Reply #38: According to this FT article, Dems oppose Israeli invasion of Gaza by 22 points. [View All]

[flpoljunkie]

Israel’s self-defeating Gaza offensive

By Gideon Rachman

Published: January 5 2009 19:04 | Last updated: January 5 2009 19:04

Ingram Pinn illustration

By sending ground troops into the Gaza Strip, Israel has crossed a line that brings it perilously close to strategic failure.

Just as with the Lebanon war of 2006, an air bombardment has failed to stop rocket fire into Israel – and has been followed by a ground invasion. The Israeli government says it has learnt the lessons of its stalemated war with Hizbollah, the Lebanese militia. Gaza is more hospitable terrain than southern Lebanon; Hamas is militarily weaker than Hizbollah; Israel is better prepared and is using new tactics.

Maybe so. But what are Israel’s strategic needs? The first is the protection of Israeli citizens; the second is the re-establishment of Israel’s deterrent power; the third is the preservation of international support; and the fourth some prospect of durable peace. Each one of these objectives is now in peril.

By sending the army into Gaza, Israel has probably ensured it will lose many more lives than the four killed by Hamas rockets in the year before the conflict started. It is, of course, the job of the military to take casualties to protect civilians. But Israel’s is a citizen army. The point has not been lost on the Israeli public. A poll taken early in the conflict found more than 70 per cent support for bombing Gaza – but just 20 per cent support for a ground invasion.

The Israeli government may feel that the loss of life, on both sides, is justified if it can stop the rockets and restore the deterrent power that was damaged in Lebanon. But this is a gamble that could easily backfire. As Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, put it a couple of days ago: “Let’s say we unilaterally stopped and four days from now a barrage fell on Ashkelon ... Do you understand the consequences for Israeli deterrence?” But that means that a battered Hamas just has to find a way to keep firing rockets into Israel to claim some sort of victory. And even if Israel succeeds in stopping the rockets for now, any future regional enemy now knows how best to taunt Israel and delight its enemies: rockets.

Then, there is international opinion. In the early stages of the campaign, Israel got a relatively easy ride. Among western governments there was widespread acceptance of the argument that no state can tolerate regular assaults of the sort that peppered southern Israel. And Hamas has few friends among Arab governments.

But international sympathy is predictably crumbling away as the death toll mounts. Arguments about what is a “proportional” response to Hamas’s rockets seem legalistic, next to the simple fact that more than 500 Palestinians have died so far, compared with five Israelis. The European Union is now demanding a ceasefire. Arab governments are responding to outrage at home.

Israel has so far been able to rely on the usual rock-solid support from the US government. But even that could eventually change. A recent opinion poll showed that Democratic party voters were opposed to the Israeli attack on Gaza by a margin of 22 per cent. It is not inevitable that Barack Obama, president-elect, will reflect the views of the rank and file of his party. But neither is it inevitable that he will ignore them.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/34c5a426-db49-11dd-be53-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1