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- Herausgeber: Biteback Publishing
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
No war in living memory has stirred up such anger, fear and loathing as the long-running Israel–Palestine conflict, and peace in the region has never seemed further away. The 7 October 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel had far-reaching and potentially devastating consequences for the Middle East and for the world. As the war has expanded to take in other players in the area, the future of Israel as a regional superpower is now in doubt and the chances of all-out war between Israel and its neighbours have become much greater. This essential work looks at the background to the Hamas–Israel war and asks whether the international system can contain two simultaneous wars in Europe and the Levant. It examines the wars that preceded this one, the rise of Hamas and the roles Hezbollah, Iran and Syria play in the conflict. Paul Moorcraft considers the war's impact on Israeli society, the economy and the Israel Defense Forces, while also looking at how media and propaganda shape our view of the war and how the conflict affects the whole region's relationships with the west. Here, Moorcraft brings all perspectives together in an expert and balanced analysis, examining the potential outcomes of the war and arguing that the two-state solution should be revived. Peace has never looked more impossible – but the alternative, a forever war, is even more impossible.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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“The ‘forever war’ that Paul Moorcraft talks about has the power of stopping thought, a roundabout of sheer despair. But in this remarkable book he shows how we have come to this and provides a succinct and punchy analysis, which those of us who have long just despaired instead of thinking should really read. The choices since the 7 October Hamas attack of 2023 are stark, not just for Arabs and Israelis but for the rest of us too. And Moorcraft makes a powerful case that unless we embrace the impasse with clarity and courage there will be no escape from a forever war. It’s the best book to come out of the Israel–Gaza war so far.”
Professor Mike Clarke, former director general of the Royal United Services Institute, fellow of King’s College London and associate director of the Strategy and Security Institute at the University of Exeter
“An insightful, up-to-date examination of the Arab–Israeli conflict, which provides a full and imaginative analysis for any interested observer.”
Alan Ward, former head of the defence and international affairs department, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst
“Truly, from the first page I found it captivating. It answers many questions and also explains what is happening now with sound reference to the historical context. I am pleased that the author stayed optimistic in the final chapters by offering some hope of finding a solution to the longest of conflicts.”
Reem AlHilou, honorary consul of the Republic of Guinea-Bissau to the Republic of Sudan ii
“Riveting. A must-read book for anyone concerned about the horrors of Gaza or the future of the Middle East. Moorcraft argues convincingly that despite widespread opposition to a two-state solution, it is the only way to end the forever war.”
Michael Smith, author of The Real Special Relationship: The True Storyof How the British and US Secret Services Work Together
“In a step-by-step analysis, Moorcraft paints a pessimistic but necessary picture of the outlook for Israel and the Middle East. Assiduously argued but always in a balanced way, this book should be required reading for all policymakers.”
Stephen Chan OBE, Professor of World Politics, SOAS University of London
“Paul Moorcraft has chronicled humanity at its most fragile and raw for more than half a century. In both his native Britain and globally, Moorcraft has helped a generation of students, scholars and practitioners make sense of war, on both the front lines of geopolitical rivalries and their most obscure margins. In Israel’sForever War, Moorcraft weighs up the rapidly fading prospects for peace between Israel and its neighbours following the era-defining attack by Hamas on 7 October 2023. Measured, insightful and urgent, Israel’s Forever War challenges us all to think anew about solutions to the world’s most intractable conflict.”
Dr Terence McNamee, global fellow at the Wilson Center, Washington DC iii
“Paul Moorcraft does what journalists do best – take a complex issue and make it accessible. In Israel’s Forever War, Moorcraft dissects the many thorny issues that, over the decades, have led to the ongoing Israel–Gaza tragedy. He parses the players, the countries, their motives, the conflicts, the media and potential outcomes, trying to present all sides. His ultimate view is that a new world order is emerging. Jordan, the UAE, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other Arab states could help pave the way to a two-state solution and peace… If not, ‘the dangerous status quo will remain – that way lies permanent war’.”
Heidi Kingstone, author of Dispatches from the Kabul Café and Genocide
“Israel’s Forever War demands the reader’s attention from its very first sentence. What follows is a forensic analysis of the October 2023 attack and its aftermath and a punchy discussion of what happens next. Paul Moorcraft writes intelligently and accessibly, combining the scholar’s eye for complexity with the journalist’s nose for fairness. ‘Must-read’ is a rather overused compliment to pay when reviewing a book, but in this case it’s more than justified.”
Paul Cornish, Professor of Strategic Studies, University of Exeter
“From a concise timeline through topic-specific chapters, Paul Moorcraft has combined expertise as an historian, military lecturer and foreign correspondent to make what he terms an ‘interim report on the forever war that may or may not reach an historic culmination point’. An ideal starting point for anyone trying to make sense of the Israel–Palestine conflict.”
Allen Pizzey, former CBS News foreign correspondent iv
“As Israel pursues revenge in Gaza with violence, the wider Middle East is reaching such levels of stress that the peace of the world is threatened. Paul Moorcraft’s very good book explains clearly and simply how it all went so horribly wrong.”
Graham Bound, author of Invasion 1982: The Falkland Islanders’ Story and At the Going Down of the Sun: Love, Loss and Sacrifice in Afghanistan
“Forensic research has become the trademark of defence expert Dr Paul Moorcraft and his latest book is no exception. His expert analysis will please no one on either side of the conflict, which is a tribute to his pragmatic approach to writing about one of the most complex and volatile political landscapes in the world today. The book is a great introduction for the many who struggle to understand the nuances of the Middle East conflict and how it has affected the psychology of Israeli society. Written without fear or favour to either side, what you get from this book is the authoritative view of one of the most prolific defence authors, who always comes from a point of knowledge.”
Dr Yvonne Ridley, broadcaster, politician, former nominee for Muslim Woman of the Year and author of In the Hands of the Taliban
“A step-by-step primer for perhaps the world’s most intractable political and military dispute, written with Professor Moorcraft’s characteristically concise and engaging style.”
James Barker, formerly of the Imperial War Museum and an authority on Mandatory Palestine
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Contents
Source: Wikimedia Commons, Gringer
xii
Timeline
Dramatis Personae
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
The attack by Hamas on Israel on 7 October 2023 did not just shift the tectonic plates in the Middle East – it tore them apart. This was the strategic equivalent of 9/11 or Pearl Harbor. On 6 October 2023, it was difficult to imagine even asking whether Israel could survive. It was taken for granted. Now, Israel’s very existence has been challenged.
And yet it was also the start of something that could lead to world war or, paradoxically, a new peace. It is always hard to write about wars in the middle of one, especially as the conflict is expanding at the time of writing. This book, by definition, must be an interim report on the forever war that may or may not reach a historic culmination point soon.
No local conflict in living memory has stirred up such worldwide anger as well as fear and loathing as the Gaza–Israel conflict. Not the Vietnam War, not the war in Ukraine, where international sympathies were based overwhelmingly on one side, not the Balkans or Iraq wars.
This book is not a comprehensive account of the long Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Readers should look at the timeline in the xxxiipreliminary pages if they want a quick refresher on events before 2023. This specific story begins in October 2023 and attempts to suggest possible future outcomes thereafter.
Hamas could have stood back and watched the Israelis tear themselves apart over widespread internal opposition to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s legal reforms. Instead, the attack – Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, as Hamas dubbed it – has led to Israeli unity (largely) in a vengeful nation. One Israeli special forces officer told me just after the Hamas atrocities: ‘We are a heartbroken nation, but we are not a broken nation.’
I first started interviewing senior Israeli officers in 1975, when I was working on a small British scholarship to examine the mechdalim(mistakes) of the Yom Kippur War of 1973. The main mistake was Israeli hubris and this was repeated in 2023. The arrogance of the IDF intelligence elite made them assume that Hamas could not and would not attack in strength. The 1973 ‘War of Atonement’ (as it was also called) was relatively brief and played to the strengths of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) – air power and tank manoeuvre, the direct application of conventional military strength.
The 7 October Hamas attack was different. It struck at the soft underbelly of Israeli pride and the core concept of Israeli deterrence based upon sound intelligence, as well as the country’s conventional superiority as the military superpower in the region. Hamas intended to suck in the other proxies of Iran’s interventionism in the region. In particular, Hamas assumed that Hezbollah would enter the fight alongside the Axis of Resistance in Lebanon as well as allies in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. The Shia theocrats in Tehran had learned one major lesson of the savage eight-year war with Iraq (1980–88): never suffer mass casualties again. Always deploy proxies, even troublesome Sunni militias such as Hamas.xxxiii
Israel’s failed deterrence was soon transformed into retaliation and cold and ‘mighty’ revenge for the Hamas atrocities. In this, the Jewish state lost much support, even from its closest ally, the US, as it pounded Gaza for months, officially to destroy Hamas completely and to retrieve the over 250 hostages taken in the attack.
Israeli military policy since 1948 has been largely linear and founded on the Jewish verdict of history that it can lose only once. October 2023 is very different from October 1973. It could bring an apocalypse or even, possibly, peace.
This book tracks the war from 7 October 2023 until August 2024. The key question is who would rule Gaza after the IDF wound down its invasion? The Israeli government has been adamant that Hamas cannot govern again. This would probably mean a revived role for the (revamped) Palestinian National Authority. Israelis have come to loathe Hamas, but even moderate Palestinians in the West Bank and in Israel proper will often quietly support Hamas as the only effective resistance against the occupation.
Any kind of deal in Gaza will require the support of key neighbours such as Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, as well as that of the UN, plus reconstruction funds from the west, especially the EU and US. And any deal is predicated on an Arab–Israeli peace agreement, based on the traditional two-state solution.
That solution would demand the removal of over 700,000 illegal Jewish settlers in the West Bank; most of them back Benjamin Netanyahu and the far right. Netanyahu has spent his whole life fighting against the establishment of a Palestinian state. And Hamas wants to destroy the Jewish ‘entity’. So, the leadership on both sides will have to change. Israel, at least, has democratic elections and the unpopular Netanyahu will be ousted as the pendulum swings from the religious right to the secular centre. Probably. But anyIsraeli xxxivleader would be bound to take a very hard line on Hamas and its possible resurrection. Benny Gantz, a former general and member of the emergency Cabinet, tipped to be a possible successor to Netanyahu, said of the ‘final’ stages of the Gaza–Israel conflict: ‘Ending the war without clearing out Rafah is like sending a firefighter to extinguish 80 per cent of the fire.’ So even a supposed moderate like Gantz is taking hardline views.
The Palestinian–Israeli relationship is now so bad it can perhaps only get better after the mass casualties of the Israel–Hamas war end. A real deal with new leadership, backed by Arab states and the west, can perhaps ignore some of the inevitable Iranian pot-stirring. The hostility of many (Sunni) Arab states towards Shia Iran’s long attempt to establish itself as a hegemon cannot be underestimated. Many Arabs regard Iranians as not only mad and bad but also as apostates.
President Bill Clinton led on the Oslo Accords of the early 1990s. They could have worked. Two states, side by side, could have saved many lives lost since then. Because many Arab states considered the Palestinians – especially Yasser Arafat, then leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) – as the main stumbling block to general peace, the more ‘moderate’ Arab countries moved to make separate peace deals with the growing regional superpower, Israel. First Egypt and Jordan, then some of the Gulf states and even the troubled Sudan. The Abraham Accords – as the later peace initiatives between Israel and the UAE and between Israel and Bahrain were called – were about to be capped by a formal agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Progress, many argued, meant going around the Palestinian roadblocks. The imminent deal with the Saudis was one reason for the timing of the Hamas attack in October 2023.xxxv
For twenty years prior to 2023, it was commonplace to assume that the two-state solution was dead. Now, the zombie has been revived and made whole again. Perhaps.
This short period 2023–4 may be the last chance for a real peace in the Middle East. The stark alternative is an escalation to a full-scale Armageddon. The rubble and bones of Gaza could be replicated across the whole region.xxxvi
Chapter One
Hubris
The Hamas attack of 7 October 2023 was launched deliberately on the near-anniversary of the 1973 war, which commenced on 6 October. That was on Yom Kippur in 1973, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. The war was a multi-front onslaught led by Egypt and Syria. At the height of the Cold War, the Arabs and Jews became proxies for the superpower conflict between the US and the USSR.
Most international observers considered that if the Arabs could not defeat Israel in the most propitious conditions of surprise and Israeli unreadiness, then the military options for the Arabs were small. So, it was no surprise that the major Arab neighbours started a process of negotiations following the conflict. On the Israeli side, according to Major General Chaim Herzog of the IDF, ‘The [1973] war demonstrated both the limits of force and risks of conceit, complacency and stagnation.’1
The series of wars fought before 1973 had led to an IDF deterrence posture based on good intelligence and therefore early warning. Should that intelligence be deficient, then the Israelis relied on air supremacy in case of a surprise attack and a very sophisticated mobilisation system of reserve units to enable the IDF to take the 2battle into the enemy’s territory and achieve a quick and decisive victory. And the ultimate backup was always US support, both political and military.
The Arabs had worked hard to counter the IDF strategy. In 1973, they relied on the element of surprise and split the Israeli forces by attacking in the north and south, and the Egyptians set up an anti-aircraft umbrella with a missile shield. The Syrians expected the Egyptians to keep advancing at the start, but the Egyptians knew they could not win a war of manoeuvre in the Sinai Peninsula and stopped within the range of their Russian-designed missile shield.
The most important Israeli failure was in deterrence. The Israelis believed in their strategy completely and ignored intelligence that it was weakening. This led to the debacle of the early warning system going wrong. Senior intelligence chiefs talked of an Israeli Pearl Harbor afterthe event.
Israel’s counterattack in 1973, the efficiency of their all-arms integration, their superior technology and the real-time connectivity of all IDF branches saved the day for the Israelis. And yet even as technology becomes more and more advanced – the drone battles in the Russo–Ukrainian War after 2022 is a current example – the human element is still crucial. The IDF has always relied on the training and skills of its men and women. The motivation, courage and often initiative of individual soldiers usually match the quality of the high command. However, at the same time, the human factor was the main cause of the intelligence failure, mostly based on complacency and sometimes hubris. The senior IDF commanders refused to believe that Hamas could organise a major attack. At the same time, senior – male – officers refused to listen to reports by the junior female ‘watchers’ who scanned the movements just over the Gaza border daily.3
The Israeli failures in 1973 were also partly based on their consecration of the military lessons learned in the victory of the Six-Day War in 1967. The IDF leaders tended to want to fight the next war as if it were the seventh day. The overconfidence was partly founded on the new territories acquired in 1967 – Israel’s borders were no longer as fragile as they were when the Knesset (parliament) was barely a mile from the 1948–9 border.
Despite their losses on the battlefield, the Arab powers turned military defeat into political success. The oil embargoes by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and the resulting pressures from western Europe and the US especially encouraged Israel to hasten the process of bargaining, bit by bit, the tangibles of territory for the intangibles of peace and recognition from the surrounding Arab states.
But the sores of Palestinian anger continued to fester.4
225NOTES
1 Chaim Herzog, TheWarofAtonement:TheInsideStoryoftheYomKippurWar (Frontline, Barnsley, 2018), p. xi
Chapter Two
The Context
HAMAS
After the 7 October attack, the word ‘context’ was much in use. To most Israelis, the burning issue was the terrorist atrocities of that date. To many outside Israel, including the UN secretary general, the ‘context’ of decades of Arab–Israeli conflict had to be considered even while condemning the specific abominations committed by Hamas.
Hamas is an acronym of the Arabic term for the Islamic Resistance Movement that was set up in 1987, though it had grown out of the Muslim Brotherhood organisation that had emerged in the region in the 1950s. The political core and its associated militia challenged the dominant PLO, which was far more secular. In the elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council in January 2006, Hamas won a majority over the Fatah party, the PLO core and dominant party in the West Bank. Hamas had become very popular because of its extensive generosity in education and welfare benefits. In the period 2006 to 2007, Hamas waged a brutal civil war that ended in Hamas and its close allies, such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad, gaining total control in Gaza, while Fatah purged Hamas 6from the West Bank. It was a policy of divide and rule, approved by the more right-wing Israeli securocrats. While Fatah and Hamas fought each other, the IDF tried to keep out of direct participation in the Palestine fratricide.
As a response to the Hamas takeover and its rocket launches, Israel increased its stranglehold on the flow of people and goods into the Gaza Strip. About 70 per cent of the Gazan work force became unemployed and about 80 per cent of its population lived in poverty, often dependent on Hamas handouts.
Israel had originally taken over control of Gaza from Egypt after the Six-Day War. For a while, the Israelis worked with the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. The Brotherhood was allowed to develop a charitable role, especially in building mosques, schools and also a library.
Originally from just outside Ashkelon in British Mandatory Palestine, Yassin and his family fled to Gaza. Involved in a childhood wrestling accident when he was twelve, he became a paraplegic. He was also almost completely blind, although he received medical treatment at the best medical institutions in Israel. Despite being restricted to a wheelchair, Yassin’s charisma and Islamic learning allowed him to become spiritual leader of Hamas in Gaza. After numerous killings of Israelis were attributed to Yassin’s followers, he was assassinated by a Hellfire missile from an Israeli Apache helicopter on 22 March 2004.
The term ‘Hamas’ had started appearing in military intelligence and Shin Bet – the Israeli security agency focused on internal security, roughly equivalent to MI5 in the UK – files around 1987. The Israelis were, at this time, much more focused on Fatah in the West Bank and initially talked with Islamist leaders in Gaza, though they did not arm them against the PLO. Israeli intelligence sometimes 7turned a blind eye to Hamas weapon storage because it was considered the weapons would be used against Palestinian rivals.
But in 1989, Hamas killed two IDF soldiers. Yassin was arrested again and 400 Hamas militants were deported to southern Lebanon, then controlled by the IDF. At the same time, Hamas started building its connections with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Inside the Gaza Strip, Hamas enforced its restrictive form of Islam, including compulsory wearing of the hijab. The Gazans who opposed Hamas (very discreetly) considered it to be Taliban-like in its authoritarianism.
In the 1990s, Hamas’s military wing became known internationally for its attacks on Israeli military and civilian targets, including suicide bombings, despite the Oslo Accords (which Hamas opposed). The Palestinian Authority (PA) created by the Oslo deal appeared to be either reluctant to or incapable of stopping Hamas attacks in both Israel and the occupied territories. However, in Jordan, King Abdullah clamped down hard on Hamas activities in his kingdom. Millions of the country’s population were originally of Palestinian origin.
In both the first and especially the second intifadas, Hamas’s military wing was very active. Nevertheless, Yassin offered Israel a ten-year truce (hudna) after a complete withdrawal from all territories occupied in the Six-Day War. A temporary Hamas truce followed. In 2005, Hamas took part in municipal elections in the occupied territories and did well. In 2006, it stood in elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council.
Despite much domestic right-wing opposition in Israel, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered IDF withdrawal from Gaza and the Jewish settlements (containing nearly 9,000 settlers), although Israel still controlled access by land, sea and air. On the fifteenth anniversary of the Gaza lockdown, in June 2022, Omar Shakir, the 8Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, said Gaza was ‘an open-air prison’.1 Others dubbed it a huge concentration camp. To compensate Israelis, Sharon encouraged new Jewish settlements in the West Bank, especially around Jerusalem.
