Civil Fights: Debunking a
persistent canard
The mantra "there is no military
solution to terrorism" is so rarely challenged these days that it
was shocking to see the following commentary last Wednesday on the
front page of Haaretz, a leading bastion of the "no
military solution" theory.
"It's common to claim it is
impossible to defeat terrorism," the analysis stated. But in the
seven years since the intifada began, "the IDF and Shin Bet have
come as close as possible to achieving victory. Since the beginning of
the year, two soldiers (one each in the West Bank and Gaza) and six
civilians (three in a suicide bombing in Eilat, two from Kassam
rockets in Sderot and one who was stabbed to death in Gush Etzion)
have been killed by terrorism. This is a very small number,
considering the number of attempted attacks, and also compared to the
high point of the intifada, when 450 Israelis were killed in 2002. The
last suicide bombing in central Israel occurred 18 months ago, in
April 2006.
"The formula that produced this
achievement is known," it continued: aggressive intelligence
gathering, the security fence and "the IDF's complete freedom of
action in West Bank cities."
If this is not victory, it is a close
enough approximation that most Israelis would happily settle for it.
That is why the June Peace Index poll found Jewish Israelis
overwhelmingly opposed to security concessions to the Palestinian
Authority, with 79 percent against arming the PA, 71 percent against
removing checkpoints and 54 percent against releasing prisoners: Few
Israelis want to scrap measures that have reduced Israeli fatalities
from 450 to eight over the last five years.
It also helps explain the stunning
reversal in Israeli attitudes toward Sderot revealed by August's Peace
Index poll. According to that poll, fully 69 percent of Jewish
Israelis now support an extensive ground operation in Gaza to stop the
Kassam fire at southern Israel - whereas last December, 57 percent
opposed such an operation. Moreover, this support crossed party lines:
Even among people who voted for the leftist Labor and Meretz parties,
64 and 67 percent, respectively, favored a major military operation in
Gaza.
CLEARLY, THIS reversal occurred
partly because in the interim, all other options had been exhausted.
The December poll came a month after Hamas declared a cease-fire in
Gaza, and while the truce had not fully taken hold, many still hoped
that it would. By August, those hopes had died: Not only were rockets
fired at Sderot almost daily during the "cease-fire," but in
May, Hamas trumpeted its contempt for the truce by claiming credit for
over 100 Kassam launches in a single week. Additionally, in December,
Mahmoud Abbas was nominally in control of Gaza, and many still hoped
that he would take action to stop the rocket fire. By August, Hamas
was in full control.
The fact that Israel first sought
nonmilitary solutions in Gaza resembles its behavior during the first
18 months of the intifada: It signed cease-fires (which instantly
collapsed), declined to respond even to major suicide bombings inside
Israel (Dolphinarium and Sbarro), and generally sought to get the
Palestinian security services to reassert control. But as the casualty
toll, especially inside Israel, mounted, it became clear that
salvation would not come from the PA. So in March 2002, Israel
reconquered the West Bank in Operation Defensive Shield - and Israeli
fatalities dropped dramatically, that year and every year thereafter.
HOWEVER, there is one crucial
difference between the intifada's early years and the recent Israeli
quest for a nonmilitary solution in Gaza: While Israelis would always
prefer to avoid risking soldiers' lives, they now know, as they did
not in 2002, that the military option works. After all, not a single
Kassam has been fired at Israel from the West Bank. Hence Israelis are
not awaiting leadership from above; they are backing military action
even as the politicians still vehemently reject it.
Given this growing recognition among
the Israeli public, it is bizarre to hear senior politicians and
military officers still parroting the "no military solution to
terror" mantra. But at least these officials understand that in
practice, Israel's defensive measures in the West Bank work, and
therefore, ending them would be a bad idea (not to mention unpopular
with the voters).
International agencies and diplomats,
in contrast, have not even gotten that far. Any of them could, if they
took five minutes to examine the data, realize that Israel's military
measures in the West Bank have dramatically reduced Israeli
fatalities, especially inside Israel, since 2002; yet they persist in
declaring that these measures are unnecessary and must be scrapped.
Thus Condoleezza Rice uses her every visit to pressure Israel on this
issue, while the World Bank once again demanded last week that Israel
remove West Bank checkpoints, open its border with Gaza and restore
freedom of movement between Gaza and the West Bank.
Or perhaps this is feigned ignorance,
meant to cover a willingness to sacrifice Israeli lives in order to
demonstrate "progress" in the peace process. The World Bank
report, for instance, coyly stated that "the costs are subjective
to each side and are beyond the scope of this report" - thereby
sparing it the need to acknowledge that the likely cost is Israeli
lives - but "all parties will need to expend more resources and
assume more risks than they have done in the past."
Is it really unaware of what those
carefully unstated risks are? Either way, however, this willful
blindness perpetuates the conflict by ensuring that a key obstacle to
resolving it - Palestinian terror - remains unaddressed. In 1993, many
Israelis hoped that a peace agreement would end terror. Fourteen years
later, after having suffered more fatalities from Palestinian terror
post-Oslo than during the entire preceding 45 years, most Israelis
have concluded that the allegedly nonexistent military solution does a
much better job of protecting their lives. And until there is concrete
evidence of Palestinian willingness and ability to do the job as well
or better, there will be no Israeli majority for any deal with the PA.
