Syria
In the Gunsight
By Uri Avnery
01 August, 2006
Gush Shalom
It
is the old story about the losing gambler: he cannot stop. He continues
to play, in order to win his losses back. He continues to lose and continues
to gamble, until he has lost everything: his ranch, his wife, his shirt.
The same thing happens in
the biggest gamble of all: war. The leaders that start a war and get
stuck in the mud are compelled to fight their way ever deeper into the
mud. That is a part of the very essence of war: it is impossible to
stop after a failure. Public opinion demands the promised victory. Incompetent
generals need to cover up their failure. Military commentators and other
armchair strategists demand a massive offensive. Cynical politicians
are riding the wave. The government is carried away by the flood that
they themselves have let loose.
That is what happened this
week, following the battle of Bint-Jbeil, which the Arabs have already
started to call proudly Nasrallahgrad. All over Israel the cry goes
up: Get into it! Quicker! Further! Deeper!
A day after the bloody battle,
the cabinet decided on a massive mobilization of the reserves. What
for? The ministers do not know. But it does not depend on them anymore,
nor on the generals. The political and military leadership is tossed
about on the waves of war like a boat without a rudder.
As has been said before:
it is much easier to start a war than to finish one. The cabinet believes
that it controls the war, but in reality it is the war that controls
them. They have mounted a tiger, and can't be sure of getting off without
being torn to pieces.
War has its own rules. Unexpected
things happen and dictate the next moves. And the next moves tend to
be in one direction: escalation.
* * *
DAN HALUTZ, the father of
this war, thought that he could eliminate Hizbullah by means of the
Air Force, the most sophisticated, most efficient and the generally
most-most air force in the world. A few days of massive pounding, thousands
of tons of bombs on neighborhoods, roads, electricity works and ports
- and that's it.
Well, that wasn't it, as
it turned out. The Hizbullah rockets continued to land in the north
of Israel, hundreds a day. The public cried out. There was no way round
a ground operation. First, small, elite units were put in. That did
not help. Then brigades were deployed. And now whole divisions are demanded.
First they wanted to annihilate
the Hizbullah positions along the border. When it was seen that that
was not enough, it was decided to conquer the hills that dominate the
border. There, the Hizbullah fighters were waiting and caused heavy
casualties. And the rockets continued to fly.
Now the generals are convinced
that there is no alternative to occupying the whole area up to the Litani
River, about 24 km from the border, in order to prevent the rockets
from being launched from there. Then they will find out that they have
to reach the Awali River, 40 km inside - the famous 40 km which Menachem
Begin talked about in 1982.
And then? The Israeli army
will be extended over a large area, and everywhere it will be exposed
to guerilla attacks, of the sort Hizbullah excels in. And the missiles
will continue to fly.
What next? One cannot stop.
Public opinion will demand more decisive moves. Political demagogues
will shout. Commentators will grumble. The people in the shelters will
cry out. The generals will feel the heat. One cannot keep tens of thousands
of reserve soldiers mobilized indefinitely. It is impossible to prolong
a situation which paralyzes a third of the country.
Everybody will clamor to
storm forwards. Where to? Towards Beirut in the North? Or towards Damascus,
in the East?
* * *
THE CABINET ministers recite
in unison: No! Never ever! We shall not attack Syria!
Perhaps some of them really
don't intend to. They do not dream of a war with Syria. Definitely not.
But the ministers only delude themselves when they believe that they
control the war. The war controls them.
When it becomes clear that
nothing is helping, that Hizbullah goes on fighting and the rockets
continue to fly, the political and military leadership will face bankruptcy.
They will need to pin the blame on somebody. On who? Well, on Assad,
of course.
How is it possible that a
small "terror organization", with a few thousand fighters
altogether, goes on fighting? Where do they get the arms from? The finger
will point towards Syria.
Even now, the army commanders
assert that new rockets are flowing all the time from Syria to Hizbullah.
True, the roads have been bombed, the bridges destroyed, but the arms
somehow continue to arrive. The Israeli government demands that an international
force be stationed not only along the Israeli-Lebanese border, but on
the Lebanese-Syrian border, too. The queue of volunteers will not be
long.
Then the generals will demand
the bombing of roads and bridges inside Syria. For that, the Syrian
Air Force will have to be neutralized. In short, a real war, with implications
for the whole Middle East.
* * *
EHUD OLMERT and Amir Peretz
did not think about that when they decided 17 days ago in haste and
light heartedly, without serious debate, without examining other options,
without calculating the risks, to attack Hizbullah. For politicians
who do not know what war is, it was an irresistible temptation: there
was a clear provocation by Hizbullah, international support was assured,
what a wonderful opportunity! They would do what even Sharon did not
dare.
Dan Halutz submitted an offer
that could not be refused. A nice little war. Military plans were ready
and well rehearsed. Certain victory. The more so, since on the other
side there was no real enemy army, just a "terror organization".
How hotly the desire was
burning in the hearts of Olmert and Peretz is attested by the fact that
they did not even think about the lack of shelters in the Northern towns,
not to mention the far-reaching economic and social implications. The
main thing was to rush in and gather the laurels.
They had no time to think
seriously about the war aim. Now they resemble archers who shoot their
arrows at a blank sheet and then draw the rings around the arrow. The
aims change daily: to destroy Hizbullah, to disarm them, to drive them
out of South Lebanon, and perhaps just to "weaken" them. To
kill Hassan Nasrallah. To bring the captured soldiers home. To extend
the sovereignty of the Lebanese government over all of Lebanon. To establish
a new-old Security Zone occupied by Israel. To deploy the Lebanese army
and/or an international force along the border. To rehabilitate deterrence.
To imprint into the consciousness of Hizbullah. (Our generals love imprinting
into consciousnesses. That is a wonderfully safe aim, because it cannot
be measured.)
* * *
THE MORE the nice little
war continues, the clearer it becomes that these changing aims are not
realistic. The Lebanese ruling group does not represent anybody but
a small, rich and corrupt elite. The Lebanese army cannot and will not
fight Hizbullah. The new "security zone" will be exposed to
guerilla attacks and the international force will not enter the area
without the agreement of Hizbullah. And this guerilla force, Hizbullah,
the Israeli army cannot vanquish.
That is nothing to be ashamed
of. Our army is in good - or, rather, bad - company. The term "guerilla"
("small war") was coined in Spain, during the occupation of
the country by Napoleon. Irregular bands of Spanish fighters attacked
the occupiers and beat them. The same happened to the Russians in Afghanistan,
to the French in Algeria, to the British in Palestine and a dozen other
colonies, to the Americans in Vietnam, and is happening to them now
in Iraq. Even assuming that Dan Halutz and Udi Adam are greater commanders
than Napoleon and his marshals, they will not succeed where those failed.
When Napoleon did not know
what to do next, he invaded Russia. If we don't stop the operation,
it will lead us to war with Syria.
Condoleezza Rice's stubborn
struggle against any attempt to stop the war shows that this is indeed
the aim of the United States. From the first day of George Bush's presidency,
the neo-cons have been calling for the elimination of Syria. The deeper
Bush sinks into the Iraqi quagmire, the more he needs to divert attention
with another adventure.
By the way: One day before
the outbreak of this war, our Minister of National Infrastructures,
Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, took part in the inauguration ceremony of the
big pipeline that will conduct oil from the huge Caspian Sea reserves
to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, just next to the Syrian border. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan
pipeline avoids Russia and passes through Azerbaijan and Georgia, two
countries closely aligned with Israel, like Turkey itself. There is
a plan to bring a part of the oil from there along the Syrian and Lebanese
coast to Ashkelon, where an existing pipeline will conduct it to Eilat,
to be exported to the Far East. Israel and Turkey are to secure the
area for the United States.
* * *
MUST THE sliding into a war
with Syria happen? Is there no alternative?
Of course there is. To stop
now, at once.
When President Lyndon Johnson
felt that he was sinking into the morass of Vietnam, he asked his friends
for advice. One of them answered with five words: "Declare victory
and get out!"
We can do that. To stop investing
more and more in a losing business. To be satisfied with what we can
get now. For example: an agreement that will move Hizbullah a few kilometers
from the border, along which an international force and/or the Lebanese
army will be deployed, and to exchange prisoners. Olmert will be able
to present that as a great victory, to claim that we have got what we
wanted, that we have taught the Arabs a lesson, that anyhow we had no
intention of achieving more. Nasrallah will also claim a great victory,
asserting that he has taught the Zionist Enemy a lesson it will not
forget, that Hizbullah remains alive, strong and armed, that he has
brought back the Lebanese prisoners.
True, it will not be much.
But that is what can be done to cut losses, as they say in the business
world.
That can happen. If Olmert
is clever enough to extricate himself from the trap, before it closes
entirely. (As folk wisdom says: a clever person is one that gets out
of a trap that a wise one would not have got into in the first place.)
And if Condoleezza gets orders from her boss to allow it.
* * *
ON THE 17th day of the war
, we must recognize that soon we will be faced with a clear choice:
to slide into a war with Syria, intentionally or unintentionally, or
to get a general agreement in the North, that will necessarily involve
also Hizbullah and Syria. At the center of such an agreement will be
the Golan Heights.
Olmert and Peretz did not
think about that in those intoxicating moments on July 12, when they
jumped at the opportunity to start a nice little war. But then, were
they thinking at all?
Uri Avnery is an Israeli
writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom.