The Bible has a lot to say in regards to the deadly significance of shifting navy alliances within the small strip of land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. All through Biblical historical past, all societies constructed upon it have been characterised by their have to ally themselves with one of many a lot bigger, extra highly effective, and infrequently competing civilizations amongst which they discovered themselves.
The prophets, seeing how none of those alliances may forestall a recurring conquest, got here up with the groundbreaking concept of a society based mostly on the justice of the weak in opposition to the facility of the sturdy. Or, to make use of up to date terminology: mushy energy versus laborious.
‘Woe to those that go to Egypt for assist! They depend on horses, trusting within the variety of chariots and the good multitude of chariot fighters,” Isaiah warned the kings of Jerusalem. As a substitute, “By judgment shall Zion be saved, and by righteousness those that dwell therein.”
In a way, Isaiah’s prophecy got here true. What was left as one biblical kingdom after one other was destroyed was a nation – Israel, if you’ll. Within the ‘dispossession’ or ‘diaspora’ the Israeli individuals may exist and develop an often flourishing Jewish tradition with out having to depend on chariots and chariot fighters. Even on the time of the destruction of the Second Temple, extra Jews lived elsewhere than on the small strip of land between the ocean and the river.
Palestinians examine injury after an Israeli airstrike at El-Remal Airport in Gaza Metropolis on October 9, 2023. Photograph by Naaman Omar apaimages Supply: Wikimedia Commons
All through Biblical historical past, laborious energy has by no means been Israel’s greatest weapon. It’s nonetheless not within the historical past written immediately.
Israel’s navy superiority has not translated into strategic benefits for a very long time. Because the ill-fated invasion of Lebanon in 1982 (ensuing within the bloodbath of the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila), Israel’s wars have price greater than they’ve yielded. The struggle in Lebanon in the summertime of 2006 didn’t destroy Hezbollah as supposed, however somewhat strengthened it. The struggle in Gaza six months later didn’t destroy Hamas as supposed, however strengthened it. Since then, every new struggle to eradicate Hamas (2008, 2012, 2014) – “mowing the garden” as it’s now referred to as – has solely strengthened the nation.
The present struggle, which goals to wipe out Hamas “as soon as and for all,” is not going to wipe out something “as soon as and for all.” Least of all the truth that Israel is situated the place it’s, on a slender strip of land between the ocean and the river, and remains to be surrounded by bigger and doubtlessly extra highly effective empires. Nor the truth that Israel, regardless of how effectively armed and fortified, in its present incarnation relies upon for its survival on alliances with bigger powers – since 1967 with the USA.
Entangled in one more struggle with no discernible finish and no lasting objective, a struggle that brings extra demise and destruction than ever earlier than, it ought to now be clear to Israel that no variety of chariots will survive ‘as soon as and for all’ will safe. all’. With one other geopolitical earthquake within the making, Israel should acknowledge that it should make a brand new try – albeit belatedly – with the type of energy that Isaiah advocated: an try and result in peace and reconciliation between the 2 peoples on that slender strip of land, based mostly on fairness and justice.
The 1993 Oslo Settlement between Israel and the PLO was one such try. For some time, it appeared that the high-level handshake between Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat can be adopted by 1000’s upon 1000’s of handshakes on the bottom, resulting in a mutually agreed upon division of the nation into two states that lived peacefully facet by facet.
I are likely to consider that it was the Palestinian rebellion of 1987 and Saddam Hussein’s rockets over Tel Aviv in 1991 that made Yitzhak Rabin, a former commander-in-chief and navy hardliner, conscious of the strategic limitations of Israel’s navy superiority. Rabin noticed peace and reconciliation with the Palestinians as a strategic necessity. However he was murdered by his personal individuals, and strategic necessity gave strategy to a brand new interval of strategic hubris and more and more aggressive occupation and settlement insurance policies. One individuals continued to rule militarily over the opposite, and by creating ‘details on the bottom’ one state continued to colonize the territorial foundations of what may have been the opposite.
Within the a long time that adopted, Israel advised itself that the strategic drawback had been solved, that the state may proceed to dwell on that small strip of land without end as an occupying energy and as a de facto apartheid state. The Palestinians, it believed, have been too weak and divided to defend their trigger, whereas their very own navy superiority was enough to suppress any rebellion and deter any regional enemy. In recent times, Israel even started to suppose that by forging alliances with autocratic rulers within the Arab world, it may consign the Palestinian trigger to the dustbin of historical past.
For too lengthy, Israel has lived in strategic self-denial. This grew to become all too clear on the morning of October 7, 2023, when Hamas, with its violation of the ‘safe’ border between Gaza and Israel and the pogrom-like bloodbath of some 1,200 unsuspecting Israeli males, girls and kids, carried out an ideal stabbing extradited. to the center of the State of Israel – and of the Jews of the world. Not solely was this one of many deadliest pogroms in dwelling Jewish reminiscence (except for the Holocaust), however a bloodbath of Jews dedicated in the identical state that had traditionally justified its existence and insurance policies by being a haven for Jews.
If Hamas’s intention was to awaken the historic demons of the Jewish world and provoke Israel right into a navy response of such proportions as to trigger a geopolitical earthquake, then that is precisely what the October 7 assaults completed. If Hamas hoped to ignite a devastating regional conflagration that may irrevocably finish the potential of peace and reconciliation among the many peoples between the ocean and the river, then that is precisely what it has accomplished.
Israel’s purpose to eradicate Hamas “as soon as and for all” with a devastating navy marketing campaign is after all as illusory as Hamas’s purpose to launch the “liberation” of Palestine “from the river to the ocean” with a terrifying terrorist assault. However, illusions can have actual and horrible penalties. Nonetheless the struggle ends (this time), Israel’s existential vulnerabilities and strategic weaknesses have been uncovered as by no means earlier than. Hamas, for its half, has managed to impress a brand new disaster, a brand new Nakba, for its personal individuals, with the intention of detonating the final remnants of the admittedly overgrown path to peace and reconciliation.
In that sense, Hamas has already received. Israel, with its disproportionate and humanly disastrous response, has continued to behave on the morally and geopolitically untenable technique that the Palestinians have to be oppressed without end – and, if vital, expelled from their land.
Not solely the ethical but additionally the geopolitical untenability of a method based mostly solely on navy superiority has been clear for a while. What Isaiah as soon as warned about, and what Yitzhak Rabin tried to attract political conclusions from, ought to have been clear, if not sooner, then since Israel’s navy protector, the USA (in Afghanistan and Iraq) has proven that it can’t capable of undertaking its energy in politics. area with navy assets. There’s little or no proof immediately that this has modified. As a substitute, there’s a lot proof that the US is heading right into a interval of inner uncertainty and exterior unreliability.
Irrespective of how a lot of Hamas is worn out this time, how a lot of Gaza is razed to the bottom, and what number of 1000’s of Palestinians are killed or pushed from their properties, Hamas’s horrific assault marks the top of an Israeli safety doctrine constructed on political-military pleasure and strategic self-deception.
A brira“No selection” is a Hebrew expression associated to the basic delusion that Israel by no means had another, that the forces of historical past and the circumstances of geopolitics confronted the younger state with just one path.
That is after all not true. In Israel’s historical past, many decisions haven’t been made and lots of paths haven’t been taken. We do not know the place they could have led. However we do know that the trail we’ve taken has led Israel to a useless finish. The nation’s geopolitical vulnerability has steadily elevated, its capability to supply safety by means of navy supremacy has steadily declined, and the delicate circumstances for peace and reconciliation among the many peoples dwelling on the land between the ocean and the river have steadily eroded.
Isaiah’s most stunning prophecy now sounds extra utopian than ever:
For out of Zion the regulation can be proclaimed,
from Jerusalem the phrase of the Lord.
He’ll decide between the nations,
do justice to all peoples.
They are going to beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into winery knives.
Nation is not going to elevate up sword in opposition to nation,
nor will they study struggle anymore.
