Posted By Emad Omar

The 1967 Arab-Israeli war was Israel’s last victorious battle. It seems that the swift and unexpected win made the Israeli military organization hasty in its use of force to achieve desired goals. It has encouraged Israeli politicians to choose a military response the majority of the time, even if that means sending troops and tanks to hunt rock-throwing children in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Since 1967, the Israeli army has been unable to successfully conclude any war. The wars they have engaged in have only created internal political strife in Israel, harmed the reputation to the Israeli military institution, and set in motion new regional trends that created more fragile security conditions for Israel. 

Yet, its seems the attitude formed after the 1967 victory, still controls the Israeli political mindset and trapped them into more military adventures with unrealistic goals. This decades-old victory has blinded the Israeli political institutions to the possibilities of negotiating and seems to have left them unable to embrace historical chances to create peace and end the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The 1973 war shattered the legend of the once-invincible Israeli army and forced Israel to give back Sinai to Egypt. Additionally, it produced the resignation of Golda Meier, and the rise of Israel’s right wing. The 1982 war opened the door for the empowerment of Hezbollah while giving rise to an infrastructure of a pure Lebanese resistance against Israel. Furthermore, 1982’s war increased Iran’s power throughout the Middle East and laid the foundation for the first Palestinian Intifada (uprising). In Israel, after admitting in public that Israel had fought three wars of its own choosing, Begin retreated to his house where he remained until his death. It was during this time that the Israeli military began to send the heavily armed Israeli army into the Palestinian territories, which negatively affected the Israeli army. As Ze’ev Schiff, the well-known Israeli security analyst, remarked recently, this ultimately destroyed the morale of its troops and opened the eyes of the world to the brutalities of occupation and the militarization within Israeli society.

The 1996 war on Lebanon, “Operation Grapes of Wrath”, together with the Qana massacre, led to unprecedented support for Hezbollah and the Lebanese national resistance by all Lebanese sects. Sharon’s escalation of war during the second Intifada led to an intensified suicide bombing campaign inside Israel and to Israel’s unilateral pullout from Gaza. This unilateral dismantling of settlements weakened the moderate Palestinian groups and empowered Hamas. Without a doubt last summer’s war in Lebanon undermined any hope that the Lebanese national debate would lead to disarming Hezbollah peacefully and it revived Syrian influence in Lebanon in contravention to Olmert and his party’s political plans. 

Essentially, the outcome of this last Israeli military action has been the development of new and more complicated tools and tactics of guerrilla warfare, strengthening its legitimacy and use throughout the Middle East, and encouraging ordinary citizens to support or incite this kind of warfare.

The critique of Olmert’s performance during the first six days of the Lebanon war, presented in the Winograd report, is also true for the performances of many Israeli military and political leaders since the 1967 war. As stated in the report, the war had: “over-ambitious and unrealistic goals; lack of understanding of the situation; hasty decision-making; [did] not consider the whole range of options; weakness in strategic thinking; a serious failure in exercising judgment, responsibility, and prudence; a lack of exit strategy; [and] did not explore and seek adequate responses for various reservations that were raised.”

Olmert’s refusal, before the release of Winograd report, to admit his government’s mistakes in conducting the Lebanon war is also a legacy from former Israeli political leadership who refused to examine their failures and, instead, concentrated on staying in power. As the Winograd report so clearly states, “The impression was sometimes that the prime minister believed, at least until the day of his testimony before us, that his decisions had no real defects, and that they were not what caused the sense the public had, which in his opinion was largely unjustified, that this war had not succeeded.”

The Israeli situation, which has been almost constant since 1967 with few exceptions, reminds me of the important writings of the late two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Barbra Tuchman, in The March of Folly: from Troy to Vietnam. She points out that it is the lust of power and lure of office, the blindness of ideology, and the lack of historical critique as well as the ignorance about other countries, that binds leaders into the “self-imprisonment” of the “we have no alternative” approach to policy. Tuchman underscores this point by saying “the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests, despite the availability of feasible alternatives” is the march of folly by governments.

Now, there is an historical opportunity to end the Arab-Israeli conflict through the Arab Peace Initiative. Grasping this opportunity means that Israelis should change their decision-making process, which exaggerates the reliance on the military to achieve their political goals, and open their eyes to existing alternatives and policies that, in the final analysis, support their nation’s interests. This is the time for Israel to leave behind the trap it stepped into in 1967. Now is the time for Israel to act in its own best interests by ending the occupation and making peace with the Arab nations. This is the feasible alternative to the folly.

* Emad Omar specializes in conflict resolution and media based in Amman, Jordan.

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