The current situation in the Middle East, according to me
After following the situation closely for about the last week, I thought I'd put up my impressions. But first some backstory.
Israel is surrounded by enemies, most of whom would like nothing more than for it to disappear off the face of the earth, and some of whom (notably Hamas) in fact have that exact goal in their manifesto. The Palestinians are divided into two main groups and geographic areas: Fatah (the group that used to be led by Arafat before his death) in the West Bank ( generally east of Israel and including part of Jerusalem), and Hamas in Gaza (a small strip of land on the coast to the southwest of Israel that also shares a border with Egypt).
Fatah has, over the past several years, lost face with a lot of the Arab world because of its willingness to negotiate with Israel. It was also severely weakened (on purpose) by the US and Israel, which is unfortunate for those who want to negotiate a lasting peace settlement. Hamas kicked Fatah out of Gaza in June of 2007 in a coup, after winning some Palestinian parliamentary elections. They are considered by Israel, the US, and the EU to basically be a terrorist organization, and they are currently aided and backed by Iran.
To the north, Israel's neighbors are Lebanon and Syria, both unfriendly. Lebanon, while it technically has a real government, is mostly run by the terrorist organization Hezbollah, which has its own army independent from the Lebanese government. Hezbollah is openly run by Iran. Israel and Hezbollah were engaged in yet another short war in the summer of 2006. Syria is for all intents and purposes an Iranian puppet state, with Hezbollah HQ being located in Damascus. Syrians also really want the northeastern area of Israel, known as the Golan Heights, back from the Israelis, who captured the area in 1967 and later annexed it (mostly for strategic reasons).
To the east, Jordan is cordial with Israel but exceedingly poor. To the south, Egypt is also not actively aggresive against Israel. Egypt has its own problems with Gaza and is subject to criticism from pretty much the rest of the world for closing their border with Gaza instead of allowing refugees through. Egypt, of course, doesn't want a horde of Palestinian terrorists acting out of Egypt, or a horde of Palestinian refugees in a land that is already poor. The matter is further complicated by the fact that Iran is backing Hamas, and the Egyptians (majority Sunni Islam) are not at all happy about Iran (majority Shiite Islam) increasing its sphere of influence in the Middle East. Moreover, Egypt does not want a large influx from Gaza that might create a foothold for Iran to destabilize its government.
Israel has been imposing an economic embargo against Gaza for the last year. The border is militarized, and only certain supplies are allowed through. Hamas fires a steady stream of rockets into Israel, mostly into neighboring regions. Last week, the rocket fire increased at around the same time the cease fire between Gaza and Israel (negotiated by Egypt) expired. Hamas had also gotten a hold of some longer-range rockets than their normal fare, smuggled in from Iran, and sent a few to the Israeli city of Ashdod, as well as the outskirts of Bet Sheva. This is pretty bad for Israel, and the latest military action began. Israel has been bombing Gaza from the air for several days now, with the stated goal of ceasing the rocket fire from Gaza. Israel is currently massing armed forces around the border of Gaza and talking about a ground offensive.
So, what's actually going on here? It's so hard to figure it out from listening to the pundits or reading the articles, but here is my and zunger 's take on the matter.
We think that Israel is using the intelligence it has gathered in the past six month cease fire to try to take out as much of Gaza's military capacity (mostly its rocket supply and ability to make more rockets) as is humanly possible. There is no more cease fire to prevent this, they were provoked by the increase in rocket numbers from Gaza, and by acting now, they allow Obama to come into office at the end of January with his hands relatively clean for peace-making negotiations, with a weakened Hamas. Iran will also be less able to re-arm Hamas immediately after Obama comes to office, as they wish to make their own deals with the US. We think that Israel hopes to provoke Hamas into making stronger and stronger threats without any capability of backing these threats up, thereby causing Hamas to lose face in the Arab community. If Hamas is weakened sufficiently, it is possible that they will lose their grip on Gaza, and that Gaza might be brought back into the Fatah fold, which is better from an Israeli perspective because Fatah is more likely to negotiate a peace settlement (and is also not run by Iran or considered to be a straight-out terrorist organization). In order to succeed in this goal, Israel has to prevent Hamas from retaliating in any major (or even relatively minor) way and has to destroy as much of their weapons infrastructure as possible.
This strategy could backfire, however. The world's opinion of Israel is fairly low to begin with, and the massive bombings in Gaza right now aren't helping. Arab feeling against Israel is also running even higher than usual, which could hurt any future peace talks. If Hamas can evade Israel's security and either continue lobbing rockets or orchestrate any suicide attacks, then Hamas will probably win the PR battle and potentially maintain control in Gaza. So Israel needs to be extremely thorough and extremely confident in their intelligence capabilities.
And meanwhile, Egypt is stuck between a rock and a hard place.... And Iran is being very clever in its grab for power in the Middle East.
Interestingly, the current military action also has domestic political implications for Israel. They have elections for prime minister in February, and the current third runner, Ehud Barak, is the defense minister in charge of this strike. If he can declare "success" before the election, he has at least a chance to come up from behind and win the election. Otherwise, it is likely that Netanyahu will win (he's conservative, which zunger informs me means "Security will bring peace.") Barak, on the other hand, is left wing, which means "Peace will bring security". I translate this to mean that Barak would be more likely to sit down and negotiate a peace, especially with Fatah.
Israel is surrounded by enemies, most of whom would like nothing more than for it to disappear off the face of the earth, and some of whom (notably Hamas) in fact have that exact goal in their manifesto. The Palestinians are divided into two main groups and geographic areas: Fatah (the group that used to be led by Arafat before his death) in the West Bank ( generally east of Israel and including part of Jerusalem), and Hamas in Gaza (a small strip of land on the coast to the southwest of Israel that also shares a border with Egypt).
Fatah has, over the past several years, lost face with a lot of the Arab world because of its willingness to negotiate with Israel. It was also severely weakened (on purpose) by the US and Israel, which is unfortunate for those who want to negotiate a lasting peace settlement. Hamas kicked Fatah out of Gaza in June of 2007 in a coup, after winning some Palestinian parliamentary elections. They are considered by Israel, the US, and the EU to basically be a terrorist organization, and they are currently aided and backed by Iran.
To the north, Israel's neighbors are Lebanon and Syria, both unfriendly. Lebanon, while it technically has a real government, is mostly run by the terrorist organization Hezbollah, which has its own army independent from the Lebanese government. Hezbollah is openly run by Iran. Israel and Hezbollah were engaged in yet another short war in the summer of 2006. Syria is for all intents and purposes an Iranian puppet state, with Hezbollah HQ being located in Damascus. Syrians also really want the northeastern area of Israel, known as the Golan Heights, back from the Israelis, who captured the area in 1967 and later annexed it (mostly for strategic reasons).
To the east, Jordan is cordial with Israel but exceedingly poor. To the south, Egypt is also not actively aggresive against Israel. Egypt has its own problems with Gaza and is subject to criticism from pretty much the rest of the world for closing their border with Gaza instead of allowing refugees through. Egypt, of course, doesn't want a horde of Palestinian terrorists acting out of Egypt, or a horde of Palestinian refugees in a land that is already poor. The matter is further complicated by the fact that Iran is backing Hamas, and the Egyptians (majority Sunni Islam) are not at all happy about Iran (majority Shiite Islam) increasing its sphere of influence in the Middle East. Moreover, Egypt does not want a large influx from Gaza that might create a foothold for Iran to destabilize its government.
Israel has been imposing an economic embargo against Gaza for the last year. The border is militarized, and only certain supplies are allowed through. Hamas fires a steady stream of rockets into Israel, mostly into neighboring regions. Last week, the rocket fire increased at around the same time the cease fire between Gaza and Israel (negotiated by Egypt) expired. Hamas had also gotten a hold of some longer-range rockets than their normal fare, smuggled in from Iran, and sent a few to the Israeli city of Ashdod, as well as the outskirts of Bet Sheva. This is pretty bad for Israel, and the latest military action began. Israel has been bombing Gaza from the air for several days now, with the stated goal of ceasing the rocket fire from Gaza. Israel is currently massing armed forces around the border of Gaza and talking about a ground offensive.
So, what's actually going on here? It's so hard to figure it out from listening to the pundits or reading the articles, but here is my and zunger 's take on the matter.
We think that Israel is using the intelligence it has gathered in the past six month cease fire to try to take out as much of Gaza's military capacity (mostly its rocket supply and ability to make more rockets) as is humanly possible. There is no more cease fire to prevent this, they were provoked by the increase in rocket numbers from Gaza, and by acting now, they allow Obama to come into office at the end of January with his hands relatively clean for peace-making negotiations, with a weakened Hamas. Iran will also be less able to re-arm Hamas immediately after Obama comes to office, as they wish to make their own deals with the US. We think that Israel hopes to provoke Hamas into making stronger and stronger threats without any capability of backing these threats up, thereby causing Hamas to lose face in the Arab community. If Hamas is weakened sufficiently, it is possible that they will lose their grip on Gaza, and that Gaza might be brought back into the Fatah fold, which is better from an Israeli perspective because Fatah is more likely to negotiate a peace settlement (and is also not run by Iran or considered to be a straight-out terrorist organization). In order to succeed in this goal, Israel has to prevent Hamas from retaliating in any major (or even relatively minor) way and has to destroy as much of their weapons infrastructure as possible.
This strategy could backfire, however. The world's opinion of Israel is fairly low to begin with, and the massive bombings in Gaza right now aren't helping. Arab feeling against Israel is also running even higher than usual, which could hurt any future peace talks. If Hamas can evade Israel's security and either continue lobbing rockets or orchestrate any suicide attacks, then Hamas will probably win the PR battle and potentially maintain control in Gaza. So Israel needs to be extremely thorough and extremely confident in their intelligence capabilities.
And meanwhile, Egypt is stuck between a rock and a hard place.... And Iran is being very clever in its grab for power in the Middle East.
Interestingly, the current military action also has domestic political implications for Israel. They have elections for prime minister in February, and the current third runner, Ehud Barak, is the defense minister in charge of this strike. If he can declare "success" before the election, he has at least a chance to come up from behind and win the election. Otherwise, it is likely that Netanyahu will win (he's conservative, which zunger informs me means "Security will bring peace.") Barak, on the other hand, is left wing, which means "Peace will bring security". I translate this to mean that Barak would be more likely to sit down and negotiate a peace, especially with Fatah.