The Bible has a lot to say concerning the deadly significance of shifting army alliances within the small strip of land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. All through biblical historical past, all of the societies constructed on it have been characterised by their have to ally themselves with one or different of the far bigger, extra highly effective and infrequently competing civilisations they have been positioned between.
The prophets who noticed how none of those alliances might stop recurrent conquest got here up with the ground-breaking thought of a society based mostly on the justice of the weak towards the ability of the robust. Or, to make use of up to date terminology, gentle energy towards laborious.
‘Woe to those that go all the way down to Egypt for assist! They depend on horses, trusting within the variety of chariots and the good multitude of chariot fighters,’ Isaiah warned the kings of Jerusalem. As a substitute: ‘By proper shall Zion be saved, by righteousness those that dwell therein.’
In a way, Isaiah’s prophecy got here true. What remained when one biblical kingdom after the opposite had been destroyed was a folks – Israel, if you’ll. Within the ‘dispossession’ or ‘diaspora’, the Israeli folks might exist and develop an sometimes flourishing Jewish tradition with out counting on chariots and chariot fighters. Even on the time of the destruction of the Second Temple, extra Jews have been dwelling elsewhere than on the small strip of land between the ocean and the river.
Palestinians examine the harm following an Israeli airstrike on the El-Remal aera in Gaza Metropolis on October 9, 2023. Picture by Naaman Omar apaimages Supply: Wikimedia Commons
All through biblical historical past, laborious energy was by no means Israel’s finest weapon. It nonetheless isn’t within the historical past being written right this moment.
For a very long time now, Israel’s army superiority has not translated into strategic benefits. Ever because the ill-fated invasion of Lebanon in 1982 (ensuing within the bloodbath of the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila), Israel’s wars have price greater than they’ve yielded. The struggle in Lebanon in the summertime of 2006 didn’t destroy Hezbollah as meant, however strengthened it. The struggle in Gaza six months later didn’t destroy Hamas as meant, however strengthened it. Ever since, every new struggle to wipe out Hamas (2008, 2012, 2014) –‘mowing the garden’ because it has come to be referred to as – has solely strengthened it.
The present struggle, which is meant to wipe out Hamas ‘as soon as and for all’, won’t wipe out something ‘as soon as and for all’. Least of all the truth that Israel lies the place it does, on a slender strip of land between the ocean and the river, and continues to be surrounded by bigger and doubtlessly extra highly effective empires. Nor the truth that, nevertheless well-armed and fortified, Israel in its current incarnation depends for its survival on alliances with higher powers – since 1967 with the USA.
Embroiled in one more struggle with no discernible finish and no sustainable purpose, a struggle that brings extra loss of life and destruction in its wake than ever earlier than, it ought to by now be clear to Israel that no variety of chariots will safe its existence ‘as soon as and for all’. With one more geopolitical earthquake within the making, Israel ought to see that it should make one other try – albeit belated – on the form of energy that Isaiah advocated: an try and result in peace and reconciliation between the 2 peoples on that slender strip of land, based mostly on justice and righteousness.
The 1993 Oslo Settlement between Israel and the PLO was one such try. For a short second it appeared that the high-level handshake between Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat can be adopted by hundreds upon hundreds of handshakes on the bottom, resulting in a mutually agreed division of the land into two states dwelling peacefully aspect by aspect.
I are likely to consider that it was the Palestinian rebellion of 1987 and Saddam Hussein’s missiles over Tel Aviv in 1991 that triggered Yitzhak Rabin, a former Commander-in-Chief and army hardliner, to grow to be conscious of the strategic limitations of Israel’s army superiority. Rabin got here see peace and reconciliation with the Palestinians as a strategic necessity. However he was assassinated by his personal folks, and strategic necessity gave option to one other interval of strategic hubris, and an more and more aggressive occupation and settlement coverage. One folks continued to rule over the opposite militarily and, by creating ‘information on the bottom’, one state continued to colonise the territorial foundations of what might have been the opposite.
Within the many years that adopted, Israel informed itself that the strategic drawback had been solved, that the state on that small strip of land might go on dwelling ceaselessly as an occupying energy and a de facto apartheid state. The Palestinians, it believed, have been too weak and divided to claim their trigger, whereas its personal army superiority was ample to suppress any revolt and deter any regional enemy. Lately, Israel even started to suppose that by forging alliances with autocratic rulers within the Arab world, it might consign the Palestinian trigger to the dustbin of historical past.
For too lengthy, Israel has lived in strategic self-denial. This turned all-too evident on the morning of seven October 2023, when Hamas, with its breach of the ‘safe’ border between Gaza and Israel and pogrom-like bloodbath of some 1200 unsuspecting Israeli males, girls and youngsters, delivered an ideal stab to the center of the State of Israel – and of the Jews of the world. Not simply was this one of many deadliest pogroms in dwelling Jewish reminiscence (the Holocaust apart), however a bloodbath on Jews perpetrated within the very state that had traditionally justified its existence, and its insurance policies, by being a haven for Jews.
If Hamas’s intention was to awaken the historic demons of the Jewish world and provoke Israel right into a army response of such proportions that it will set off a geopolitical earthquake, that is precisely what its assaults on 7 October have achieved. If Hamas hoped to unleash a devastating regional conflagration that might irrevocably finish the potential for peace and reconciliation between the peoples between the ocean and the river, that is precisely what it has accomplished.
Israel’s purpose of eradicating Hamas ‘as soon as and for all’ with a devastating army marketing campaign is, after all, simply as illusory as Hamas’s purpose of launching the ‘liberation’ of Palestine ‘from the river to the ocean’ with a terrifying terrorist assault. Nonetheless, illusions can have actual and horrible penalties. Irrespective of how the struggle ends (this time), Israel’s existential vulnerabilities and strategic weaknesses have been uncovered as by no means earlier than. Hamas, for its half, has managed to impress one other disaster, one other Nakba, by itself folks, with the intention of detonating the final remnants of the admittedly overgrown highway to peace and reconciliation.
In that sense, Hamas has already received. Israel, with its disproportionate and humanly disastrous response, has continued to behave on the morally and geopolitically unsustainable technique that the Palestinians should be ceaselessly suppressed – and, if essential, expelled from their land.
Not simply the ethical but additionally the geopolitical unsustainability of a method based mostly on army superiority alone has been evident for a very long time now. What Isaiah as soon as warned about, and what Yitzhak Rabin tried to attract political conclusions from, ought to have been clear, if not earlier than, then ever since Israel’s army protector, the USA demonstrated (in Afghanistan and Iraq) its incapability to undertaking energy within the area by army means. There’s little or no proof right this moment that this has modified. As a substitute, there are various indications that the US is heading for a interval of inner uncertainty and exterior unreliability.
No matter how a lot of Hamas is worn out this time, of how a lot of Gaza is razed to the bottom, and of what number of hundreds of Palestinians are killed or pushed from their properties, Hamas’s horrific assault marks the tip of an Israeli safety doctrine constructed on political-military hubris and strategic self-deception.
Ein brira, no selection, is a Hebrew expression related to the foundational delusion that Israel by no means had an alternate, that the forces of historical past and the situations of geopolitics confronted the younger state with just one path to take.
This isn’t true after all. Within the historical past of Israel there have been many decisions not made and lots of paths not taken. The place they may have led we have no idea. However we do know that the paths taken have introduced Israel to a useless finish. Its geopolitical vulnerability has steadily elevated, its means to ship safety by means of army supremacy has steadily decreased, and the delicate situations for peace and reconciliation between the peoples dwelling on the land between the ocean and the river have been steadily eroded.
Isaiah’s most stunning prophecy now sounds extra utopian than ever:
For out of Zion shall the Legislation be proclaimed,
from Jerusalem the phrase of the Lord.
He shall choose between the nations,
administer justice amongst all peoples.
They are going to forge their swords into ploughshares,
and their spears into winery knives.
Nation shall not carry up sword towards nation,
neither shall they study struggle anymore.
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