Just as a tiny spark can touch off a raging wildfire, so can a single incident set two adversaries on a path to war that benefits neither.
History is full of such lessons.
If one were to ask how the current shooting war between Israel and Hamas began, some would take the long view and point to 2007 when Hamas, designated a terrorist group by the United States and the European Union, took control of the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian territory on the Mediterranean Sea that borders Israel and Egypt.
The latest flashpoint resulting in unguided rocket fire from Hamas and retaliatory Israeli precision airstrikes can be traced back to early May when tensions in a Jerusalem neighborhood began to rise over an impending court ruling over whether six Palestinian families would have to give up their homes to Jews who lost them in the 1948 war.
Palestinian protesters, who see this as part of a move to push them out of east Jerusalem, clashed with Israeli security forces.
Then on May 7 came a confrontation at the Al Aqsa Mosque, one of Islam’s holiest sites, which Jews also revere as the Temple Mount.
Protests grew more violent as Israeli police prevented Palestinians from gathering near one of the Old City’s ancient gates, a Ramadan tradition, and Muslim worshipers clashed with Jewish groups celebrating Israel’s capture of east Jerusalem in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
Israeli police conducted a raid on the Al Aqsa Mosque on May 10, using rubber bullets and stun grenades. In the mayhem, hundreds of Palestinians and some 20 Israeli police were injured.
This provided the pretext for Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers to issue an ultimatum for Israel to withdraw its forces from the Al Aqsa Mosque compound.
When Israel did not comply, Hamas fired long-range rockets from Gaza indiscriminately into civilian neighborhoods in Jerusalem, a war crime.
Israel responded with airstrikes, which the U.S. says it has a right to do, and war had begun.
The escalated cycle illustrates the danger of a small conflict expanding into a full-blown war when grievances are held for too long and there are no off-ramps or firebreaks.
It also holds lessons for the U.S. and its efforts to avoid sleepwalking into a major war with potential adversaries, such as China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran.
“One of the things that concerns me particularly in a place like North-South Korea or the South China Sea or Taiwan or Ukraine is the risk of accidental war of conflict which escalates out of control in a hurry,” said Maine Sen. Angus King, an independent, at a recent Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing for the U.S. Korea commander.
“If you look back through history, wars often start by accident,” King observed. “Nobody thought that a single gunshot in Sarajevo was going to plunge the world into the conflict that it did in World War I.”
“You are going to one of the world’s tinderboxes,” King warned Army Gen. Paul LaCamera, who will be in command of the combined U.S.-South Korean military forces (35,000 U.S., 600,000 South Korea, plus another million reservists) that are poised to deter and, if necessary, defeat North Korea.
Former President Donald Trump’s signature foreign policy triumph, achieved in his final months in office, was the brokering of the Abraham Accords, normalizing diplomatic relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
Trump hailed the agreements as “the foundation for a comprehensive peace across the entire region — something which nobody thought was possible.”
He said the accords would open the door for Muslims around the world “to visit the historic sites in Israel and peacefully pray at Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, the third-holiest site in Islam.”
While some critics say the hot war between Israel and Hamas demonstrates that the Abraham Accords have done little to bring the peace they promised, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, a Democrat who sits on the Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees, says he believes they will play a constructive role by incentivizing the signatories to use their newfound relationship with Israel to become more involved in the process,
“Arab nations for years have said they support the Palestinians, but they have done virtually nothing to back it up,” Kaine said recently on CNN. “Once these Arab nations normalized with Israel, they really have skin in the game right now. They have their own domestic populations saying to them, you’ve normalized relations with Israel. What are you trying to do to help out people in the West Bank and maybe bring about some increasing order in Gaza?”
Similar to many in Congress and the military, Kaine worries about the kind of low-level incident that could spin out of control and inadvertently spark a war between the U.S. and North Korea.
At the confirmation hearing for LaCamera, Kaine suggested a temperature-lowering measure and wanted to bounce it off the Korea commander.
Noting that the 1950 Korean War never officially ended, that South Korea did not sign the armistice agreement that halted the fighting in 1953, and that North Korea still cites that as a reason it must maintain its million-man army because the war could, in theory, resume at any time, Kaine posed this question:
“What if the U.S. and South Korea were to just declare we are not at war with North Korea? We have no desire to be involved in hostilities with North Korea. We have no desire to get any of North Korea’s territory. Our only desire is to live in peace with North Korea,” he asked LaCamera.
“From a military standpoint, a declaration of that kind would not limit the U.S. ability to carry out the mission that it’s currently carrying out in South Korea, would it?”
After a pregnant pause, the laconic LaCamera replied, “I don’t believe it would, senator.”
Jamie McIntyre is the Washington Examiner’s senior writer on defense and national security. His morning newsletter, “Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense,” is free and available by email subscription at dailyondefense.com.
