http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=107&ItemID=10713
What Can Israel Achieve?
by Immanuel Wallerstein
August 06, 2006
Commentary No. 190, August 1, 2006
The State of Israel was established in 1948. Ever
since, there has been continuous violence between Jews
and Arabs in Israel, and between Israel and its
neighbors. Sometimes, the violence was low-level and
even latent. And every once in a while, the violence
escalated into open warfare, as now. Whenever full-
scale violence broke out, there was an immediate
debate about what started it, as though that mattered.
We are now in the midst of warfare between Israel and
Palestine in Gaza and between Israel and Lebanon. And
the world is engaged in its usual futile debate about
how to reduce the open state of warfare to low-level
violence.
Every Israeli government has wished to create a
situation in which the world and Israel's neighbors
recognize its existence as a state and
intergroup/interstate violence ceases. Israel has
never been able to achieve this. When the level of
violence is relatively low, the Israeli public is
split about what strategy to pursue. But when it
escalates into warfare, the Jewish Israelis and world
Jewry tend to rally around the government.
In reality, Israel's basic strategy since 1948 has
been to rely on two things in the pursuit of its
objectives: a strong military, and strong outside
Western support. So far this strategy has worked in
one sense: Israel still survives. The question is how
much longer this strategy will in fact continue to
work.
The source of outside support has shifted over time.
We forget completely that in 1948 the crucial military
support for Israel came from the Soviet Union and its
eastern European satellites. When the Soviet Union
pulled back, it was France that came to fill the role.
France was engaged in a revolution in Algeria, and it
saw Israel as a crucial element in defeating the
Algerian national liberation movement. But when
Algeria became independent in 1962, France dropped
Israel because it then sought to maintain ties with a
now- independent Algeria.
It is only after that moment that the United States
moved into its present total support of Israel. One
major element in this turn-around was the Israeli
military victory in the Six Days War in 1967. In this
war, Israel conquered all the territories of the old
British Mandate of Palestine, as well as more. It
proved its ability to be a strong military presence in
the region. It transformed the attitude of world Jewry
from one in which only about 50% really approved of
the creation of Israel into one which had the support
of the large majority of world Jewry, for whom Israel
had now become a source of pride. This is the moment
when the Holocaust became a major ideological
justification for Israel and its policies.
After 1967, the Israeli governments never felt they
had to negotiate anything with the Palestinians or
with the Arab world. They offered one-sided
settlements but these were always on Israeli terms.
Israel wouldn't negotiate with Nasser. Then it
wouldn't negotiate with Arafat. And now it won't
negotiate with so-called terrorists. Instead, it has
relied on successive shows of military strength.
Israel is now engaged in the exact same catastrophic
blunder, from its own point of view, as George Bush's
invasion of Iraq. Bush thought that a show of military
strength would establish U.S. presence unquestionably
in Iraq and intimidate the rest of the world. Bush has
discovered that Iraqi resistance was far more
formidable militarily than anticipated, that American
political allies in Iraq were far less reliable than
he assumed they would be, and that the U.S. public's
support of the war was far more fragile than he
expected. The United States is heading towards a
humiliating withdrawal from Iraq.
Israel's current military campaign is a direct
parallel of Bush's invasion of Iraq. The Israeli
generals are already noting that Hezbollah's military
is far more formidable than anticipated, that U.S.
allies in the region are already taking wide distance
from the United States and Israel (note the Iraqi
government's support of Lebanon and now that of the
Saudi government), and soon will discover that the
Israeli public's support is more fragile than
expected. Already the Israeli government is reluctant
to send land troops into Lebanon, largely because of
what it thinks will be the reaction of its own people
inside Israel. Israel is heading towards a humiliating
truce arrangement.
What the Israeli governments do not realize is that
neither Hamas nor Hezbollah need Israel. It is Israel
that needs them, and needs them desperately. If Israel
wants not to become a Crusader state that is in the
end extinguished, it is only Hamas and Hezbollah that
can guarantee the survival of Israel. It is only when
Israel is able to come to terms with them, as the
deeply-rooted spokespersons of Palestinian and Arab
nationalism, that Israel can live in peace.
Achieving a stable peace settlement will be extremely
difficult. But the pillars of Israel's present
strategy - its own military strength and the
unconditional support of the United States -
constitute a very thin reed. Its military advantage is
diminishing and will diminish steadily in the years to
come. And in the post-Iraqi years, the United States
may well drop Israel in the same way that France did
in the 1960s.
Israel's only real guarantee will be that of the
Palestinians. And to get this guarantee, Israel will
need to rethink fundamentally its strategy for
survival.
[Copyright by Immanuel Wallerstein, distributed by
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These commentaries, published twice monthly, are
intended to be reflections on the contemporary world
scene, as seen from the perspective not of the
immediate headlines but of the long term.]
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