Spinning out of control

Israel has every right, like any other nation on Earth, to defend itself. However, the disproportionate response has been shocking to its friends and foes alike, undermining Israel's moral domination in western perceptions. This callousness reinforces the opposition to Israel's existence, even among those who have been persuaded over the years, through intellectual interaction, that Israel can live in peaceful co-existence with its neighbours.

Even if one were given the rules of engagement peculiar to the conflict raging in the Middle East since 1948, the Israeli reaction to the capture of its soldiers in Gaza, and later in South Lebanon, was shocking. Hamas(?) and Hezbollah certainly had no business abducting the soldiers. They broke a certain fail-safe line that goes for a tenuous peace in the area.

Tap here to add The Daily Star as a trusted source

When the Israeli demand to release its soldiers was refused, an Israeli ground incursion and preventive air strikes were to be expected. Not abandoning its own is an article of faith of Israel. Take into consideration the raid at Entebbe to rescue Israeli hostages many thousands of miles away.

As the government-in-power in Palestine, it was Hamas's responsibility to search out and return the Israeli soldiers. However, the Israeli response was disproportionate in targeting power stations, bridges, utility services, etc. They then went on to detain Hamas parliamentarians and even government ministers.

Without electricity and water, and facing daily pounding from the air, the Gazans, as indeed the rest of the Muslim world, may be forgiven for condemning this collective punishment. The Hezbollah ambush that killed Israeli soldiers and took two prisoners is another matter. It broke the fragile ceasefire in place, and the Israeli response was swift, deadly, and again, disproportionate.

The war was extended into Lebanon itself, with the city of Beirut firmly in Israel's gunsights. Israeli aircraft roamed far and wide, attacking Hezbollah targets, focusing also on Hezbollah TV stations and known Hezbollah bunkers within Beirut, etc. What was shocking was that the Israeli air force also indiscriminately attacked bridges, communication centres, etc. By any account this degradation of civic facilities was deliberate overkill, and in areas considered out-of-bounds by military planners.

The result has been mayhem. More than 500 persons killed, thousands injured, plus half a million internally displaced. Over 150,000 Lebanese refugees have crossed over into Syria. What took over two decades of tireless effort (and plenty of money) to re-create and develop has been reduced to rubble in less than a fortnight. The biggest casualty is the psychological security of Lebanon as a tourist haven. With an exodus of all nationalities, desperate to get out of harm's way, only some have been lucky to be evacuated to Cyprus.

While Lebanon is a resilient nation one wonders whether anyone can repair the damage to perception about security, the prime interest of any potential tourist. Instead of focusing on the battle zone in South Lebanon, which by itself would have been bad enough, Israel has succeeded in making all of Lebanon a war zone. While force is understandable against Hezbollah combatants, and one can stretch it to include the logistics chain, this overwhelming use of force against the defenceless has shaken the faith of quite a segment in the intelligentsia who firmly believed that, given the hand of sincerity by Muslims, Israel would respond in good faith.

Why has Israel gone into overdrive with overkill in this awesome manner? Since Israel does have a definite military motive in degrading Hezbollah's military facilities one can only surmise that the objective of "shock and awe" was to force the Lebanese population out of South Lebanon so as to have a buffer zone 20 kms broad.

One objective certainly was for the population to blame Hezbollah for bringing Israel's wrath on them. Israel's military policy of a swift and surprise offensive has also not materialised. For the first time in its history of successful military campaigns, fought over almost six decades, Israel does not have a conventional army with fixed defences to contend with. A conventional army has bunkers, command posts, transport, artillery, ammunition and supply trucks, with accompanying personnel etc. The complete paraphernalia provides good targets to destroy and/or decimate by air, artillery and ground maneuver.

Hezbollah is operating in very small mobile groups, and with Viet Cong-style tunnels crisscrossing the area they seem to have taken a toll of Israeli armour in their limited incursions, thereby the reluctance to engage in hand-to-hand fighting. With the whole area covered with shoulder-fired and/or wire guided missiles, and interspersed with anti-tank and anti-personnel landmines, the forecast of possible Israeli casualty figures has been dramatically increased. And the going has been painfully slow. With a small population, Israel is psychologically ill-equipped to handle large casualty figures. It is extremely sensitive to inordinate increase in numbers of dead and injured, this will happen with the Hezbollah.

So the Israeli strategy seems to be a combination of socio-economic gain and military access to South Lebanon short of an actual war. It is a strategic bluff to get the international community, led by the UN, to call for a buffer zone, patrolled by an effective international force, that would create a stand-off distance against missiles, thus giving Israel their concept of "secure borders." This would be carried out from South Lebanon.

A by-product of this strategy is to further vilify Syria and Iran as terrorist sponsoring nations, titling the balance against Iran in the nuclear issue which is shortly to go before the UN Security Council. While the Israelis may still go in for incursions, limited by time and space, Hezbollah has challenged the reputation of Israel's invincibility in battle. Something that made Israel be perceived in nothing short of awe. If Israel does invade Lebanon it will be a calculated risk meant to restore Israel's image of overwhelming and unchallenged might in the region.

If Syria, and then Iran, is drawn into the conflict directly, things may go out of control in the region. There will be no way of keeping the US out, and that may be catastrophic given that the Shias in Iraq will feel obliged to strike at the dispersed US and coalition forces in Iraq. There is a growing conviction amongst geo-political analysts that this could be the Israeli strategy to force US and coalition forces into a greater conflict.

The US army has already got its hands full coping with the Sunni insurgency. The far better and larger Shia militias would be more than a handful. To add to that, the new Iraqi army has yet to see its loyalties tested.

In fact, Hosni Mobarak could well find the Egyptian armed forces simmering with discontent if Iran and Syria enter the equation. This discontent is already rampant in the streets of Cairo and Alexandria. Lebanon is a powder keg with grenades going off all over, and it needs only one wrongly directed attack to blow the whole region to smithereens.

Ikram Sehgal, a former Pakistan army officer, is a political analyst and columnist.