Israel’s Plateau of ‘Security’

July 24th, 2006

Views: 450

Posted by ChrisG at 9:16 am

Early stirrings of a framework for ceasefire negotiations, and a return to the old story. Israel wants security, then it will give peace. The Syrians suggest that Israel should give up land occupied since the Six-Day war, then it will have peace. And part of the ’security’ that Israel demands is a buffer zone in southern Lebanon.

The Israeli establishment sees security as depending on its military deterrent potential, on its capacity to keep its neighbours at bay. That is, it predicates security on a state of constantly managed tension, punctuated by the occasional slaughter of a few of its own citizens, a periodic assassination, and the occasional small war.

Another European diplomat, close to the deliberations, said Olmert came around to the idea of a peacekeeping force because “the Israelis have realised that they are not able to completely crush Hizbollah” and have no plans to reoccupy southern Lebanon.

Politics, as Umberto Eco once said, inverting Clausewitz, has become a continuation of war by other means, and for Israel this is particularly true. Once again, the Israeli government is about to return its citizens and those of neighbouring countries, to another round of violent ‘peace’, its military planners and their political assistants busying themselves with preparations for the next head-to-head.

But this isn’t just something planned by the elite. It rests on a deadlock, both logical and emotional, that threads itself through Israeli national consciousness.

Close to the Lebanese border at Avivim, scene of fierce clashes between Israel and Hizbollah, Guy Shachar an IT consultant from Tel Aviv, was photographing swirling smoke where a Katyusha rocket had landed. ‘I wanted to come and see for myself,’ he said. ‘No one wants war but peace processes have failed for us. I’m a man of peace, I have been on demonstrations. But it became frustrating.’

So frustration with peace leads to war. And, amidst war, in the absence of an impossible, ultimately decisive victory, the furious longing for the final destruction of the enemy subsides, and in its place comes a ceasefire, the licking of wounds, the catching of breath. Insecure security returns. And another round of frustration, this time that military power is never quite enough. Frustration, that slides back into… what else but war?

And for the present the recipients of Israel’s uniquely caring approach to dropping high-explosive ordnance keep on ungratefully dying.

UPDATE: A measured response, via Lebanon Updates and JSF.