AT PENPOINT
The question that will ever remain over the present Israel-Hamas conflict is what was keeping the Israeli Defence Forces from going into the Gaza Strip. The Israeli answer, that it is awaiting the results of the US attempts at a ceasefire is not credible, for it would represent the first time Israel has paid attention to any factor short of its own desires or needs, in determining its course of action. The suspicion arises that the IDF is scared. The initial engagement, followed by withdrawal, Indicates as much.
The IDF faces the problem of all conscript forces, that the troops are not of high quality. In the sort of fighting that invading infantry would face in Gaza, conscript troops would probably not do too well. The bulk of the troops would probably be reservists recalled to duty, but their primary purpose would probably be to survive, not to overcome.
The IDF might hark back to the Ramadan War of 1973, when Israeli armoured formations composed primarily of reservists defeated Egyptian armoured formations which broke out into the occupied Sinai. However, that should take account of how bad the Egyptian armour was, as shown in the 1967 Six-Day War. More instructive is when there was more infantry-oriented fighting, around the Chinese Farm, when the Egyptians gave a good account of themselves, against reservist Israeli infantry.
In other words, the IDF cannot count on its infantry in the urban warfare that will characterise a ground invasion of Gaza. Opposing forces are not an army, so there will be gaps in training. True, just because a soldier does not know how to salute properly does not mean he cannot fire his personal weapon accurately. Another problem for attacking IDF forces is their lack of information about the Hamas tunnel network. The USA came up against the same problem in Vietnam against the Viet Cong, and never came up with a solution. One method, to use its infantry to clear the tunnels was tough, for it meant high casualty rates. This increased domestic pressure against the war, as the returning bodybags of conscripts created a backlash.
As a matter of fact, the Israeli comparison of the October 7 Hamas attacks to 9/11 are probably not accurate. A more valid comparison would be to the 1968 Tet Offensive, when the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong jointly launched an attack during the Vietnamese New Year, Tet, to exploit the fact that many South Vietnamese military personnel would be on holiday leave. Hamas used this, launching its attacks to coincide with the Yom Kippur holiday, which meant that military personnel would be on leave, and reservists would face problems in answering the inevitable call-up.
Are all the agonisings in the Muslim world over the Gazans actually just a nostalgic hankering for the Caliphate? They are inspired by a feeling for fellow Muslims, and for the land of Al-Aqsa, and the Caliphate is the mechanism for their defence. But there is presently no Caliphate, and the Gazans must shift for themselves.
Already with about 400,000 personnel in Vietnam, the US commander, Gen William C. Westmoreland, estimated that there would be another 200,000 needed to defeat the North Vietnamese. This meant that a million more personnel would have to be called up. Clearly, the USA had reached its limit. Though the Tet offensive did not cause the general uprising it was supposed to, it did cause the USA to enter the path of peace negotiations.
Similarly, the decisive moment for Israel will be whether it can sustain the cost of continuing the War. One of the major problems it faces is that it is not fighting another state, but a guerrilla organization. It might have realized that the peace with the PLO did not give it security. The PLO was initially committed to an end to Israel, and the Palestinian people getting their homeland, but came around to a two-state solution.
Hamas is committed to a Palestinian state, with no Zionist state. If it comes to a two-state solution, what is the Israeli guarantee that no other Palestinian group will emerge, with a similarly anti-Israeli ideology? One problem is that the Zionists will not accept that they are in the wrong, that Israel is an abomination, a perversion of the concept of the nation state. The era of a nation taking over another’s land by simply walking in, and throwing out the original inhabitants, has long been over. The last memorable example was the WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) snatching of the USA and Canada from the Native Americans.
One of Israel’ problems is that Hamas is not a state. Worse for it, the Gaza Strip is occupied territory, and by Israel. It is qualitatively different from Lebanon, where it fought the Hezbollah. Though Hezbollah was not the Lebanese state, at least the state’s borders were there to be observed. In Gaza, who is Israel supposed to subdue? Hamas? But they took power through an election Israel accepted as the occupying power. And the occupation has gone on since 1967. Only colonial occupations lasted longer. The Gaza Strip itself was occupied for 31 years by the British, when it was part of the Mandate of Palestine, from 1917 to 1948. It was initially occupied by Egypt, which lost it in the 1967 War. It has remained under Israeli occupation since.
Does Israel wish to have the Gaza Strip vacated? The question of where the people would go remains unanswered.
When the Ottoman Caliphate still existed, but while it was contracting, refugees would go to the capital of the Caliphate. One of the recurring problems was what to do with the refugees. Central Asians ended up in what is now Saudi Arabia; Chechens ended up in modern Jordan and also in Trebizond on the Black Sea, Greeks and East Europeans in Istanbul as well as in Anatolia. However, today, the Palestinians of Gaza have nowhere to go.
That may provide them the edge that the Israelis lack. The worst the enemy can do is deprive them of life. That is not as severe a hardship for a Palestinian stuck in Gaza under Israeli occupation, which has to be brutal and humiliating so as to sustain itself, as for an Israeli reservist who might not have a perfect life, but lives a good life.
One big advantage the Israeli forces have is that they need not worry about resupply of arms and munitions, because the USA and other backers will make up any losses. Hamas has a limited supply of munitions, and even Iran, supposedly its main backer, cannot resupply it freely. Turkish President Tayyib Erdogan held a big rally in favour of the Paelstinians in Ankara last Saturday may have said outright that Israel was an occupier, but he did not mention even a baby step to help the Palestinians. Instead, he took part in the celebrations marking the centenary of the establishment of the Turkish Republic, and thus the abolition of the Caliphate.
The rights and the wrongs of the Caliphate’s abolition can be debated, but it must be noted that the Palestinians have no right to expect help from the Turkish Republic. But the Caliph was under an obligation.
Are all the agonisings in the Muslim world over the Gazans actually just a nostalgic hankering for the Caliphate? They are inspired by a feeling for fellow Muslims, and for the land of Al-Aqsa, and the Caliphate is the mechanism for their defence. But there is presently no Caliphate, and the Gazans must shift for themselves.
