Many have said Israeli military operations in Lebanon and Gaza outweigh the provocation. While most decry Hezbollah?s cross- border kidnapping of two Israeli reservists patrolling the Israeli border, the sight of Israel shelling and dropping bombs on southern Lebanon seems like unfair collective punishment for the actions of a few.
But Israel?s current actions in Lebanon, and in the Gaza Strip, are only peripherally related to the kidnapping earlier this month. What these operations are really about is restoring Israel?s credibility.
Israel?s determination to mete out disproportionate punishment in the face of provocation was the hallmark of its reprisal actions of the 1950s.
Israel deemed such actions critical to its security because the population of its adversaries dwarfed it. The perception that Israel will show its strength when provoked has eroded in recent years, however.
Israel?s withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000 ? which came after more than a decade of Israeli protests that they would only evacuate the area as the result of a negotiated peace settlement ? was widely interpreted as a victory for the Hezbollah guerillas who skirmished with Israel from the late 1980s.
The perceived success of Hezbollah in driving Israel from southern Lebanon inspired Palestinian militants in Gaza and the West Bank to attempt a similar casualty-maximization strategy that began only five months after the last Israeli left Lebanon.
As with Lebanon, Israel had long asserted it would redeploy out of Gaza and the West Bank as a part of a negotiated peace settlement with the Palestinians.
Despite that, Israel not only withdrew its armed forces from Gaza, but also endured the public spectacle of the destruction of Israeli settlements in the Strip.
Though Ariel Sharon proclaimed that Israel withdrew “from a position of strength,” to the Arab world it signaled a second success of a terror strategy against Israel.
While Israel occupied Lebanon and Gaza, an action which many deemed illegal, the illegitimacy of the occupation impaired its ability to retaliate against Hezbollah and Hamas with disproportionate lethality.
While neutral observers often deplored how the Lebanese and Palestinians went about their resistance to the Israeli occupation they did not deny their inherent right to resist.
The fear of widespread international condemnation, including, in the extreme, a trade embargo by Europe, restrained its efforts, as in operation Grapes of Wrath in 1996, to destroy Hezbollah.
Israel feels that it must stop the perception that it can be cowed by terrorist actions.
Israel?s new and untested leadership believes that massive and disproportionate retaliation, similar to the reprisal raids of the 1950s, albeit with newer technology, will convey the message that Israel has had enough of having its gestures towards peace manipulated.
The poor people of Lebanon who are just now recovering from nearly three decades of destruction, occupation and civil war do not deserve the pain they are suffering.
They will never be secure though until the nation to their south feels safe.
The surest way to make that happen is for the Lebanese government to assert its authority over the southern portion of the country.
The evidence since 1973 from Egypt, Jordan and even Syria is that when Israel?s neighbors do not allow terrorists to operate from their borders, quiet, if not peace, is virtually guaranteed.
Ariel Roth is an assistant professor of international relations at Goucher College. He can be reached at [email protected].
