Detective trying to solve a crime always asks “cui bono?” (who would profit?) When we try to solve the crime called the Second Lebanon War, this question must head the list.
Dozens of penetrating questions were raised: Why was the decision to go to war taken in haste? Why wasn’t the army ready? Why wasn’t the rear prepared for war? But one issue was not considered: Why was there a war at all?
The decisive question is: Who would have profited from the enterprise if it had succeeded as planned? The one who stood to gain the most was the president of the United States. Bush, stuck in the Iraqi quagmire, needed a success in the Middle East.
The Israeli Army was to break Hezbollah, a supposed proxy of the Axis of Evil, and allow the pro-American client government of Fouad Siniora to take control of all of Lebanon. Since nobody doubted the huge superiority of the Israeli Army over a small band of guerrillas, that was to happen within days.
Then the victorious Israeli Army was to provoke the Syrian army, and after a short war, the regime of Bashar Assad should have collapsed. The Axis of Evil would have been smashed, American public opinion would have been convinced that the “vision” of President Bush had been realized, “Democracy” in the Middle East would have been triumphantly on the march, the Iraq fiasco would have become irrelevant.
The second one to profit would have been Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, who by sheer accident had taken over from Ariel Sharon, would have been recognized as an outstanding leader, statesman and strategist. Once the threat to the north of Israel, which had worried the Israeli military strategists for decades — the crescent of Iraq, Syria and Lebanon — is neutralized, Olmert would have entered history as the man who had eliminated from the Bible the verse of Jeremiah (1, 14) “Out of the North an evil shall break forth upon all the inhabitants of the land.”
Who pushed whom into the war? Did Bush push Olmert, or did Olmert push Bush? Years may pass before we shall know for sure — and it’s really not so important.
Question No. 2 is: Who has profited in practice?
To everybody’s amazement, the Israeli Army failed in its task. Hezbollah was not broken, but stood its ground against a military machine that is rated the fifth strongest in the world. The two captured Israeli soldiers — who had provided the mendacious justification for the war — were not freed. The United States, too, did not profit. According to reports leaked from Washington, the failure of the Israeli Army infuriated Bush.
He turned his wrath on Olmert. The Israeli military disappointed him. In the course of the war, Bush, with the generous (and loathsome) help of several governments, including Germany, had again and again prevented a cease-fire from coming into force, in order to give Israel a little more time to fulfill the task. It did not help.
Hezbollah also did not gain. True, its steadfast stand against the Israeli Army is viewed by many as an act of heroism that restores the dignity of the entire Arab world.
Hezbollah’s losses are in the process of being made good.
But Hassan Nasrallah, who radiates an extraordinary integrity, found it necessary to admit in public that he would not have carried out the initial incursion into Israeli territory if he had known what would follow. He apologized to the Lebanese public for giving Israel the pretext for the war that caused them so much death and destruction.
The war has not weakened the position of Hezbollah in Lebanon. That was underlined this week when the president of France, Nicholas Sarkozy, invited Hezbollah to take part in an all-Lebanese conference in Paris. But it seems that the war did not strengthen Hezbollah either.
Has Iran gained? After the United States did it a favor and destroyed Iraq, which has served for centuries as a roadblock between Iran and the Arab Middle East, it now has a foothold both in Iraq and Lebanon. But this has its drawbacks, too: The situation is pushing its potential enemies into preventive actions.
The conclusion: Nobody has gained from this war, from all this death and destruction.
Now the third question: Has Israel drawn any conclusions?
For a year now, everybody here has been busy with “drawing conclusions”. From the Winograd Commission of Inquiry to the last reporter on TV. E-v-e-r-y-o-n-e.
But this is make-believe. As a result of the conspiracy of silence concerning the basic questions of the war, it is quite impossible to deal with the roots of the problem.
Everybody is dealing, of course, with the rehabilitation of the army. The army was not ready for the last war, so it is training now with great determination — for the next war. If there is anything that can be assumed with certainty about the next war, if there be one, it is that it will not be a repeat of the last. Rockets will play a much bigger role, and will travel much longer distances. The weapons will be more sophisticated. The battlefield will be different.
Israelis take comfort in the fact that they now have an “experienced” minister of defense, Ehud Barak, a former army chief of staff, prime minister and defense minister. But the change of personalities does not necessarily bring about a change in the balance of powers: In the future, too, a bunch of politicians who happen to be members of the government will not dare to contradict the authoritative and determined view of the military leadership, which always, but always, produces a “professional” intelligence report to support it. This phenomenon has accompanied Israel since its foundation. It is the army that determines the public discourse. And as the former chief rabbi of France lamented this week in Jerusalem: “Peace has become a dirty word in Israel”. Almost every war is stupid. The last war was more stupid than most. The next war, if there be one, will be even stupider.
