Israel: Viet Nam or Victory?

TruthNews Commentary, March 27, 2002

The killings continue in Israel even as the Arab summit convenes in Beirut, a fitting place since Palestinian chief terrorist Yasser Arafat has done his best to turn Israel into another Lebanon. In the latest violence, a suicide bomber killed 15 Israelis in a hotel during Passover observances, which predictably earned world condemnation for both Israel and Palestinians. Earlier, Palestinian terrorists shot two U.N. observers near Hebron. World outrage was muted for this attack since the Palestinians claimed they had mistaken the U.N. workers for Jews.

In the nearly two years since the intifada began in September 2000, the Israelis have been able to do little to contain the Palestinian suicide bombings, shootings, stabbings, and other acts of random acts of violence directed against Jews and those they mistake for Jews. But the international community has been quick to step in to offer a solution, just as they stopped the genocide in Rwanda. Soon after Arafat initiated the Palestinian attacks, then-president Bill Clinton held a summit meeting with Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, Arafat, and then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Arafat agreed to stop killing the Jews but reneged.

Ex-U.S. Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, fresh from his success in negotiating a ceasefire in Northern Ireland, led an international commission that hatched the "Mitchell plan" for ending the violence. The plan has never been implemented because step one calls for an end to violence on both sides, and Arafat refuses to stop killing the Jews. Actually, he doesn't refuse. Using the skilled diplomacy that won him the Nobel Peace Prize, he promises to make peace if only the other side would stop military actions against him. Once the Israelis stop pursuing his terrorists, he unleashes another wave of terror.

CIA director George Tenet negotiated a ceasefire that was never implemented. U.S. special envoy Tony Zinni is on his third fruitless mission to the region. The EU's Javier Perez Solana, who led NATO (No Action, Talk Only) when "NATO" bombed Yugoslavia (U.S. aircraft did the bombing but Europe allowed us to use their airfields, thereby making it a NATO action), has made several trips to the region but has been unable to convince Arafat to stop killing the Jews, perhaps because he blames the violence on the Israelis. The UN has had similar lack of success, although they did manage to encourage the Palestinians with their anti-Semitic rhetoric at a racism conference in Durban, South Africa (after all, nobody said it had to be an anti-racism conference).

Meanwhile the Israelis have pursued the carrot and stick approach similar to the highly successful Lyndon Johnson strategy in Viet Nam. They bomb empty buildings, shoot missiles at terrorists, occupy villages and then withdraw, and blockade Arab areas. All of this is an attempt to put "pressure" on Arafat so that when the diplomats come talking, Arafat will weigh the cost vs. benefit of continuing the intifada and conclude that the cost to his people outweighs any possible benefit they can get from continuing to kill the Jews. The fallacy with this strategy is that it assumes, first, that Arafat is reasonable, and second, that he cares about the welfare of his people. Since neither assumption is true, the Israeli strategy has worked about as well as the U.S. strategy in Viet Nam, or for that matter, Iraq.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has pushed a program that he dubs a "Palestinian Marshall Plan," which calls for the rich Arab states to contribute funds to the rebuilding of the Palestinian areas. Sharon forgets that the real Marshall plan came after the total defeat and unconditional surrender of the Axis powers. If Israel wants to emulate the U.S., they should emulate our World War II strategy, not our Viet Nam strategy. In World War II, we didn't just bomb a few power plants, knock off a few key Nazis, and then send in the diplomats to convince Hitler to stop invading other countries. No, we bombed his power plants, we bombed his factories, we bombed his oil refineries, we bombed his cities, we bombed his railroads, then we invaded his country, killed his soldiers, arrested his henchmen and hung them (we would have hung Hitler, too, but he blew his brains out first). Then we occupied Germany, banned the Nazis, and instituted a democratic government. Only after we were convinced that the Germans had in fact reformed, did we sign a peace treaty, and Germany did not regain independence until 1955.

The Israelis are reluctant to implement this strategy for two reasons. First, they think that the U.S. won't like it, and second, they would have to mobilize their reserves with its subsequent drain on the economy. In response to the first reason, we ask, when did Israel become the 51st state and need U.S. approval to do anything? Yes, Israel gets a lot of support from the U.S., but so does Europe, and that doesn't keep the Europeans from thumbing their noses at us. U.S. support for Israel is broad based and not dependent on any particular administration or political party, so it doesn't really matter what Colin Powell, who initiated a war against Iraq in 1990 and has yet to finish it, has to say.

The issue of mobilization of reserves and other domestic political considerations seriously hinders Israel's response to terrorism, particularly under the current "unity" government. But Prime Minister Sharon is faced with the same dilemma that Lyndon Johnson faced. As Johnson discovered, a long protracted struggle with mounting casualties and limited success conducted by a government without any ideas for bringing the war to a close will lose support. A quick military action with decisive results may be unpopular both domestically and internationally in the short term but is the only option for bringing an end to the "cycle of violence."

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