The politics of the Middle East are as incendiary as they have ever been. The focus of global initiatives for peace, no prospect of resolving the situation has yet proven to be sustainable.
At the end of 2006 optimism momentarily took root in the Israel–Palestine dispute, when Israel decided to withdraw its settlements from Gaza. Ehud Olmert, the then-new Israeli prime minister, had decided that since it was important for Israel to maintain its fully democratic status, to have within its state borders a potentially Arab majority was unwise. The case he made to an invited London audience not long before becoming prime minister was convincing, and left many hoping for concrete improvement. This was, however, not to be.
Iraq has suffered from major problems since 2006, but at the time of writing, civil war has not erupted, the withdrawal of most Western troops has happened without disaster and while life there cannot be described as ideal, it is certainly far better than pessimists feared it might be even a few years ago.
The Palestine-Israel-Lebanon situation is far worse, with war breaking out in 2006 and further bloodshed and conflict occurring in 2008–9. In mid-2010 the region is as tense as ever, with Gaza as much in the headlines as before, and no end to the decades-old conflict in sight.
As for Iran, which we will look at in the next chapter, the threat of nuclear escalation remains very strong, with the hardliners appearing even more repressive than before.
The year 2006 saw two wars, both involving Israel. Casualties materialized on all sides, the extent of which are still hotly contested thanks to the waging of simultaneous propaganda wars. The Second Lebanon War (also called the July War) was a brief conflict between Israel and Hizbollah, the radical Lebanon-based Shiite group with close links to fellow Shiites in Iran. Hizbollah, led by Hassan Nasrallah, had grown increasingly powerful since the Lebanese civil war of the 1980s. The rapidly expanding Shiite population perceived Hizbollah as representing their interests and aspirations, as well as acting as a proxy for their theological and ideological allies in Iran. This perception enabled the Islamic Republic of Iran to become a major player in the Middle Eastern conflict without the Iranian state having to become directly involved.
Northern Israel had faced regular rocket attacks by Hizbollah fighters based on Lebanese soil, while the multi-faith (Christian/Sunni/Shia/Druze) government of Lebanon did all it could to stay out of the fighting. In July 2006 some of the rockets not only killed Israeli civilians but also some Israeli Defence Force (IDF) soldiers as well. Two of the IDF were also captured. Israel has a no-tolerance policy in relation to the capture of its citizens, so a massive Israeli attack on Hizbollah positions in Lebanon followed. Hizbollah retaliated by launching what they described as Operation Truthful Promise.
The fighting continued until August, with formal proceedings continuing until October 2006. This war, between Israel and Hizbollah (in which the Lebanese frequently found themselves in the way, despite the Government’s neutrality) has been one of the most controversial wars fought in recent years. Unlike the Six Day War (5–10 June 1967) or that of Yom Kippur (6–26 October 1973), no side can truly be said to have won, despite what each side has declared for itself.
Cities and settlements within Israel were hit by approximately 13,000 Hizbollah rockets – mainly the Ra’ad 1 and Fajr-3 – which were clearly of Iranian derivation (it is also said that some Iranian Revolutionary Guards fought alongside Hizbollah militants). In return, Israeli bombers struck the Lebanese capital Beirut, in which the Hizbollah headquarters was a key target. Consequently there were civilian casualties on both sides, with the exact numbers, as always, being disputed.
In September 2006 Hassan Nasrallah declared that Hizbollah had won the war amid scenes of enormous rejoicing among the Shiite population. Israeli opinion polls pointed to uncertainty as to who, if anyone, had been victorious, and the former defence minister Moshe Arens proclaimed that Israel had lost. Over a quarter of a million Israeli citizens had to be evacuated temporarily from their homes in northern Israel and it was not until two years later, in 2008, that the two captured IDF soldiers were returned home.
Much discussion at the time revolved around the fact that Ehud Olmert, the prime minister (and a former Mayor of Jerusalem) was the first Israeli prime minister never to have served in the Defence Forces. The Chief of Staff, Dan Halutz was, by contrast, an airman and not a soldier. This became an important consideration given that the air force tried to achieve Israel’s aims by bombing as much as by land-based strikes, with mixed results. Olmert became unpopular and subsequently had to resign in relation to possible corruption charges, and Halutz was compelled to retire in early 2007. For many the myth of Israeli invincibility had finally been punctured, and that remains the view of commentators today. However, the situation is slightly more complex than that, and a more nuanced understanding is possible to achieve.
In November 2006, Sir John Keegan, former Royal Military Academy Sandhurst lecturer and noted military historian, argued that the Israelis had not, in fact, been defeated. What had helped Hizbollah resist Israeli bombing raids was their tunnel system, which was similar to that which the Vietcong had employed to get their troops (literally) under American lines back in the 1960s and 1970s. Broadcaster Al Jazeera – notably based in Sunni-dominated Qatr – commented on another of Hizbollah’s tactics, namely that many of the Hizbollah rockets were launched from civilian areas, thereby endangering inhabitants to Israeli reprisals. (According to Amnesty International, Hizbollah frequently uses civilians as human shields.) Despite these tactics, Hizbollah was hit badly, so much so that – as former Israeli general and Prime Minister Ehud Barak commented – they were unable to assist Hamas and the Gaza militants. With Hizbollah compromised, the power to launch further and even more damaging raids on Israeli territory had been severely curtailed.
In addition, the fact that Hizbollah is a Shiite organization with close ties to Iran has not made them popular in the Sunni majority states. During the 2006 conflict, the Arab League carefully supported Lebanon rather than Hizbollah. The latter were also condemned by Saudi Arabia, whose strict Wahhabi interpretation of Islam does not legitimate the Shiite version of that faith. (Though this does not prevent Shiite Iran supporting Sunni Hamas, as we shall see later.) Fear of a ‘Shiite Crescent’ still influences states such as Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, which in turn shapes their relationship to Hizbollah. Saudi Arabia is especially anxious about the possible development of a ‘Shiite Crescent’, since so much of the oil-rich territory under its sand has Shiite inhabitants.
To return to the influence of Sir John Keegan’s argument, it might be better to suggest that no one won the Second Lebanon War, and that a stalemate still exists. Predictions of a new war on Lebanese soil have proved unfounded – so far.
As for Gaza, which for the last five years has continuously been in the news, no sign of peace being restored has yet materialized. The first intrusion against Gaza – after the Israelis had withdrawn their troops and settlers by the end of 2005 – was Operation Summer Rains (June–November 2006), whose last action was codenamed Autumn Clouds. The fact that Operation Summer Rains followed the Hamas victory in the elections for the Palestinian Authority area is no coincidence given Hamas’ continued refusal to recognize the existence of the state of Israel.
The Hamas victory in the Palestinian Authority elections on 9 January 2006 has certainly changed the already complex situation in the Middle East. Hamas is a body that for religious reasons rejects permanently the right of Israel to exist at all. Unusually, this Sunni Muslim group is supported by Shiite Iran, a link that – crucially – enables Iran to be a major player in the region in a way that has not before been possible.
Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya (Islamic Resistance Movement) – Hamas – is a body that is Islamic by name. This makes it by definition different from the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), one of whose leading representatives, Hanan Ashrawi, is, for instance, both a woman and a Christian as well as being a long-standing Palestinian nationalist. Though it is possible to be a supporter of the PLO as well as being a Christian, this is not the case with Hamas, which is entirely Islamic in its goals and outlook – a crucial distinction between the two organizations.
Hamas formally dates back to 1987. However the practice of Islamic-based opposition to any kind of non-Muslim presence in the region goes back much further. In this sense, one of Hamas’ religious and ideological forbears is Sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam (1882–1935), after whom the rockets propelled against Israel are named. It is significant that, in defining Hamas identity, Sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam – killed in a shootout with the British in 1935 – was a Syrian and not a Palestinian. This is noteworthy because Hamas, much like the PLO, is nationalist organization. One resolution to the possible conflict posed by nationalism in defining such organizations requires reference to a particular Muslim vision of a pure Islamic state in which arcane, Western constructions such as Syrian, Palestinian and Jordanian become irrelevant, and a much larger body defined by the borders of the seventh-century Islamic Caliphate become the new focus.
As many commentators, including Beverley Milton-Edwards and Stephen Farrell in their book Hamas: The Islamic Resistance Movement (2010), have written, there is more to Hamas than just extremism and violence. As one member of the Israeli security apparatus once stated, for many Palestinians the issue is simple and has little to do with extremism: would you rather be ill in a Hamas hospital or one run by the Fatah wing of the PLO? Another example, articulated by Israeli journalist Nathan Shachar, is that the choice in January 2006 for ordinary voters in Gaza and the West Bank was very straightforward: clean-living, incorruptible Hamas or deeply corrupt and factional Fatah? At the time of the elections, Hamas – thanks in large part to extensive funding from friendly devout Muslims in places such as Saudi Arabia – had an enormous welfare organization, schools, hospitals (usually free for patients and supplicants, with no bribes necessary); whereas the cost of getting anything done in Fatah-controlled areas required a great deal of corruption and even greater expense.
This domestic Palestinian point of view stood in contrast to that of the outside world, whose leadership in places like the US, along with Britain (and other European Union countries) expressed astonishment when Hamas won the election in January 2006. Surely most Palestinians wanted to be ruled by those working for peace, many journalists questioned, for a two-state solution that would guarantee an independent Palestine living in peaceful coexistence with Israel? In fact the likelihood is that most Palestinians had voted, like people the world over, for entirely domestic concerns unrelated to international affairs. The outcome did, however, pose a major problem for the West, especially for the Bush regime, given that the US had invaded Iraq in 2003 with the long-term goal of introducing democracy to the Middle East. Now here, in 2006, in the Palestinian Authority, the people had indeed voted democratically – for an organization that the international community considered to be terrorist. In 2006, the West sided with the election losers, Fatah.
This outcome is reflected upon in the work of Indian-born American thinker and writer Fareed Zakaria, whose book The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad (2007) espouses the view that when people vote, they do not necessarily do so for liberal, democratic, pluralist parties. Voters are as capable of freely choosing profoundly illiberal and even repressive governments, if that is what they want to do.
President Abbas of the Palestinian Authority area refused to accept the election result. It took until 2007 for Saudi Arabia to broker a Fatah–Hamas government, a compromise that did not last long and soon saw the region engulfed in a virtual civil war. In effect Gaza was controlled by Hamas, the West Bank was controlled by Fatah, and what was supposed to be a two-state solution rapidly became three states: Israel, Palestine/ Fatah-controlled West Bank and Palestine/Hamas-controlled Gaza. Not only was all of this unacceptable to the PLO/Fatah regime, and to the West, but also to the Israelis, who saw Hamas as a major threat to regional peace.
The trigger for Israel’s attacks on Gaza was the kidnapping of Corporal Shalit of the Israeli Defence Force. At the time of writing, Corporal Shalit is still in the hands of Hamas several years after his initial capture. In addition, Qassam rockets have continued to bombard parts of southern Israel, which has also proven to be a major provocation.
As with the conflict in Lebanon, Operation Summer Rains became ferocious both in the way in which both sides fought and in the reaction of the international community. Hamas used civilians as human shields and hospitals and schools to launch attacks against the Israelis. The IDF focused their retaliation by attacking those locations that had attacked them, resulting in hospitals and schools absorbing hits from Israeli planes. Many civilians died as a consequence, and much of the blame has been allocated to Israel. Hamas’ use of Qassam rockets has killed many Israeli civilians, while the IDF’s use of white phosphorous has had a similar outcome on the Palestinian population. These tactics have attracted heavy criticism for both sides.
In fact Gaza suffered from not one, but two, conflicts during this time period. In June 2007 Fatah, who still controlled the West Bank and the Presidency of the Palestinian Authority, and Hamas, in Gaza, launched vicious attacks upon each other in which many were killed. Civilians once again found themselves in the middle of the fighting, with fatal results. Human Rights Watch commented on this internecine struggle (which Hamas won in terms of gaining total control of Gaza) on their website from 2007–10:
These attacks by both Hamas and Fatah constitute brutal assaults on the most fundamental humanitarian principles. The murder of civilians not engaged in hostilities and the wilful killing of captives are war crimes, pure and simple.
What is distinct about the reading of this particular conflict is that it didn’t pit Palestinians against Israelis, but against other Palestinians. In some cases it has become easy for media and public opinion to blame Israel, but this incidence of violence was committed by two groups of Palestinians against their own people, with appalling results.
The Egyptian-sponsored ceasefire, or ‘lull’, between Israel and Gaza lasted until December 2008. As soon as it finished, Hamas once again unleashed Qassam rockets against Israel. In this new chapter of the conflict, the Al-Quds Brigades of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad also became active in the fighting. In retaliation, the Israelis launched a new assault on Gaza, which they called Operation Cast Lead. Phase One involved bombings by the Israeli Air Force and a second attack by the IDF directly into Gaza followed early in the New Year, January 2009. Once again the fighting proved immensely controversial, made more complicated by the fact that Israel was able to ban much of the foreign media from entering Gaza. As before, the use of rockets by one side and white phosphorous by the other created international furore, and the Israeli bombing of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency office in Gaza, with resultant civilian casualties, aroused widespread condemnation.
Trying to identify precisely how many died in Cast Lead shows how hard it is to gain accurate figures, with each side exaggerating or diminishing the claims of the other. One statistic puts the Palestinian deaths at around 1,100; others put it to well over 1,600, which is quite a major discrepancy. By now it is probably impossible to verify either way. However, even the lower figure represents a high loss of life.
The United Nations asked an eminent South African judge, Richard Goldstone, to investigate the conflict, which he did in autumn 2009. Given that he was criticized by both sides and therefore did not hesitate to condemn human rights abuses by both Israel and Hamas, Goldstone’s resulting research was perceived to not suffer from bias. That being said, Goldstone did comment that he had been issued a ‘one-sided mandate’, since his remit did not, for example, expand to cover Hamas atrocities against fellow Palestinians during the struggle with Fatah to control Gaza.
Israelis often protest in the media, when interviewed for television and radio, and in newspapers that they are held accountable to a much higher standard than those of their neighbours, which is worth noting in consideration of the frequent role of bias in reportage emerging about this conflict.
While at the time of writing there is no actual conflict in the Gaza area, that narrow strip of land continues to be in the news. In late May 2010 a flotilla of aid ships set off with supplies, aiming to break the embargo that Israel has placed on all potentially dangerous supplies entering the Gaza Strip. Most of the boats were manned by Western peace activists of various descriptions, and were certainly not armed – with the alleged exception of one of the boats. The MV Mavi Marmora was chartered by a Turkish organization, the IHH (Turkish Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief), which some speculate has close links to violent jihadist groups in the Middle East. When Israeli commandos stormed the flotilla, most boats presented no retaliation, though the IDF gained bad publicity on YouTube and similar popular media outlets for using force against peaceful protesters. But the Turkish boat was armed, shots were exchanged, and several Turks were killed – their bodies flown home and buried ceremoniously as martyrs to the Islamic cause. The Turkish government was forthright in its condemnation of Israel, which in turn defended itself strongly in the international media.
The general consensus was that Israel had erred, especially since the country’s enemies, such as Iran, were able to use the event as an excuse to portray Israel in the worst possible light. However, some commentators argued that the events played out in such as manner that suggested that Turkey supports the Islamic cause in the Middle East. This, it was suggested, could be good news for Israel, if it meant that democratic Turkey might then become a key player in regional affairs. Turkey presents a very particular role model in the context of the Middle East in that in the eyes of some, it is considered to endorse democratic, pluralist and Western-friendly values in the context of a Muslim state.
Can there be peace in the Middle East? Countless American presidents and their special emissaries have done their best to support such an outcome, in conjunction with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. One response lies in a May 2010 publication in the influential magazine of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Foreign Policy. The article, entitled ‘The False Religion of Middle East Peace: And Why I’m no Longer a Believer’, was written by Aaron Miller, who had been for three decades an American State Department Analyst and Negotiator (1978–2003). After advising six US Secretaries of State and having met all the major players in the region for over thirty years, Miller no longer believes that American intervention can secure the ever-elusive goal of peace.
Is this a counsel of despair? Certainly there have been no meaningful breakthroughs in decades. And, as we shall see in the next chapter, if nuclear war breaks out, then even the Six Day War would appear modest. It would be wonderful to think that one glorious day peace could come. But it might alas be a long way off – if it comes at all, and as experts such as Benny Morris have reminded us, the prospects, however desirable, are still tragically remote.