[Kabar-indonesia] 1 of 2: NYRB: A New Middle East [+War Within War]

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-1 of 2-

note: Feature: War Within War is in Part 2 of 2

The New York Review of Books
Volume 53, Number 14 • September 21, 2006

A New Middle East

By Robert Malley

1.

On June 25, members of three militant Palestinian
organizations, including the governing Hamas, attacked
an Israeli military base, killing two soldiers and
seizing a third. On July 12, militants from the
Lebanese Hezbollah crossed into Israel, captured two
soldiers, and killed three others. When Israeli troops
pursued them into Lebanese territory, Hezbollah hit
again, killing five more.

Israel reacted similarly in both instances. It
rejected any negotiation or prisoner exchange and
unleashed large-scale attacks designed to assert its
military might, subdue the militant organizations, and
erode their rocket-launching capacity. In one case it
hoped to accelerate the collapse of Hamas's
government; in the other to force Hezbollah to disarm.
At this writing, none of the abducted soldiers have
been released. Hamas remains in power and Fatah, which
Israelis hoped would replace it, remains in shambles.

The outlook is bleakest on the Lebanese front.
Exceeding expectations —or fears—Hezbollah stood fast,
firing a steady stream of rockets deep into Israel and
forcing hundreds of thousands of Israelis to seek
shelter or move south. A fragile truce is in place,
but few in Israel consider it satisfactory; fewer
still believe that its terms will be fully respected.
Hezbollah has made clear that it will not disarm and
no one can credibly contradict it. Israeli Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert, who claimed that Hezbollah would
be destroyed, defined victory in terms that ensured a
loss. Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, whose
stated goal was to withstand the onslaught,
characterized success in a way that ruled out defeat.
A war waged to reassert Israel's power of deterrence
and to spoil Hezbollah's image has significantly
eroded the former while unintentionally improving the
latter.

The political toll in Israel is equally heavy. Bitter
recriminations and accusations over the conduct of the
Lebanese campaign, its purpose, and its outcome came
unusually early, even before the last shot was fired.
With rockets having been launched from two regions
from which Israel had withdrawn, Prime Minister
Olmert's plan to unilaterally disengage from parts of
the West Bank is, to put it mildly, moribund. He has
no alternative program to offer. Until now, he has
ruled out negotiations with Syria over a peace deal
and excluded a dialogue with Hamas unless the movement
undergoes an improbable ideological conversion. There
is plenty of dissatisfaction in the West Bank and
Gaza, but the gamble of Israel and Western nations
that cutting off funds for the Palestinian civil
service and supplies for the hungry population would
lead them to rebel and would force Hamas to change its
ways has so far failed. In Lebanon, the best Israel
can do is stand aside and hope that Lebanese
politicians and public opinion will damage Hezbollah
in ways the Jewish state's military arsenal could not.
A war Israel fought without a clearly defined purpose
has left the country without any tangible achievement.
The summer has not been good for Israel.

It has not been much kinder to others. Hamas may still
be standing, but its position is wobbly. The movement
was not prepared for its electoral victory; it was
even less prepared for what followed. Its government
has been largely deprived of resources as Israel
withholds the taxes that were supposed to be collected
on the Palestinian Authority's behalf, and as both the
United States and the European Union insist that Hamas
meet their three preconditions—recognition of Israel,
renunciation of violence, and adherence to past
agreements—before they will resume assistance.

Of late, international attention has shifted to
Lebanon, but Palestinian suffering has not eased.
After an Israeli soldier was captured on June 25,
Israel's forces killed scores of Palestinians,
destroyed vital facilities in the Gaza Strip, jailed
over thirty Hamas ministers and parliamentarians, and
effectively closed the area to the outside world.
Expressing frustration with international impotence
and Israeli aggression, Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh
and other Hamas leaders have warned vaguely that they
might dissolve the Palestinian Authority. The
president of the PA no longer presides, the government
no longer governs, and anarchy is spreading: How, one
wonders, would the Palestinian people know the
difference?

Along with the Palestinian confrontation with Israel
there has been a debilitating power struggle between
Hamas and the secular nationalist Fatah. Except for a
few bloody episodes, outright internecine conflict
between Palestinian factions has traditionally been
taboo; Yasser Arafat was often berated by foreigners
for refusing to crack down on opponents, but for most
Palestinians it was one of his proudest achievements.
That line has been crossed. It is not yet all-out war,
and following a recent national reconciliation
agreement such a war may be avoided; but there has
been a steady stream of politically motivated
assassinations of Palestinians by Palestinians amid
harsh accusations of betrayal. In opinion surveys
asking Palestinians to choose between Hamas and Fatah,
the response "none of the above" has increasing
appeal.

The Lebanese people have paid the heaviest price. With
the stated purpose of recovering its men as well as
crippling the Islamist movement, and the unstated one
of turning the Lebanese people against Hezbollah,
Israel has damaged the country, killed over a thousand
of its citizens, and provoked the displacement of a
quar-ter of its population. Having scarcely recovered
from its latest ordeal, Lebanon is a broken nation
once more.

The Islamist movement may be pleased by the results of
the war, but in the longer run its outlook appears
less certain. For Hezbollah, holding Israel to a
military draw—a huge victory by any measure—may well
prove to have been the easier task. It had, after all,
prepared itself for such a confrontation during the
past six years. Managing the domestic battle that has
ensued could present a tougher challenge. The war has
created a humanitarian catastrophe of almost
unimaginable proportions for Lebanon's Shiite
population, Hezbollah's base of support. Hundreds of
thousands of Shiites are without shelter or means of
subsistence. Some of them remain dispersed throughout
the country, dependent for their well-being on the
generosity of rival sectarian groups. Hezbollah, which
largely built its popularity on its ability to meet
social needs and whose system for providing services
has been severely damaged—far more, one suspects, than
its military arsenal—is promising speedy help, and,
with support from Iran, has started to provide it
earlier and more effectively than the government. But
it will face huge demands for reconstruction and much
competition from others in meeting them. As the
glamour of its claimed military victory fades, it may
face more pressing demands from Lebanese and
non-Lebanese that it give up its weapons.

At the same time, Arab public opinion is increasingly
radicalized and governments allied with the US stand
doubly discredited—exposed for their hostility toward
Hezbollah in the early stages, shamed by the
movement's military prowess later on. As for the
attitude of the US administration, it has been utterly
incomprehensible. Banking on an implausibly swift
Israeli victory, the US stood virtually alone against
a cease-fire even as the number of civilian victims
grew and even as the Lebanese government it ostensibly
wished to support pleaded in vain for the violence to
halt. That the US made protestations of sympathy for
the Lebanese people while giving concrete support for
Israel's military operations only compounded popular
fury. All this for a cause—the battle for
"freedom"—that was further discredited on every day of
further bloodshed, and whose purported
beneficiaries—the Arab people—want nothing to do with.
America's standing in the region may well recover, but
it is increasingly difficult to see how, or when.

It's a desolate balance sheet. On all fronts,
confrontations proceed with little logic or purpose
and with no stable outcome in sight. Something has to
give.

2.

Hamas's electoral victory in January 2006 was the
equivalent of a political earthquake. It represents
the most radical shift on the Palestinian scene since
Yasser Arafat and his Fatah movement took over the
Palestine Liberation Organization following the 1967
Arab–Israeli war. The transition is only partial, but
that only adds to the complexity. Hamas controls the
Palestinian Authority's parliament and, therefore, its
government. Fatah retains the presidency as well as
control of the PLO. Because of personal loyalty or
party membership, Fatah also controls the security
forces and much of the civil service. Dual power has
thus been introduced into a system accustomed to
domination by a single faction, with neither Hamas nor
Fatah prepared for the change. Hamas is governing as
an opposition party; Fatah is resisting it like a
ruling one. Neither has been able to shed habits of
the past.

Unwilling to accept the outcome of the elections,
Fatah officials alternatively blamed it on the
electoral system they had themselves devised or on
internal divisions for which they were responsible.
Not wasting any time, they started looking for ways to
reverse it. Within hours of the results, they were
considering whether President Mahmoud Abbas could
legally dissolve parliament and call for new elections
(he can't); they also considered whether he could
declare a state of emergency and suspend parliament
(he can, but only temporarily), or otherwise cut short
Hamas's time in office. Some in Fatah contemplated a
military confrontation; if it had to occur, they
reasoned, it was better that it happen before the
Islamists consolidated their power.

Fatah officials early on rejected suggestions of a
national unity government, fearing it would only
strengthen Hamas, allowing Hamas to benefit from
Fatah's international legitimacy without paying the
price Fatah had paid to achieve it. Publicly bemoaning
the West's policy toward Hamas, Fatah leaders
privately supported that policy, encouraging the US
and EU to maintain their three conditions for resuming
donor aid. With US help, they hoped to establish a
channel of communication between President Abbas and
Prime Minister Olmert in order to circumvent and
marginalize Hamas. And they discreetly promoted subtle
forms of insubordination by civil servants who,
deprived of salaries, hardly needed encouragement.
Hamas has won power but cannot exercise it. The
Islamists do not have the funds to pay the civil
servants—who did not intend to take orders from them
in the first place.

Pressure on Hamas has emanated from other sources.
Members of the Quartet—the US, EU, UN, and Russian
Federation—halted their assistance until the new
government meets its three conditions while Israel
both withheld tax revenues it collects on the PA's
behalf and impeded movement within the occupied
territories as well as trade with them. The goal
seemed clear: squeeze the government, arouse popular
dissatisfaction with its performance, find ways to
strengthen President Abbas, and ensure that Hamas's
days in power would come to a rapid and unsuccessful
end. Hardly pleased with the emergence of an Islamist
government, let alone through democratic elections,
Arab governments discreetly shared these objectives.

Throughout, President Abbas has appeared ill at ease.
By temperament and principle, he recoils at
confrontation. He is deputy head of Fatah, but he also
is chairman of the PLO and president of the
Palestinian Authority and takes his position as leader
of all Palestinians seriously. He does not want his
legacy to be that of a partisan politician who
contributed to what, for Palestinians, would be a
suicidal civil war. Years of disappointment with US
and Israeli policies also have made him suspicious of
any strategy that— like the one advocated by some
around him—would depend on their complicity in order
to succeed. And so he has continued to try to work
with Hamas, resisting the entreaties of some of his
advisers to challenge the Islamists head-on.

All the same, he is not about to surrender to the
Islamists' worldview, particularly their rejection of
Israel's right to exist, which he considers a threat
to the national movement. The Palestinians' sole
option, he is convinced, is a negotiated settlement
with Israel, and their most valuable asset their
international legitimacy. Hamas, he fears, is
jeopardizing both. Trying to counter it, Abbas has
asserted his control over the presidency, the PLO, and
the security forces. On several occasions he warned he
might dismiss the government. Not particularly
conciliatory when he reaches out to Hamas, not quite
assertive enough when he confronts it, Abbas has come
across as a political actor drifting between two
distinct and contradictory roles. In neither case has
he looked the part.

3.

What is one to make of Hamas's reactions? And how is
one to interpret the military attack in Gaza that set
off the current crisis? On the theory that power
breeds pragmatism, many people expected the Islamists
to adjust and, one way or another, indicate a
willingness to compromise and negotiate with Israel on
the basis of a two-state outcome. They are still
waiting. Hamas and the new government made a flurry of
statements, but the outside world was none the wiser.
Instead of putting forward clear positions, they
launched ambiguous trial balloons, offering one day
what they hurriedly withdrew the next. The cease-fire,
which Hamas had unilaterally observed for over a year,
came to an end, both with the military attack that
resulted in the soldier's abduction and with the
resumption of launches of Qassam rockets from Gaza
into Israel. For those convinced that Hamas was simply
masking its rejectionist convictions beneath hazy
phraseology, there was plenty of evidence at hand.

The most common explanation for Hamas's attitude cites
both internal divisions and external influence. Under
this view, Khaled Mashal, the leader of the
organization's Damascus-based politburo, in connivance
with his Syrian hosts, systematically obstructed any
pragmatic move initiated by the Islamist leadership
within the occupied territories, particularly by Prime
Minister Ismail Haniyeh. Mashal is alleged to have
ordered the raid on June 25, in which the Israeli
soldier was abducted, in order to scuttle negotiations
between Haniyeh and Abbas over a proposal worked out
by prominent Palestinian leaders in Israeli
prisons—leaders from both Fatah and Hamas—that
implicitly endorses a two-state solution. In a single
stroke, Mashal is said to have all at once sabotaged
the agreement, asserted supremacy within the
organization, escalated the Israeli–Palestinian
conflict, and served the interests of his Syrian and
Iranian patrons.

The theory is elegant but it does not hold. If the
goal was to deter Haniyeh from signing the agreement,
it did not work. An agreement was reached hours after
the armed attack of June 25, and it was publicly
welcomed by Mashal and his exiled colleagues. In fact,
the final version reflects substantive changes for
which the Damascus-based leadership had argued: it
accepts the legitimacy of international resolutions
but only to the extent they do not "detract...from our
people's rights," and it explicitly calls for the
right of return of refugees to their "homes and
properties from which they were expelled." The
document reflects a significant step forward for
Hamas, but there is no mistaking it for a peace
platform. It does not recognize Israel, and reaffirms
the rights of resistance as well as return. The
Quartet got something that it should acknowledge and
respond to; it did not get what it was asking for.
Perhaps most important, what is known of Hamas's
methods of decision-making casts serious doubt on
whether Haniyeh could afford to discount Mashal's
views or Mashal could take the risk of single-handedly
undercutting Haniyeh. The leadership is collective and
although viewpoints undoubtedly differ, at times
sharply, decisions are made by consensus.[*]

If one bothers to ask them, Hamas leaders—within the
occupied territories or outside—offer a simpler
explanation for the course of events. If they can't
concentrate on governing, they say, it is not because
they don't want to but because they cannot. Isolated,
with their government starved of resources even before
they assumed office, they faced escalating attacks by
Israel, including Israeli artillery bombardments, air
strikes, and targeted assassinations. They also had to
deal with attacks on Israel by Palestinian
militants—which, incidentally, they did nothing to
prevent—who launched Qassam rockets from Gaza.

The leaders of the Islamist movement contemplated two
options. They could show themselves unable to manage
Palestinian affairs, gradually losing their
constituents' confidence and support. Or they could
strike back, in the hope of either forcing Israel,
Fatah, and foreign governments to give their
government breathing space or, barring that, bringing
down everything around them. Differences of opinion
within the movement aside, it never was a close call:
if they are to go down, Hamas's leaders would rather
go down fighting than failing.

Another aspect of Hamas's behavior is relevant, though
it has more to do with the psychology than with the
politics of the Arab–Israeli conflict. The Islamists
are determined to alter the rules of a game that, in
the recent period at least, they see as having been
fundamentally rigged. In their eyes, Israel is the
occupier, holds prisoners, engages in large-scale
military operations, and yet Palestinians are asked to
behave, demonstrate their worthiness, and offer
political compromise. The conflict, they argue, began
in 1948, when Palestinians were uprooted and an alien
entity came into being; today, it has been reduced to
a mundane territorial dispute in which acts of
resistance are condemned as unacceptable violations of
the status quo and Israeli concessions as laudable
gestures of statesmanship. Out of fear of greater
Israeli military power, Palestinians are advised to
hold their fire; to gain international support, they
are asked to soothe and seduce the West. What, Hamas
asks, has all that gotten them? 

There is an urgency in Abbas's voice, a sense of
despair that one does not find among Hamas's leaders.
The contrast reflects not only the differing weight
each gives to religious belief, but also differing
assessments of the balance of power, of how to tilt it
and how to attract international attention. Hamas's
message is that it is not afraid or in a hurry; that
if it is prevented from governing or otherwise bears
the brunt of attacks, it can hit back; that if Israeli
attacks threaten to bring the PA down—an increasingly
plausible possibility—Hamas can survive without it;
and that it will gain notice through steadfastness
rather than eagerness to please. Acceptance of the
three conditions of the Quartet has no place in this
worldview, nor indeed do any political concessions
aimed solely at demonstrating good will. Instead,
Hamas will try to govern, but at the same time insist
on reestablishing a new balance of power and, as it
sees it, restoring a sense of mutuality and dignity.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Hezbollah, too, had built a
network of rockets on Israel's northern border and
initiated military attacks with similar aims in mind,
and Hamas had taken note. Small wonder that the two
movements found themselves engaged in the same sort of
activity—abducting Israeli soldiers—for the same
self-professed purpose—a prisoner exchange—at roughly
the same time.

4.

Hezbollah is an oddity on the Arab scene. It is
effective in action—even when those actions are
repellent—and relatively sparing in words. It has
shown skill in battle and competence at social work.
The world may know it for its violent attacks and
deadly rocket launches, but for most of Lebanon's
Shiites, its more down-to-earth and less glamorous
social programs are the most convincing. It is both
deeply pragmatic and deeply ideological, putting its
considerable tactical suppleness at the service of
unyielding beliefs. A Shiite movement in an
overwhelmingly Sunni region, it has remained loyal to
its sectarian base in Lebanon while appealing across
sectarian lines throughout the Arab world. A Lebanese
national movement intent on proving itself the only
true defender of the country's security, it also
possesses a regional identity, with its strong
alliance with Syria and an even more powerful bond,
both logistical and ideological, with Iran.
Hezbollah's feat is that it has been able to take
advantage of the religiously divided political system
and the nation's tragic civil war to implant an
Islamist revolutionary idea in Lebanon.

Since Israel's withdrawal from south Lebanon in May
2000, Hezbollah has had to intensify its involvement
in Lebanese domestic politics, taking the
unprecedented decision to join the government. But it
has also steadfastly clung to its internationalist,
Islamist creed, intent on expanding its influence on
Palestinian affairs. Hezbollah often has been accused
of doing Iran's bidding. It does, but not in the ways
typically assumed. Nasrallah is not subordinate to
Tehran's rulers; he is a true believer in their basic
outlook, and, in advancing the cause of the Islamic
revolution, he believes he is advancing his own. When
Nasrallah speaks of resistance, he is evoking more
than a practice. He is reflecting a state of mind.
Hezbollah is resisting Israel, the US, and complicit
Arab regimes, together with Western attempts to
reorder the region. Asked shortly after Israel's
withdrawal in 2000 whether it was time for him to
start looking for a different job, Nasrallah is said
to have expressed surprise. His work, he asserted, was
only just beginning.

Before and better than Hamas, Hezbollah has juggled
the conflicting constraints of political participation
and violent action. Most significantly perhaps, in a
region whose leaders are given to bombast, it has
tended to do what it says. One of the more jarring
contrasts of the recent confrontation was between the
matter-of-fact, almost clinical dissection of the war
by Hassan Nasrallah, militant head of an Islamist
organization, and the often grandiose, hyperbolic
claims of Ehud Olmert, civilian leader of a democratic
state.

If there are numerous plausible explanations for why
Hezbollah launched its July attack, it is because of
the numerous pressures and interests to which the
movement responds. Hezbollah had called 2006 the year
of retrieving the few remaining Lebanese prisoners
held in Israeli jails—and for many months Nasrallah
had publicly proclaimed the movement's intention of
seizing soldiers for the purpose of a prisoner
exchange. For the Islamist leader, it was a matter of
living up to his word. The near simultaneity with
Hamas's abduction of an Israeli soldier and Israel's
harsh response presented another advantage. For it
allowed Hezbollah to reassert an Arab-Islamic identity
transcending both its Lebanese and Shiite origins and,
by initially insisting that any prisoner swap include
Palestinian detainees, enabled Hezbollah to show that
it alone in the Arab world would come to the
Palestinians' defense.

Another factor, and it is not to be belittled, was
regional. Hezbollah was concerned about Western
pressure on Syria and Iran, incriminating evidence in
the Islamists' eyes that there is a broadening US-led
effort to reshape the Middle East. The timing of
Hezbollah's raid fit in well with the concerns of both
Tehran and Damascus, whose interests Nasrallah
carefully keeps in mind.

Hezbollah expected that its operation would result in
yet another bloody— although manageable and contained—
skirmish in a long history of such encounters. It was
not a wholly unreasonable guess. Over the years, the
two sides had intermittently tested one another, with
Hezbollah attacks on the contested Shebaa Farms or
Israeli incursions into Lebanese air and sea space as
well as assassinations of Palestinian militants on
Lebanese soil. The Islamists' raid was more audacious
and provocative than customary, occurring as it did on
territory that was incontrovertibly Israeli. But in
its objectives—a brief military confrontation and
abduction followed by protracted third-party
negotiations over yet another prisoner exchange—it did
not fundamentally differ.

Still, Hezbollah should have known better. For Israel,
this was not just another tit-for-tat. It was a
tipping point. After its unilateral withdrawals, first
from south Lebanon—seen by both Hezbollah and
Palestinian groups as a victory for armed
resistance—then from Gaza, Israel feared an erosion of
its deterrent power. In their growing boldness,
Palestinian attacks, from the intifada on, were read
by Israelis as alarming symptoms of a larger threat.
Further darkening the horizon were longer-term
regional trends—the growth of an increasingly popular
brand of Islamism, greater tolerance for public denial
of Israel's right to exist, as well as Iran's
belligerent attitude, its mounting influence, and its
nuclear program.

Lebanon is where all these fears came together. For
there, on Israel's northern border, was something that
Israel considered an inherently un-sustainable
reality: the presence of a well-trained,
well-motivated, and well-equipped armed militia which
had close ties to Iran and had built its reputation by
standing up to the Jewish state. Whether or not, as
some have suggested, Israel merely was waiting for a
pretext to decisively attack Hezbollah, it was not
going to let this provocation go by. Israel's
strategic strength may be as solid as ever, buttressed
by the absence of an Arab conventional military
threat, Saddam Hussein's overthrow, a debilitated
Palestinian national movement, and unprecedented
international support. But its sense of unparalleled
strength is mixed, however awkwardly, with a feeling
of intrinsic vulnerability.

In its intensity and brutality, this was not the war
Hezbollah had anticipated. But it is a war for which
it had prepared. Notwithstanding repeated Israeli
bombing raids, Hezbollah's command and control
remained intact. It continued to fire rockets; its
television station stayed on the air; and Nasrallah,
the target of obvious threats to his life, was able to
publicly and almost instantaneously respond to
developments. On the Lebanese scene, few people,
Hezbollah's enemies included, question that it has
emerged at least in the short term as the victor.

Before long, Hezbollah could face trouble. The war may
have temporarily united virtually all groups against
Israel, but sectarian tensions simmer and they are
intensifying. Many Sunnis and Christians blame
Hezbollah for the catastrophe; not a few Shiites
resent their fellow citizens for letting them down.
Hezbollah has tried to escape the traditional Lebanese
straitjacket of sectarian identity; it may now find it
harder to maintain that distinctive position. Israeli
targeting was disproportionate, but not
indiscriminate. Whatever others may have felt, Shiites
are certain this was a war waged against them. If the
rest of the country does not acknowledge this, and
give Shiites the compensation and credit they believe
they deserve, they will make their grievances known.
It would not take much—forcible attempts to disarm
Hezbollah, a dispute over the shape and mandate of the
Lebanese army, disagreement concerning control over
reconstruction funds, or score-settling among
different sides—to reignite the deadly fuse of
internecine conflict.

Domestically, Hezbollah's leaders feel they can handle
political opponents who demonstrated impotence in the
face of the Israeli onslaught and sectarian
narrow-mindedness throughout their careers. But a
reinvigorated central government capable of rebuilding
the nation and a reinforced Lebanese army able to
secure the country would be another matter. Greater
international attention will mean more intense
international involvement and that, too, could pose
its share of problems, including demands that
Hezbollah turn over its weapons.

Mindful of future potential pitfalls, Hezbollah is
wasting no time in reaping the political dividends of
its military success. Having accepted a UN Security
Council resolution that theoretically imperiled its
status (by calling for the deployment of Lebanese and
international forces to the south, state monopoly over
weapons, and an embargo on arms deliveries to nonstate
organizations), it immediately drained it of meaning.
It succeeded in getting the Lebanese government to
both disclaim any intention to disarm the movement and
ratify the legitimacy of the "resistance." It is now
hurrying to be the most visible—and effective— agent
of reconstruction in the devastated south, dispensing
cash to constituents whose needs are great and whose
gratitude will be long-lasting. It plans on lodging
its fighters in rebuilt houses, its weapons in newly
located caches. Not coincidentally, reports suggest a
surge of enrollment in the Islamist movement, from
religious and nonreligious Shiites alike.

5.

For Israel, the war has been a rude awakening. Various
explanations are being offered for what is seen as a
dramatic failure. Israeli commentators variously blame
overreliance on air power; hesitancy to launch ground
troops; insufficient intelligence; or the prime
minister's and defense minister's lack of military
experience. Some —fewer—question the very rationale of
a war whose objectives, if they ever are to be met,
will be achieved through diplomatic, not military,
means. Not long ago, by withdrawing from Gaza, Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon silenced international critics,
earned his country exclusive credit, and contemplated
further moves on the West Bank. Today, Israelis are
finding it hard even to summon up that sense of
promise. Unilateral disengagement—the idea around
which Kadima was created and Olmert was elected—is a
thing of the past. Stunned by the turn of events,
Israelis are giving up the idea of a West Bank
withdrawal; unable to see an alternative, they still
cannot imagine where else to go.

This hardly bodes well. The very reason Israel waged
this war—to reestablish its power of deterrence— has
been one of its unquestionable casualties. Hezbollah,
Hamas, Iran, and Syria all feel that their fortunes
are rising. For much of the Arab world, the war
damaged the myth of Israeli invincibility. At this
point, the most serious peril for Israel is to cease
being seen as a dominant force and start being
perceived as an exhausted one. As Israel's leaders
balance the cost of renewed confrontation against the
possibility of a quieter period of diplomacy, much
weight will be given to this threat.

In these circumstances, the urge to prove their
strength by striking back may well prevail. Occasions
to do so are likely to present themselves. Syria or
Iran may overplay their hand. Israel will test
Hezbollah's patience, and provocations by Hezbollah in
south Lebanon cannot be excluded. Attempts to
assassinate Nasrallah or Mashal are a virtual
certainty. In any case, Israel will likely want to
press the rewind button and wage the kind of battle it
wished had been waged in the first place. For Israel,
as well as Hamas and Hezbollah, the most costly blow
is the one to which they will be seen as having
surrendered. 

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