It is the old story about the losing gambler: He cannot stop. He continues to play, in order to win his losses back. He continues to lose and continues to gamble, until he has lost everything: His ranch, his wife, his shirt.
The same thing happens in the biggest gamble of all: War. The leaders that start a war and get stuck in the mud are compelled to fight their way ever deeper into the mud. That is a part of the very essence of war: It is impossible to stop after a failure.
That is what happened this week, following the battle of Bint Jbeil, which the Arabs have already started to call proudly Nasrallahgrad. All over Israel the cry goes up: Get into it! Quicker! Further! Deeper!
A day after the bloody battle, the Cabinet decided on a massive mobilization of the reserves. What for? The ministers do not know.
Dan Halutz, the father of this war, thought that he could eliminate Hezbollah by means of the Israeli Air Force. But the Hezbollah rockets continued to land in the north of Israel, hundreds a day. The public cried out. There was no way round a ground operation. First, small, elite units were put in. That did not help. Then brigades were deployed. And now whole divisions are demanded.
Now the generals are convinced that there is no alternative to occupying the whole area up to the Litani River, about 24 kilometers from the border. Then they will find out that they have to reach the Awali River, 40 kilometers inside — the famous 40 kilometers that Menachem Begin talked about in 1982.
And then? The Israeli Army will be extended over a large area, and everywhere it will be exposed to guerrilla attacks, of the sort Hezbollah excels in. And the missiles will continue to fly.
What next? Toward Beirut in the north? Or toward Damascus in the east?
When it becomes clear that nothing is helping, that Hezbollah goes on fighting and the rockets continue to fly, the political and military leadership will face bankruptcy. They will need to pin the blame on somebody. On who? Well, on Bashar Assad, of course.
How is it possible that a small “terror organization,” with a few thousand fighters altogether, goes on fighting? Where do they get the arms from? The finger will point toward Syria.
Even now, the army commanders assert that new rockets are flowing all the time from Syria to Hezbollah. True, the roads have been bombed, the bridges destroyed, but the arms somehow continue to arrive.
The Israeli government demands that an international force be stationed not only along the Israeli-Lebanese border, but on the Lebanese-Syrian border, too. The queue of volunteers will not be long.
Then the generals will demand the bombing of roads and bridges inside Syria. For that, the Syrian Air Force will have to be neutralized. In short, a real war, with implications for the whole Middle East.
Ehud Olmert and Amir Peretz did not think about that when they decided 17 days ago in haste and light-heartedly, without serious debate, without examining other options, without calculating the risks, to attack Hezbollah.
Dan Halutz submitted an offer that could not be refused. A nice little war. Military plans were ready and well rehearsed. Certain victory. The more so, since on the other side there was no real enemy army, just a “terror organization.”
How hotly the desire was burning in the hearts of Olmert and Peretz is attested by the fact that they did not even think about the lack of shelters in the northern towns, not to mention the far-reaching economic and social implications. The main thing was to rush in and gather the laurels.
They had no time to think seriously about the war aim. Now they resemble archers who shoot their arrows at a blank sheet and then draw the rings around the arrow.
The aims change daily: To destroy Hezbollah, to disarm them, to drive them out of south Lebanon, and perhaps just to “weaken” them. To kill Hassan Nasrallah. To bring the captured soldiers home. To extend the sovereignty of the Lebanese government over all of Lebanon. To establish a new-old security zone occupied by Israel. To deploy the Lebanese Army and/or an international force along the border. To rehabilitate deterrence. To imprint into the consciousness of Hezbollah.
The more the nice little war continues, the clearer it becomes that these changing aims are not realistic. The Lebanese ruling group does not represent anybody but a small, rich, and corrupt elite. The Lebanese Army cannot and will not fight Hezbollah.
The new “security zone” will be exposed to guerrilla attacks and the international force will not enter the area without the agreement of Hezbollah. And this guerrilla force, Hezbollah, the Israeli Army cannot vanquish.
That is nothing to be ashamed of. Our army is in good — or, rather, bad — company. The term “guerrilla” (“small war”) was coined in Spain, during the occupation of the country by Napoleon. Irregular bands of Spanish fighters attacked the occupiers and beat them. The same happened to the Russians in Afghanistan, to the French in Algeria, to the British in Palestine and a dozen other colonies, to the Americans in Vietnam, and is happening to them now in Iraq.
Even assuming that Dan Halutz and Udi Adam are greater commanders than Napoleon and his marshals, they will not succeed where those failed.
When Napoleon did not know what to do next, he invaded Russia. If we don’t stop the operation, it will lead us to war with Syria.
Condoleezza Rice’s stubborn struggle against any attempt to stop the war shows that this is indeed the aim of the United States. From the first day of George Bush’s presidency, the neocons have been calling for the elimination of Syria. The deeper Bush sinks into the Iraqi quagmire, the more he needs to divert attention with another adventure.
By the way: One day before the outbreak of this war, our minister of national infrastructures, Binyamin Ben Eliezer, took part in the inauguration ceremony of the big pipeline that will conduct oil from the huge Caspian Sea reserves to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, just next to the Syrian border.
The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline avoids Russia and passes through Azerbaijan and Georgia, two countries closely aligned with Israel, like Turkey itself.
There is a plan to bring a part of the oil from there along the Syrian and Lebanese coast to Ashkelon, where an existing pipeline will conduct it to Eilat, to be exported to the Far East. Israel and Turkey are to secure the area for the United States.
Must the sliding into a war with Syria happen? Is there no alternative? Of course there is. To stop now, at once.
When president Lyndon Johnson felt that he was sinking into the morass of Vietnam, he asked his friends for advice. One of them answered with five words: “Declare victory and get out!”
We can do that. To stop investing more and more in a losing business. To be satisfied with what we can get now. For example: An agreement that will move Hezbollah a few kilometers from the border, along which an international force and/or the Lebanese Army will be deployed, and to exchange prisoners.
Olmert will be able to present that as a great victory, to claim that we have got what we wanted, that we have taught the Arabs a lesson.
Nasrallah will also claim a great victory, asserting that he has taught the Zionist enemy a lesson it will not forget. True, it will not be much. But that is what can be done to cut losses, as they say in the business world.
That can happen. If Olmert is clever enough to extricate himself from the trap, before it closes entirely.
As folk wisdom says: A clever person is one that gets out of a trap that a wise one would not have got into in the first place. And if Condoleezza gets orders from her boss to allow it.
On the 17th day of the war, we must recognize that soon we will be faced with a clear choice: To slide into a war with Syria, intentionally or unintentionally, or to get a general agreement in the north, that will necessarily involve also Hezbollah and Syria. At the center of such an agreement will be the Golan Heights.
Olmert and Peretz did not think about that in those intoxicating moments on July 12, when they jumped at the opportunity to start a nice little war. But then, were they thinking at all?
— Uri Avnery is a journalist, peace activist, former member of the Knesset, and leader of Gush Shalom.
