Yassin Musharbash: Is Israel Repeating Mistakes of the Past?
Israel has promised a "war to the bitter end." Yet history is full of examples showing that battling an organization like Hamas is almost futile. It is a lesson Israel learned just two short years ago.
It was almost a century ago when the British soldier T.E. Lawrence described for posterity the World War I revolt of the Arabs against the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East. Lawrence helped organize the revolt, and he famously said that combating such an uprising was "like eating soup with a knife."
His adage may not be perfectly applicable to the current Israeli offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Hamas, after all, is more than just a rebel group. It is simultaneously a political party, a social-services organization and a terrorist group. It is a sworn enemy of Israel, and it continues to incessantly fire rockets across the border, hoping to kill Israeli civilians at random. The group has a civilian and a military component.
Still, the maxim uttered by Lawrence -- who was later immortalized in the film "Lawrence of Arabia" -- does have a present-day application when speaking of the ongoing fight against terror groups like the Taliban, Hezbollah, al-Qaida. And Hamas. Lawrence was essentially describing the problems that result when a regular army comes up against an irregular fighting force. In military parlance, such a conflict is called "asymmetrical."
Armies and governments prefer to avoid such conflicts. They often end without a clear victor; nobody capitulates, there is no white flag waved, no peace treaties signed. Other rules apply. One of them is the following: If the militarily inferior rebel group manages to survive, it is seen as the victor.
wo years ago, the truth of this rule was brought home to Israel after its summer war with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. The Israeli army attacked with the goal of ending the Hezbollah threat after the terror group kidnapped two Israeli soldiers at the Lebanese border. But the war, pitting the ultra-modern Israeli force against a few thousand irregulars from Hezbollah, dragged on for weeks. Now the war is seen as a disaster in Israel, and Hezbollah came away seen as the victors, and its image in the Middle East was only strengthened....
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It was almost a century ago when the British soldier T.E. Lawrence described for posterity the World War I revolt of the Arabs against the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East. Lawrence helped organize the revolt, and he famously said that combating such an uprising was "like eating soup with a knife."
His adage may not be perfectly applicable to the current Israeli offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Hamas, after all, is more than just a rebel group. It is simultaneously a political party, a social-services organization and a terrorist group. It is a sworn enemy of Israel, and it continues to incessantly fire rockets across the border, hoping to kill Israeli civilians at random. The group has a civilian and a military component.
Still, the maxim uttered by Lawrence -- who was later immortalized in the film "Lawrence of Arabia" -- does have a present-day application when speaking of the ongoing fight against terror groups like the Taliban, Hezbollah, al-Qaida. And Hamas. Lawrence was essentially describing the problems that result when a regular army comes up against an irregular fighting force. In military parlance, such a conflict is called "asymmetrical."
Armies and governments prefer to avoid such conflicts. They often end without a clear victor; nobody capitulates, there is no white flag waved, no peace treaties signed. Other rules apply. One of them is the following: If the militarily inferior rebel group manages to survive, it is seen as the victor.
wo years ago, the truth of this rule was brought home to Israel after its summer war with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. The Israeli army attacked with the goal of ending the Hezbollah threat after the terror group kidnapped two Israeli soldiers at the Lebanese border. But the war, pitting the ultra-modern Israeli force against a few thousand irregulars from Hezbollah, dragged on for weeks. Now the war is seen as a disaster in Israel, and Hezbollah came away seen as the victors, and its image in the Middle East was only strengthened....