That military operation against Hezbollah was seen as a success — so punishing that it bought 17 years of relative quiet. But it also nurtured resentments that could help turn an invasion of Gaza into a wider regional war. This past March, Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, told a group of Iran-backed militia members to get ready for a war with Israel that would begin a new era and include a ground invasion, according to a report by The Times. Over the weekend, Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, warned that attacks on Gazan civilians would trigger a reaction from Hezbollah, which has the military capability to cause a “huge earthquake” in Israel.
Hamas appears to want to lure Israelis into Gaza and has been preparing for this battle for years.
“This looks to me like a group that has come to believe its own narrative that Israel is a paper tiger and that it can defeat them militarily,” said Thanassis Cambanis, the director of the Century Foundation’s international research and policy center, who studies Islamist groups.
Israel’s military is not a paper tiger; it is one of the most technologically sophisticated militaries in the world. But it seems to be repeating the same mistakes the United States made after Sept. 11. Acting out of grief, rage and no small amount of hubris, America waged two costly wars, with deadly consequences for Iraqi and Afghan civilians and poor outcomes for ourselves in the end. Those wars empowered one enemy, Iran, and created a new one, ISIS. And after maintaining an over-20-year insurgency in Afghanistan, the Taliban is back in power, proving that “dismantling” a terrorist organization is easier said than done. American overreach squandered the good will we’d gotten in the wake of the attack.
By cutting off power, food and other essential goods to more than two million people in Gaza — until Hamas releases the hostages that are being held, Israel’s energy minister, Israel Katz, said — Israel is opening itself up to charges of collective punishment, which is illegal under international law. Nearly half of Gazans are under the age of 18. Why should they pay the price for Hamas’s attacks?
Over the summer, thousands of Palestinians staged protest marches in Gaza against Hamas’s rule. Hamas security beat them with batons. “They don’t even pretend to care about us,” one demonstrator told al-Monitor, an online news site. Now those same protesters are losing their homes, and possibly their lives, to Israeli bombs. Without power, many Gazans will lose the ability to pump water from wells or treat the wounded in hospitals. They are already losing contact with the outside world as their cellphones die. So they won’t be able to receive the evacuation warnings that Israel sends.
Farah Stockman
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