direct consequence of the 2006 war in southern Lebanon. The obvious similarities have led many people to foresee a comparable outcome, with Israel condemned for causing great human suffering while smarting from a military humiliation.
As in 2006, Israel is responding to a cross-border provocation and is fighting in territories it once occupied but then abandoned in the hope of a quieter life. As in 2006, the operation began with massive air strikes, widely decried as being disproportionate in their effects, to be followed, with evident misgivings, by a land offensive.
The result in 2006 was that the Israelis hurt Hizbollah but failed to achieve their over-ambitious and unrealistic political goals. Most important, they appeared to have no answer to rockets fired into Israeli territory by mobile militia groups and fared poorly when dealing with these militias in ground combat.
Hamas, long a follower of Hizbollah when it comes to strategy, took comfort from this experience and believed that it too could mount a regular rocket barrage against Israel with impunity, knowing that the Israel Defence Forces were wary about getting bogged down in Gaza as they had been in southern Lebanon. For the same reason, Israel knows that if it fails again, it will have severely reduced any deterrent against future rocket attacks.
As the range of these rockets is progressively extended, so will be the existential threat to Israel as more population centres become vulnerable. So in addition to the immediate objectives, this war is about restoring deterrence – and especially the credibility of the IDF after their unimpressive performance in 2006.
The lessons learnt from that year can be seen in every aspect of the current campaign. Instead of a rushed and improvised military response without political preparation, the Israeli government warned Hamas of the risks of a new rocket offensive before it responded. It has not set itself unrealistic objectives, talking more of degrading than of eliminating Hamas’s military infrastructure and of reducing the frequency and accuracy of rocket attacks rather than stopping them.
The IDF’s public relations operation has been more effective, getting over Hamas’s responsibility for the current round of fighting and at least addressing the adverse international reaction to the substantial civilian casualties.
Militarily its intelligence has been more accurate and its moves have been better planned than in 2006, when the IDF often moved into death traps before making tactical retreats. Other than the high-density urban areas, which Israel seems thus far to be avoiding, Gaza is also a less daunting operating environment: small, flat and isolated. Splitting the strip in two, thereby reducing the ability of the main concentrations of fighters in the north to get further supplies from the south, gives the IDF a position it can hold if it gets stuck in Gaza for a long time.
This time Hamas, which lacks the political and military sophistication of Hizbollah, has made the big mistakes. It clearly started the current round of fighting without thinking how an Israeli government, a few weeks away from a general election, was likely to respond. This error was then aggravated by making bombastic claims about the terrible fate awaiting Israeli forces.
In the public relations war, Hamas has largely relied on others to make its case, although this often means belittling the significance of the rocket attacks that represent its main claim to be leading resistance against Israel. Politically it has put itself into a position where a ceasefire will be seen as a defeat, because this will require accepting that it must stop firing rockets.
The calls for a ceasefire are bound to become more insistent. Assuming proper monitoring mechanisms are on offer, Israel should respond positively, putting the onus on Hamas. Without a ceasefire, the risks for Israel will grow. If the rockets keep on coming, even in reduced numbers, questions will be raised in Israel and elsewhere about what has really been achieved, especially as the human cost among the Palestinians becomes even more severe. Although Hamas has taken a battering, the longer the IDF stays in Gaza the more it may find ways of striking back. Arab governments, though furious with Hamas, will come under pressure to reflect the anger on the streets. Although Hizbollah has so far offered only rhetorical support, Israel is clearly anxious that it might be tempted to join in.
The value of any claimed Israeli victory after a ceasefire will be challenged if the political differences that make such clashes so regular and bloody are left as wide as ever. The conventional assumption that this latest round will simply harden Palestinian attitudes and weaken the moderates may be right. But it is as likely that a combination of war-weariness and a weakened Hamas may open new opportunities.
If these are to be seized, Israel will also have to ease its grip on Palestinian life and territory so that its claims about a desire for peace become more credible. Israel has shown it can learn from its past military mistakes; the next question is whether it can learn from its past political mistakes.
The writer is professor of war studies at King’s College London and the author of ‘A Choice of Enemies: America Confronts the Middle East’