topic by
John Calvin
6/24/2002 (22:01) |
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This analysis from stratfor.com makes alot of sense, presumimg the intransigence of U.S. policy-makers, the complete insensibility of their 'vision' of the future, their predisposition to accept the inevitability of a 'clash of civilizations', their complete rejection of the foreign policy principles set out by George washington in his farewell address to the nation, their intractible ignorance, bigotry and hatred.
The Palestinian Strategy
Summary
It is difficult to see the strategy behind Palestinian tactics.
Suicide bombing has clearly become a mainstream Palestinian
tactic, one that makes the creation of a Palestinian state in the
West Bank and Gaza Strip unlikely to the point of impossibility.
It not only locks Israel into a war-fighting mode but also eases
diplomatic pressure on Israel to make a settlement. The
Palestinians know this. So why have the Palestinians adopted this
tactic?
The answer lies in what must be a fundamental strategic shift on
the part of the Palestinians. They no longer see the creation of
a rump Palestinian state as a feasible or desirable end. Rather,
despite the hardship of an extremely extended struggle, they have
moved toward a strategy whose only goal must be the destruction
of Israel. Since that is hardly likely to happen any time soon,
the Palestinians must see forces at work in the Islamic world
that make this goal conceivable and not just a fantasy.
Analysis
Embedded in the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli war is the
fundamental question: What is the ultimate Palestinian strategy?
We see the tactics unfolding daily, but it is neither clear what
the Palestinians expect to achieve nor what strategy links these
tactics to their ultimate goal.
The suicide bombing campaign, involving both Hamas and Al Aqsa
Martyrs, a unit of Fatah, is a well-defined and well-coordinated,
mainstream Palestinian movement, not an errant action by splinter
groups. Certainly, the Palestinians do not expect to be able to
defeat Israel militarily by conducting suicide attacks. Nor do
they expect to succeed at driving a wedge between Israel and the
United States. To the contrary, the Palestinians are quite
sophisticated managers of Western public opinion, and they
understand that the suicide attacks decrease the probability of
such an outcome, regardless of Israeli response.
The lack of strategic clarity stems from the murkiness of their
ultimately incompatible goals. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's
public goal, and the foundation of all third-party peace efforts,
is to create an independent Palestinian state on the West Bank
and in Gaza. There are, however, two other possible goals: to
reclaim all of the lost territories and create a Palestinian
state throughout the former Palestine, not incidentally
destroying Israel, or to reconcile the two goals and create a
hybrid of a smaller Palestinian state as a springboard for
broader operations aimed at ultimately defeating and occupying
Israel.
The Palestinians' current tactics are only slightly compatible
with a strategy aimed at creating a Palestinian state in the West
Bank and Gaza. For this to be their goal, the Palestinians would
have to believe that the bombing campaign will drive a wedge
between the Israeli government and the Israeli public who will
demand an end to the war and willingly give the Palestinians an
independent state in return, overriding any security
considerations of the Israeli government. The Palestinians
observed a similar process take place over the Israeli occupation
of southern Lebanon. Possibly they believe they can achieve the
same end on a much grander scale through this campaign.
Were this the goal, it would suffer from two serious defects.
Historically, bombing campaigns designed to drive a wedge between
the public and the regime have failed. When delivered from the
air -- as in the Battle of Britain or the bombings of Germany,
Japan or Vietnam -- they did not succeed, even at much greater
numbers of casualties than are likely to be experienced in
Israel.
The Palestinians must be aware that bombing campaigns against the
homeland tend to fail. They also know Israeli sentiment very well
and are too sophisticated to believe this campaign will result in
a groundswell in Israel demanding negotiations. Quite the
contrary, it is likely to freeze Israeli public opinion in an
intransigent mode.
But even if the suicide bombings forced Israel to capitulate on
creating a Palestinian state, a Palestine consisting of the West
Bank and Gaza would be an untenable solution, and the leadership
knows it. First, a consensus would never be reached, and someone
would object sufficiently to organize new attacks and undermine
any agreement.
Second, a small Palestine would be economically and militarily
untenable: It would never be free of Israel's orbit. Therefore,
Palestinian nationalism could accept a small Palestine only as an
interim measure on the way to a greater Palestine. Most
important, the Palestinians know that the Israelis are completely
aware of this and therefore are not going to reach a settlement
with Palestine on something that cannot be guaranteed: the
complete cessation of warfare and an absolute commitment to
accept the permanence of Israel. Which still leaves the question
of why they are waging this type of campaign.
One explanation is that the Palestinians no longer believe a
solution to their problem is attainable on a local basis. This
means they do not believe they can reach their goals through
negotiations with Israel sponsored by third parties, such as the
United States. Rather, they believe now that their goals can be
reached only in the broader context of a transformation of the
Islamic world and a redefinition of the relationship of the
Islamic world not only to Israel but also to the West in general.
From the Palestinians' standpoint, their fundamental problem is
hostility or indifference on the part of Islamic states and Arab
states in particular. Jordan has been actively hostile to
Palestinian interests after Arafat almost overthrew the Hashemite
monarchy in 1970. Egypt's peace treaty with Israel has kept it
from redefining its relationship to Israel while paying only
rhetorical attention to the Palestinian issue. The Syrians have
supported factions of the Palestinian movement, still dreaming of
annexing Palestine into a greater Syria. Other, more distant
states have been more bellicose but no less ineffective. The
Palestinians' fundamental problem of being isolated from Arab
resources and power enables Israel to act against them without
real concern for its other frontiers. Therefore, the Palestinians
cannot hope to win.
The needed transformation of the Islamic world will take a long
time to achieve. On the other hand, from the Palestinian point of
view, time is on their side. Given that all quickly attainable
solutions leave them in an unacceptable condition, they have
nothing to lose by playing for the long-term solution. Given
Palestinian psychology, a long-term strategy of enormous
proportions is politically more viable than short-term strategies
that cannot deliver genuine solutions. They can either capitulate
or continue to struggle, but a small Palestinian state would not
satisfy their needs. Nor could it preclude the continuation of
war by Palestinian rejectionists and therefore would not be
accepted by Israel. The Palestinians' only hope is a redefinition
of the general geopolitics of the region.
It is in this sense that the ongoing suicide campaign must be
understood. Having accepted that no political settlement in the
smaller context of Israel and Palestine is possible, the
Palestinians have accepted a long-term strategy of unremitting
warfare using whatever means is available -- for now, suicide
bombers -- as the only alternative. The price is high, but given
the stakes, their view is that it is worth it. It follows that
the Palestinians will accept reoccupation by Israel and use that
reoccupation not merely to drain Israeli resources but also to
create an atmosphere of war designed to energize the Islamic
world for a broad redefinition of relationships.
The suicide bombing campaign cannot be intended to achieve any
significant short-term goal. First, it is not likely to generate
a peace movement in Israel --quite the contrary. Second, it locks
the United States into alignment with Israel, rather than driving
a wedge between the two. Finally, it creates an extreme
psychology within the Palestinian community that makes political
flexibility all the more difficult. The fervor that creates
suicide bombers also creates a class of martyrs whose sacrifices
are difficult to negotiate away. The breadth and intensity of the
suicide bombings force us to conclude that the Palestinian
leadership is focusing on a long-term strategy of holding the
Palestinians together in a sense of profound embattlement,
transforming the dynamics of the Arab world and then striking at
Israel from a position of strength. In short, the Palestinians
think that time is on their side and that sacrifices for a
generation or two will yield dividends later. If they wait, they
will win.
Here Palestinian strategy, intentionally or unintentionally,
intersects with that of al Qaeda, which also is committed to a
radical transformation of the Islamic world. Its confrontation
with the United States is designed to set the stage for this
transformation, enabling the Islamic world to engage and defeat
the enemies of Islam.
For al Qaeda one of the pillars of this confrontation is the
Palestinian question, which it defines as the recovery of Islamic
land usurped by Israel, a tool of the United States and Great
Britain. For al Qaeda, the Palestinian question represents the
systematic repression and brutalization of the Islamic world at
the hands of both Christianity and the secular West. Israel is
merely the most extreme and visible dimension of Western
injustice. Palestine is, at the same time, a primary means of
energizing the Islamic world. The ongoing injustice of the
Palestinian situation combined with the martyrdom of the bombers
creates, in al Qaeda's view, both a sense of embattlement and
religious fervor with profound political consequences. Hamas and
Al Aqsa Martyrs are powerful recruiting tools for al Qaeda.
If the Palestinians have adopted the long-term strategy we
described, then al Qaeda is the means of achieving their
geopolitical end. If the precondition for the defeat of Israel is
a transformation of the internal politics of Egypt, Syria, Jordan
and the rest of the Arab world, then al Qaeda is currently the
only force fighting toward this end. In the same way that
Arafat's generation aligned itself with Egypt's Gamel Abdel
Nasser, Arab socialism and the Soviet Union in an attempt to find
a geopolitical lever to destroy Israel, so today's generation has
to look for geopolitical salvation among Islam's religious
fundamentalists. Al Qaeda is the only group operating effectively
at the moment and therefore, by default if not by intention, al
Qaeda is serving the Palestinians' interest and vice versa.
For al Qaeda, a Palestinian settlement would be politically and
morally unacceptable: Morally, it would represent a betrayal of
Islam; politically, it would defuse a critical, energizing issue.
Any agreement that would accept the permanent loss of territory
to Israel would increase the power of accommodationists in the
Islamic world. Al Qaeda needs an ongoing confrontation between
Palestinians and Israelis to serve its ends; the Palestinians
need tremendous pressure brought on the Arab world to serve their
interests. The Palestinians also need a transformation in the
Arab world. Here the two interests coincide. Israel, then,
becomes a foundation of al Qaeda's political strategy in the
Islamic world, as well as a test bed for tactics and military
strategies.
Palestinian strategy makes no sense except in the context of
alignment with al Qaeda. We need to be very careful here. We are
not saying that there is deep cooperation going on between the
Palestinians and al Qaeda although we would be very surprised if
representatives of the two entities have not met and coordinated
at times. Rather, what we are saying is that the goals of the
Palestinians and those of al Qaeda have converged. Whether this
was by design or by the logic of their situation is not really
relevant. What is relevant is the convergence not only of tactics
but also of a strategic and geopolitical perspective. Unless the
Palestinians undergo a profound change of goals, they need al
Qaeda to be successful to aid their own success. Al Qaeda is
helped enormously by Palestinian behavior. If not a word had ever
been exchanged --which we doubt -- the interests would still have
converged. And the alliance that grows naturally is the most
powerful one.
This means that no real peace process is any longer possible and
that Israel can expect to be under constant pressure from the
Palestinians. Then the question is, can Israel define a strategy
for containing the Palestinians without simultaneously inflaming
the Islamic world? More important, can the U.S.-Israeli
relationship survive when what Israel must do to suppress the
Palestinians flies in the face of American coalition-building in
the Islamic world? Of course the Palestinians may hope to provoke
a response from Israel that the United States cannot tolerate.
However, this is not 1973. Israeli dependence on the United
States is much less today than it was then, and therefore U.S.
influence on Israel is much lower. Second, the United States is
not likely to break with Israel when the trigger is suicide
bombing -- not what the Palestinians want to hear, but it is
exactly what al Qaeda would want.
This is precisely the crisis both the Palestinians and al Qaeda
want to create. Al Qaeda hopes to use U.S. commitment to Israel
as a tool for political mobilization in the Islamic world, since
the United States cannot accept the destruction of Israel and
nothing less can satisfy the needs of the Palestinians. The
forecast, therefore, is for pain.
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