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which is Iranian-trained and Syrian-supported, has set up camp on the Lebanese-Israeli border, ringing Israel with 2,000 upgraded Katyusha rockets with which they can easily strike the city of Haifa, the center of Israel's petro-chemical industry.3. Israeli intelligence says that the threat of chemical, biological and perhaps even atomic weapons aimed at Israel in the hands of Iraq's Saddam Hussein and the Iranian ayatollahs is no longer a theoretical possibility but a looming probability, perhaps following any American strike against Iraq.
Beyond this, the realities of Israel's weakened deterrent posture are evident every day in its continuing battle with the Palestinians, who regularly fire into the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo while shooting mortars and rockets at a growing number of Israeli communities inside Gaza, Judea and pre-1967 Israel itself.
Only a few weeks ago, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer warned of "dire consequences" if either Qassam rockets were launched or Palestinian shooting on Gilo continued. The Palestinians immediately tested Israeli resolve by shooting one Qassam rocket into Kibbutz Saad near the coastal city of Ashkelon, while another, aimed at the town of Sderot, was destroyed on its launcher by an alert Israeli Merkava tank crew ( like the one destroyed with three dead and one severely wounded). As for Gilo, the shooting on Gilo has become so accepted, if not "acceptable," that Israeli forces do not even bother returning fire, and shooting incidents often go unreported in the Israeli media, something that has been true, for a while now, of the many mortar shellings of Israeli communities in Gaza and Judea.
The shooting on Gilo has become so accepted, if not "acceptable," that Israeli forces do not even bother returning fire.
Now that the Palestinians have dared to cross these supposed Israeli red lines, it grows ever likelier that there will be a wider conflict as a result of Israel's failing deterrent posture. "We will have no choice but to go back to those places from which we withdrew," asserted Brig. Gen. Res. Hezzy Falant, former chief artillery officer for the Israeli Army (IDF).
"We are the strongest army from the Caspian Sea to the Straits of Gibraltar," bragged Ephraim Sneh, then deputy Defense Minister, in an interview on Israel State Radio two years ago. "The Israeli army is invincible," asserted Sneh, who still sits in Israel's security cabinet as Minister of Transportation, but invincibility, like deterrence, is in the eye of the beholder. When Sneh and other officials stressed Israel's strength two years ago, they did so often to encourage Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon, but the effect of the hasty Israeli withdrawals under then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak, as well as the effect of the current fighting, has caused many Israelis to feel that Lebanon is now here, as one newspaper put it.
Minister Sneh was not alone among Israeli politicians, especially from the left-of-center Israeli Labor Party, who believed that Israel could make far-reaching concessions to the Palestinians because its military strength allowed it to do so. "A Palestinian state that endangers Israel," declared Yossi Sarid, the Meretz Party leader, "will cease to exist." Sarid actually added that "if one katyusha [Soviet-made rocket] falls on [the Israeli town] Kfar Sava, then [the Arab town] Qalqilya will cease to exist."
Polls inside Israel today show that most Israelis do not feel Israel is especially strong. Polls published by Market Watch and Israel Radio show that more than 80 percent of the Jewish population wants a tough approach to the Palestinians, and fully 35 percent favor a transfer of Arabs from inside the West Bank and Gaza to other places in the Arab world. The harsh, even brittle mood of many Israelis seems very much connected to the sense of decreasing deterrence, as growing numbers of Israelis feel unsafe.
"The blow that Israel absorbed last night was three-fold," wrote Rafi Mann in the Hebrew daily Ma'ariv, referring to the destruction of the Merkava tank and the killing of its crew. "Beyond the price in blood," wrote Mann, "the Palestinians succeeded in striking a blow at one of the symbols of Israeli strength, the Merkava III. "It was almost as if terrorists with Kalashnikovs and jerry-rigged rockets had succeeded, God forbid, to bring down an F-16 or a helicopter." "The fact that the hit tank was a Merkava is a double blow to the Armored Corps, because the tank is considered by many to be one of the safest in the world," concluded O'Sullivan.
Israeli strategists are now talking about ways to make Israel's deterrent more effective, not only against the Palestinians, but against those states which encourage Palestinian terror, such as Iran and Iraq. Leading Israeli officers are conducting serious discussions about expanding the Israeli navy to include submarines and missile platforms to give Israel the strategic reach to strike both Iran and Iraq, if necessary. A further sign of failing deterrence is growing numbers of Israelis -- about half, according to some polls -- are ready to enact the worst case scenario regarding the Oslo Accords.
The late Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin said repeatedly that any Palestinian military violations would lead to strong Israeli response, as well as an end to Israeli withdrawals and even a quick Israeli re-conquest of areas turned over to control of Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority. That scenario, once considered extremist in Israel, is becoming a mainline view, but fewer and fewer Israelis believe that Israel will easily re-conquer territory it has vacated.
Michael Widlanski is senior analyst at The
Media Line and lecturer at the Rothberg School of
Hebrew University. Reprinted courtesy of The Media Line
Ltd. www.themedialine.org
[Correction to printed copy]
Outpost - 8 - March 2002